A Critique of the Althusserian Approach to Class

Author(s): R. W. Connell
Source: Theory and Society, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Nov., 1979), pp. 303-345
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/656763
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 303

complexitiesof fury leave. . .

A CRITIQUE OF THE ALTHUSSERIAN APPROACH TO CLASS

R. W. CONNELL

One of the most remarkablethings about the revivalof socialisttheory in the

last decade has been the influence of the French School of marxismwhich
formed in the early 1960s around Louis Althusser.Serious criticism of their
ideas has mostly come from within marxism,and has naturallyfocussed on
what appearedto be novel within that intellectual framework- their episte-
mological doctrine, their account of "the break" in the history of Marx's
thought, their theory of ideology and the state. Criticism(at least in English)
has mostly overlooked their position on an issue that many socialistswould
regardas rathermore fundamental- the theory of class.

Partly this omission has to do with the history of the school itself. Its posi-
tions were first worked out as philosophicaldoctrines;Althusserretrospec-
tively remarkedthat "the class struggle does not figure in its own right in
ForMarx and ReadingCapital,"f andthe sameis trueof Lenin and Philosophy.
Books within the Althusserianframeworkexplicitly devoted to the theory of
class did not appear until 1974 (Poulantzas'Classesin ContemporaryCapi-
talism) and 1977 (Carchedi's On the Economic Identification of Social
Classes). Yet there is a definite approach to class to be found even in the
philosophicaltexts, which after all use the term, if they don't examine it, on
every second page. It was crystallized in 1968 in a highly influential forty
pages of Poulantzas'Political Power and Social Classes,and can be followed
in a more explicit and elaborated(and in some respectsmodified) form, into
the texts of the 1970s.

The other reason why the Althusserianapproach to class has not figured
prominentlyin critiquesis that many of the critics shareit - or at least, hold
assumptionsabout how to think about class that are strikinglysimilar.Criti-

Department of Sociology, Macquarie University, Australia.

304

cism is very definitely a process with a subject. The following discussionis

conducted from a position at a fair distance from the Althusserian;further,
for instance, than that of marxists like Wright,Hunt and Clarkewho have
addressedPoulantzas'views on class;2 in short, from a non-marxist,though
explicitly socialist, position. I wish to evaluate the Althusserians,not as
candidatesfor the apostolicsuccessionto Marx,but as voices in an enormously
more importantdebate amongsocialistsabout the natureof capitalistsociety,
and the future strategy of the labor movement. That, I take it, is what the
theory of class is really about. The focus of the discussion,then, will be how
an account of the class structure of capitalist society is constructed in the
Althusserians'writings,and what the politics of that account might be.

Their approachcannot be extracted from one or two quotations. The socio-

logical views expounded by Poulantzas, Carchedi, etc., rest on canons of
method developed in the earlier philosophicalwritings. But these writings
themselvesrest on assumptionsabout class, more exactly on positions taken
within the theory of class and political organization.There is, then, a rather
complex network of arguments.I will certainly not attempt to expound it
in toto; but I hope at least to have teased out from the philosophicalwritings
the main themes which were to govern the developmentof a theory of class,
and converselyfrom the sociologicalwritingsthe main positions in which the
methodologicalargumentsissued. At all times the networkishcharacterof the
argumentsshould be borne in mind.

Althusser'sProject

As he has explained carefully and often, Althusser began to formulate his

distinctiveviews in response to a definite situation: that of intellectualsclose
to the French Communist Party at the end of the 1950s. It was a moment
when that party was groping for a strategy, during the de-Stalinizationin
the world communist movementand vast uncertaintyin the left at largeafter
the postwar restabilization of capitalism. The context encourageda basic
reconsiderationof socialistideas:either in the form of attempts to reconstruct
them (this was the time and place that produced Sartre'sCritiqueof Dialec-
tical Reason, Mallet'smarxist syndicalismin The New WorkingClass,as well
as a rhetoric of "humanism"in official communistcircles);or in the form of
a strenuousreaffirmationof orthodoxy.

Althusser's choice was for orthodoxy, but not a simple one. His response
took the form of a search for the class line in theory, a new way of demar-
cating what was authentically marxist and proletarianfrom what was not.
 305

What was not, included marxist humanism: to Althusser, this represented

contaminationby bourgeoisideology, whichhad now succeededin penetrating
the communist movement in a big way. The theoretician'stask was, as he put
it in ReadingCapital,

to repel the humanist and historicist assault which, in some circles, has
threatenedMarxismcontinuously for the past forty years.3

His project was, in short, to purify marxism:to free Marx'sscience from its
crust of distortions: to reject "false solutions" to political and economic
problems;andthereby7:ovindicatethe properprinciplesof proletarianpolitics.
These he summarizedin another context some years later, in talking of
parties,

which apply a mass "line" of struggle for the seizure of State Power, a
"line" based on "the concrete analysis of the concrete situation"(Lenin)
in which they have to fight (this "analysis"being achievedby a correct
applicationof Marx'sscientific concepts to the "concretesituation").4

If the identification of Marx's"scientific concepts"can be taken as the main

theme of his philosophy, their "correct application" is undoubtedly the
mastertheme of the sociology that followed.

Beginnings are not everything, but they are important; and two (related)
aspects of this one are striking.Thefirst is the intellectualframeof reference
established by a communist theoretician setting about the business of puri-
fying marxism. Though Althusser draws from some unexpected sources,
including Freud, it is notable that the socialist thinkers he draws on are,
almost exclusively, men canonized by the communist movement: mainly
Marx and Lenin, secondarily Engels, Gramsciand Mao. Many of the most
important socialist thinkers of the century are either never mentioned, or
treated briefly and with scorn. To anyone except those committed to a strict
communist loyalty in politics, this must appearan approachthat is, concep-
tually, radicallyimpoverishedfrom the start. Its effects can readilybe traced
in the starknessof the later Althusserianaccount of class.

The second point is that the project in its philosophicalbeginningis already

governed by an implicit, and highly political, conception of class. Althusser
constantly wishes to draw class lines in the realmof theory - for instancein
his early distinction of ideology (governed by class interests) from science
(which is not), and in his later definition of philosophy as the class strugglein
theory. To give him his due, Althusserexplicitly rejectsin principlethe crude
306

"proletarianscience vs bourgeoisscience"view held by Stalinistsin the 1940s.

But in practice it does not seem very different,when we look at what Althus-
ser designates as scientific and what ideological. Marxismis assumedto be
scientific, other political and sociological positions to be ideological. Indeed
all positions within marxism that are opposed to the mainstreammarxist-
leninist position Althusser holds, are taken to be the effects of bourgeois
ideology. In short, a class line is used to reject opposing positions, but the
class line itself, what is bourgeoisandwhat is proletarian,is defined politically.
Thus we get an unblushing identification of scientific truth and approved
communist leadership, of which perhaps the ripest example is Althusser's
claim that The Development of Capitalismin Russia, an admirableif rather
obscure work of Lenin's youth, is "the only work of scientific sociology in
the world."5

The project of purificationwas directed, in the early 1960s, against the two
trends that Althussersaw as the chief dangersin marxism:the old enemy of
economism, the new one of humanism.The argumentagainsthumanism(in
which most of his characteristicpositions were developed) requireda heavy
stresson Marxas scientist.

... in conformity with the tradition constantly reiteratedby the classics

of Marxism,we may claim that Marxestablisheda new science: the science
of the history of "social formations". To be more precise, I should say
that Marx"opened up" for scientific knowledge a new "continent", that
of history - just as Thales opened up the "continent"of mathematicsfor
scientific knowledge, and Galileo opened up the "continent" of physical
naturefor scientific knowledge.6

In For Marx the history of Marx'sthought was re-interpretedto show where

his new science broke from his previous moral philosophy; and in Reading
Capital, Capital was re-read to read out the ideological hangovers (i.e. all
those bits which would support a humanist interpretation),and read in the
missingbits requiredby the new scientific framework.

In Althusser'sview each science has its own particularobject of knowledge;

and his view of what the object of Marx's science actually was is most
important. It did not include the purposes,wants, needs, reactions, ideas or
consciousnessof people as people, or indeed as collectivities,i.e. much of the
content of what we would ordinarilythink of as "history." Any argument
which used such categorieswas, to Althusser,governedby the "problematic
of the subject" and not properly part of Marx'sscience of history. People as
subjects did not figure in that science, because its true "object"was the sys-
 307

tem of objective relations which govern the lives of individualpeople. These

relations are defined in the analysis of a "mode of production"which is an
abstractly-definedstructure of relations among elements (such as the direct
producer,the materialmeans of production, etc.) which themselveshave no
existence (for marxist science at least) outside the structure. Real people
appear not as the elements of these structures,but as their "bearers"or
"supports."Althusser goes so far as to characterizeMarxismas a form of
"theoreticalanti-humanism."

This was not originallya sociological doctrine, i.e. one that made people out
to be in fact the puppets of social forces- like those doctrineshammeredin
Wrong'sfamous essay on "the over-socializedconception of man" in modern
sociology.7 It wa,; originally an epistemological doctrine, simply part of the
effort to specify what Marx'sscience was about and what it was not. But it
rapidly slid into a sociological doctrine, indeed at times quite a stringent
sociological determinism.The slide was no doubt aided by the Althusserians'
scientific conviction of the truth of marxism,and their political acceptance
of the marxist-leninistrejection of spontaneity and grass-rootsinitiative.The
sociological doctrine is not arguedfor; one is simply left with the impression
that the epistemologicalargumentvalidatesit.

The search for a class line in theory, the emphasison marxistorthodoxy, the
stress on science, the dispute with humanism,come tightly togetherhere in a
node which is the heart of Althusseriantheory and the origin of its way of
doing class analysis. Its effect is to claim that mainstreammarxismin politics
has strict scientific warrant;and the urgencyof defendingit is obvious if:

the greatest event in the history of the class struggle - i.e. practicallyin
human history - is the union of Marxisttheory and the Workers'Move-
ment.8

There are well-knowndangersfor orthodoxy in too heavy a stresson science.

Sciences periodically revolutionize themselves, promote scepticism towards
received truths, are intellectually untidy and anarchic,and encouragepeople
to go looking for fractious and unruly facts. The reconciliationof faith and
reason is an ancient problem;and Althusserrespondedto it with an almost
equally ancient solution - redefining reason. In what I am still inclined to
think his most ingenious intellectual move, Althusserredefinedthe concept
of science. He vigorously rejected"empiricism,"any idea that facts exist in
the world readyto be stumbledover by the questingscientists,or that science
proceeds by a series of confrontations of tentative scientific ideas with the
brute facts of reality. Rather, he suggested,the development of science is a
308

process that occurs entirely within thought; and what distinguishesa science
from other bodies of thought is the natureof its "problematic"- i.e. the sys-
tem of concepts and questions that underliesit. In a science, the problematic
allows an open-ended developmentof questions and answers;an ideological
problematicby contrast is closed, its answers pre-determinedby the social
intereststhat governit.

The scientiflcity of marxismthen consists, not in any form of correspondence

with contemporaryfacts (the fallacy of empiricism),but in its being based on
a scientific problematic. The construction of this new problematic - the
development of concepts such as mode of production, productive forces,
surplus-value,etc., and the questionsvia which they are linked - was "Marx's
immense theoretical revolution,"which beganin 1845. For modernmarxists,
scientificity is guaranteed - if they keep within the problematic,and repel all
boarders. If they are running into theoretical problems,it is either because
they have allowed some contamination from ideology and are therefore
suffering from "deviations";or because they have not yet developed the
necessaryconcepts within the problematic.

This doctrine of science has a number of interesting consequences for the

theory of class. Most immediatelyit dissolves the problemof the correctness
of marxism as a source of concepts and laws for class analysis. Althusser
denounces the problemof the "guarantees"of scientific knowledgeas part of
the problematicof empiricism;but he replacesit with little more than meta-
phors about thought appropriatingthe real. In effect, he gets his guarantees
with his party card. In one of the very few places where he even recognizes
that there may be a question about whethermarxismis right,he suggeststhat
we recognizemarxismas a science "becauseit providesobjective knowledge,"
producing"resultswhich can be provenby scientific and political practice."9
What scientific practice can verify the theoretical results without some con-
frontation with the world of facts, is left mysterious. But Althusserat least
specifies that the political verification refers to the "fusion" of the Labor
Movementwith Marxisttheory, as expoundedby Lenin, Gramsci,and Mao. It
appears,then, that somehowor other the history of the communistmovement
providesthe verificationof marxism.To other socialists it might appearthat
the history of the communist movement is, on the contrary,extraordinarily
embarrassingfor marxism. But that is all the argumentwe get. Althusser
leavesus with "anunimpeachableandundeniablescientific corein Marxism,"l?
which practically speaking providesits own warrant,while exercisingpolice
powersover all other concepts within its domain.

The second consequence of this doctrine of science is a heavy stress on the

 309

primacy of theory, indeed the most abstractlevels of theory. Thereis a grain

of good sensehere - it is now a commonplaceof the philosophyof knowledge
that facts in science are partly constituted by the process of investigation
itself. But Althusser's position offers little resistance to the tendency to
regardfacts as entirely constituted that way - to take the world as havingthe
shape that theory says it ought to have. The effect has been, quite strongly,
to discourageoriginalinvestigativeresearchby those influencedby his thought.
The rejection of empiricism, and the necessity of "producing"concepts by
refiningthe ore-bodyof the marxistclassics,has meant that Althusserianclass
analysishas developed as an elaborationof abstractconceptual argumenton
a truly awe-inspiringscale, hardly to be matched in the social sciences since
the balmy days of Talcott Parsons.But, like Parsonianismand for much the
same reasons, it has added very little in the way of new discoveries.Most of
the practical themes of the Althusserianliterature on class - the relative
autonomy of the state, cultural control of the workingclass, the importance
of new middle strata, etc. - have been common themes of socialist debate
(and for that matteracademicsociology) for a good long time.

Thirdly, this doctrine of science places extraordinaryimportance on the

theoretical starting-point,as proper scientific conclusionscan only be arrived
at by argumentwithin the problematic.In our case this starting-pointis, by
and large,Capital- at least, those thingswhich are "settled"in Marx'sanalysis
of production in that book. Althusser himself displays a fascinating ambi-
valence towards Marx. On the one hand he praises him to the skies, using
languageabout him (and Lenin) that is quite embarrassingin its fulsomeness.
And there are many places in Althusser'swritings,and also in Poulantzasand
Carchedi,where a quote from one or other of the greatmen is taken as quite
sufficient to settle a disputedquestion.~1Yet Althusserrejectsmuch in Marx
as ideological, and devisedthe procedureof "symptomaticreading"to justify
droppingmuch from the famous texts, and supplying other things that they
did not say. The net effect is to select out as a starting-pointthat part of
Marx that correspondsto Althusseriannotions of marxist science - and to
give the full force of revelationto that part.

The problematicthus retroactivelyconstructedby Althusser,Balibar,andthe

others, centers on the concept of a "mode of production,"and this is the
base on which the Althusseriantheory of class, methodologically speaking,
rests. It is a concept constructed at a very high level of abstractionindeed, at
a good distance from historical detail. One might therefore be tempted to
think of the "capitalistmode of production," "feudalmode of production,"
etc., as ideal-typeconcepts a la Weber. But certainly Althusserdid not think
of them that way: he thought that in analyzing the mode of production,
310

Marxhad penetratedto "a deeper, more concrete reality."12The

concept of
the mode of production in this view is not a hypothetical construct,
easily to
be changed as the course of argumentdemands,but a great scientific "dis-
covery" - as Althusserexplicitly calls it.

The first step in building a systematictheory of

classon this base is provided
by the Althusseriananalysis of what a mode of production is. And here the
polemic against the second deviation in marxism,economism, becomes im-
portant.From the time of his essay "Contradictionand Overdetermination"
(1962), Althusserwas clearly aligned againstany notion of simple economic
determinism,or the inevitable unfolding of stagesin history. In that essay he
arguedforcefully that therevolutionarysituationin Russiain 1917 was not a
matterof the economic system brewingup a social crisis;but was a
coming-
togetherin one time and place, a "conjuncture,"of a whole seriesof contra-
dictionsof different kinds.This theme was spelled out more formally in his
conception of a mode of production and a social formation as systems
composedof severaldifferent "levels" or "instances"- economic, political,
andideological, in the usual formulations - each of which had a "relative
autonomy"from the others, and each of which shaped the others. (For this
networkof reciprocalinfluences he borrowed Freud'sterm "overdetermina-
tion.")Each of these instanceswas seen as havingits own history, and its own
paceof development,though neverexisting outside thecontext of the others.
A toe-holdin marxist tradition was kept by insisting that the economic was
determinant"in the last instance," which meant that it was supposed to be
whatsettled the relationshipsof dominance among the instances, without
necessarilybeing the dominant one itself. Though there is relativeautonomy
betweenthe instances, there is also "structuralcausality,"i.e. the effects of
theway the social whole is organized -
which stated the generalconstraints
onwhich marxistanalysisrests.

Thescheme of three "instances" was introduced somewhat tentatively -

Althusser later referred to it as a "metaphor,"a3and there is some oscillation
inhis own writings about how many are needed. But it rapidly became
canonical, in fact the most distinctiveformulaof Althusseriansocial analysis;
Poulantzas,to take only one case amongmany, couches his generaldefinition
of classin terms of the three instances.14Its point is to give, at least in prin-
ciple,great importance to ideological and political considerationsin under-
standing classes, which had commonly been understood in marxistliterature
as
fundamentallyeconomic categories.It decisively rejects therathersimple-
minded notion of historical progressionimplied in the traditionalformulaof
thechange from "class-in-itself"to "class-for-itself."Classes in the Althus-
serianmodel are not firsteconomic, and then political and ideological enti-
ties.
They are always all three.
 311

This is good sense, and agreeswith a great deal of recent theoreticalanalysis

and empirical research(such as Thompson's) on the importanceof culture
and political organizationin the formation of classes. But like many of the
Althusserianideas, a good (if common) insight soon becomes a conceptual
straightjacket. From the sound argument that classes are simultaneously
economic, political, and ideological, the analysis proceeds as if they areonly
economic, political, and ideological. Other dimensions of social reality and
experience are dropped from the picture. Once again,these exlusions are not
arguedfor; they are simply a tacit consequence of the science being defined
by its problematic,and the problematicbeing defined by the "marxistclas-
sics". The scope of Althusserianclass analysisis limited to questions that can
be handledwithinthe conceptuallanguageof MarxandLenin.ThusPoulantzas'
long treatise on fascismsystematicallyignoresthe psychologicaldimensionof
the class politics that produced it, though this is widely recognizedto be of
great importanceand has been the subjectof a good deal of research.15More
importantly, the sphere of sexual social relationsis practicallyexcluded from
the world which this theorizing describes;and it also seems to have been
purged of housework, childrearing,and all like matters.Only an Althusserian
could publish, in 1977, a book On the Economic Identification of Social
Classeswhich entirely ignored ten years' debate on the place of women in
class structuresand the economic role of domestic labor.

This may give the impressionof an extremely rigidtheoreticalposition, which

in some respects it is; yet there are other features of the Althusserianmodel
that give it immense flexibility. The top-down method of argument,which
has alreadybeen stressed, requiresmovement through a number of levels of
abstraction(different formulationsspecify four, three, or two, but the point
remainsthe same), at each of which new qualificationsand complicationscan
be introduced. When we get down to the most concrete level, where elements
of differentmodes of productionare intermingledand a unique history has to
be taken into account, no automatic conclusions can be read off from the
theory of the abstractstructures.There is always the possibility of the kind
of "conjuncture"which Althusserrecognized in the case of 1917; and if that
was an exceptional situation, he asks, "are we not always in exceptional
situations?" 16

Well, yes, we are. With three relatively autonomous instances, each with its
own history rolling along in a state of "dislocation"from the others; with
three or four logical levels of analysis applicableto any mode of production,
none of which can be understood by pure deduction from the level above;
and with actual social formationsmade up of a mixture of severalmodes of
production; with all this, the Althusserianformalization of marxist theory
312

begins to admit a truly formidablenumberof

possible situationsand schemes
of analysis,which makes it possible to treat
every situation as the exception
it is. Conversely,the analysis of
any actual one requiresa mighty effort of
to
cross-classification place it correctlyin its uniqueniche in the Althusserian
system.It is no wonder that was impressedby the "taxonomic fury"
Laclau
with
which Poulantzasreacts to the complexities of social structure.17That
reactionis quite strictly entailedby the
way the Althusserianmodel of things
works.
Letme push this argumentone step
further,before leavingAlthusser'sgener-
alitiesfor the specifics of class. Though his stated
intention was primarilyto
defendmarxist orthodoxy, it is plain that
enough he was unhappy with its
currentstate and wished also to extend and
modernize it, to make it able to
speakabout the manifold of
courseof the twentieth century. unpredicted situations that had arisen in the
The main apparatushe providesfor social
analysis -the top-down order of analysis, the distinction
of structurefrom
conjuncture,the notions of relative autonomy and
dislocation between
instances,and the concepts of "structural
causality"and overdetermination
are
- precisely concepts that allow these two aims, the one explicit and the
othertacit, to be met simultaneously.Whilenot
preciselystructuralistin the
sense
of
Levi-Straussand Piaget (on this point I think Althusseris right and a
number of his critics wrong), these ideas do function
as a set of translation
devices,which allow one to talk about any actual situationin the
languageof
traditional
marxism,without threat to its basic doctrine. (The received
of truths
marxism
are mostly relegatedto the realm of the structures,where they
have
little more than a rhetoricalrelationto real
situations.)In effect, ortho-
doxmarxists are allowed to believe much what other
people believe about
events
in the world, without needing to alter their
rhetoric or their convic-
tion
of the scientific truth of Marx'sgeneralmodel.

The
importanceof this will become evidentwhen we examine
the historicity
thetreatmentof class. But before doing
of that, it is necessaryto examine the
concepts that
class are employed. At this point the focus of the argument
mustshift from
Althusser to Poulantzasand Carchedi.It is not a complete
break,
because (as I have suggested)the philosophical
doctrines are active in
the
sociology, and there is at least a roughsociology of class
alreadyactive in
Althusser's
philosophy. Althusseralso, on occasion, offers a view
the directly on
sociological issues: in his "Reply to John Lewis," for
instance,he argues
that
classes exist only in the class struggle,
adding(falsely) that this is a view
that
distinguishesrevolutionariesfrom
reformists. But for the most part we
must
turn to the younger authors a
for systematic theory of class. While
out some differences between
pointing their positions, or the themes they
 313

develop, I will focus for the most part on points that are common within the
whole approach.

The ClassConcepts

The first thing they all agree on is, of course, the importanceof the concept
of class as the basic constituent of a rigorous social theory. As Poulantzas
explains,

Marxismindeed admits the existence of fractions, strata, and even social

categories ("state bureaucracy,""intellectuals"). But this in no way in-
volves groupingsalongside, marginalto or above classes, in other words
external to them. Fractionsare class fractions;the industrialbourgeoisie,
for example, is a fraction of the bourgeoisie. Strata are class strata;the
labour aristocracyis a stratum of the working class. Even the social cate-
gories, as we have seen above in relation to the state bureaucracy,have
their classmembership.
... The division of society into classes precisely means, both from the
theoretical and methodological point of view and from that of social
reality, that the concept of social class is pertinentto all levels of analysis:
the division into class forms the frameof referencefor every social stratifi-
cation.18

In the light of the discussion so far, it will surpriseno one to learn that the
classesinitiallyrecognizedin Althusseriandiscussionsare those that populated
the world of Marx;basically,those that emergedas majorcategoriesin Marx's
schematic model of capitalist production. A representativelist is given en
passant in an early essay by Althusseron the theme of the accumulationof
contradictions:

How else could the class-dividedpopular masses (proletarians,peasants,

petty bourgeois) throw themselvestogether, consciously or unconsciously,
into a general assault on the existing regime? And how else could the
ruling classes (aristocrats, big bourgeois, industrial bourgeois, finance
bourgeois, etc.), who have learnt by long experience and sure instinct to
seal between themselves, despite their class differences, a holy alliance
againstthe exploited, find themselvesreducedto impotence . . .?19

These categoriesare, so to speak, the small changefreely used in an informal

way in Althusseriandiscussion, as they are among marxists generally. The
314

formal definitions (to be discussedshortly) qualify the list in some ways, but
are mainly intended to providerigorouslogicalderivationsfor these traditional
categories.It is, quite rightly, pointed out that the definitions and specifica-
tions provided by Marx and Lenin were often informal and in variousways
incomplete.

The principaladdition to the list is a new class or class fraction to take care
of the mass of white-collar wage earnerswith administrative,clerical, and
organizationaltasks. This grouping seems to have been a relatively late dis-
covery; it does not figure, so far as I am aware,in any of Althusser'swritings
of the 1960s, nor in Political Power and Social Classes, though it makes a
fleeting appearancein 1970 in Fascismand Dictatorship.Whenit does arrive,
it does so in a big way; much of Poulantzas'and Carchedi'stheoreticalwork
in the mid-1970shas been devoted to definingthis groupand distinguishingit
from others. Poulantzasdefines a "new petty bourgeoisie"comprisedof non-
productive wage-earningor salariedemployees, and Carchedia "new middle
class" which combines the global function of capitalwith the function of the
collective worker. These are not strictly equivalentconcepts, though they are
plainly meant to refer to much the same people, and to the same familiar
historical process by which the evolution of capitalismhas produced a mass
of clericaland administrativeworkers.

The first question one must ask about these concepts is where exactly they
are located in the analysisproceedingfrom the concept of the mode of pro-
duction. Here the suggestionsof different writers, who agree on the general
logic of the approach,appearto differ.Some, such as Carchediand Dos Santos,
identify "classes"at all levels of analysis,from the most abstractto the most
specific, though makingtheir definition and descriptionmore complex as the
argumentapproachesthe most specific level. Carchedisuggests,for instance,
that at the most abstractlevel (that of the pure capitalisteconomic structure)
"classes are definable purely in terms of economic structure";the political
and ideologicalare addedin at lower levels.20

This differs from Poulantzas, to whom classes are at no stage analyzablein

economic terms alone - a point he arguesforcefully and often, and which is
more consistent with the generalviews proposedby Althusser.But the differ-
ence is not as great as it seems. WhenPoulantzasarguesthat the "relationsof
production are not social classes"(i.e. that the categoriesof capitaland wage-
labor are not directly class concepts),21he is really offeringa methodological
convention, by which the concept of class is to be confined to anotherlogical
field. Carchedi'sconcept becomes more like this when he moves down one
level from the most abstract and introduces ideological and political deter-
 315

minations into his concept of class. The gap is further closed when Carchedi
offers to change his class terminology (from "workingclass" and "capitalist
class" to "proletariat"and "bourgeoisie")on reaching this level, to signify
the new bits in the picture.22 In stressing the point, however, Poulantzas
formulatesa new concept, that of the distinction between the structureson
the one hand, and the "field of social relations"(in which classesare consti-
tuted) on the other,whichwill be importantlater on in following his approach
to history.

These different formulations converge on one idea, which is central to the

claims made by Althusserianclass analysis: that of the structuraldetermina-
tion of class. The essentialidea was stated by Balibarin ReadingCapital:

The definition of the capitalist class or of the proletarianclass therefore

does not precede that of the social relationsof production,but vice versa,
the definition of the social relations of production implies a "support"
function defined as a class.

... Classesare not the subjectsof this mechanism[of distribution] but its
supports, and the concrete characteristicsof these classes (their types of
revenue, their internal stratification,their relations to the different levels
of the social structure)are the effects of this mechanism.23

Poulantzasputs the same point as a generalformulain his own terminology:

More exactly, social class is a concept which shows'the effects of the

ensemble of structures,of the matrix of a mode of production or of a
social formation on the agents which constitute its supports:this concept
reveals the effects of the global structurein the field of social relations.24
(Italics in original)

Or more baldly, in a later book:

Social class... is a concept which denotes the effects of the structure

within the social divisionof labour.25

It is not always completely clear what these pronouncementsmean. In partic-

ular they could be interpreted as definitional statements following from
Althusserianepistemology (as suggested, e.g., by Balibar'sphrase about the
"definition" of class); or as substantiveclaimsabout causalpriorityin reality
(as suggestedby the term "effects," and as impliedmore clearlyin arguments
such as Carchedi'sabout the structuraldeterminationof the income of the
316

new middle class,which is supposedto vary accordingto the balancebetween

the functions of capital and labor performed).If they are causalclaimsthey
are never substantiatedby evidence or argument.Neverthelessit is plain that
some kind of priority is being attributed to the categoriesthat arise in the
abstract analysis of the mode of production over the categoriesyielded by
the concrete complexities of history; and that the latter are in some way
determined or governed by the former, that they must be understood as
"effects." This is the basis of the Althusserians'claim to be able to say any-
thing significantabout history; and we shall be concernedwith a numberof
the implications,variationsand transmutationsof the idea of structuraldeter-
mination from now on.

Whatare the classesso listed and so determined?The literal sense of a number

of the remarksalready quoted (such as Poulantzason fractions, strata, and
categories)would be that classes are groups of people who can be identified
by certaincriteriaandsub-dividedby other criteria.Muchthe same is, literally,
impliedby the definitionof class by Lenin which Carcheditakes as his starting
point: "large groups of people" differing from each other by their place in
production, relation to the means of production, role in the social organiza-
tion of labor, and sharein social wealth.

Yet this conception would violate the deepest taboos againstempiricismand

the problematic of the subject; and every Althusserianexplicitly rejects it.
Carchedi goes so far as to correct Lenin: "Actually, instead of 'groups of
people' it wouldbe more correctto speakof 'productionagents'."26Balibaris
even more explicit:

But these classes are obviously not sums of individuals,which would not
change anything: it is impossible to make a class by adding individuals
together on whateverscale. Classesarefunctions of the process of produc-
tion as a whole.271(Italics in original)

Poulantzas,in Classesin ContemporaryCapitalism,spells it out a little more,

by suggestingthat a class is defined by its "place" in the social division of
labor as a whole, and that this correspondsto the structuraldetermination
just discussed.The concept is applied, for instance, in givinga brisksolution
to the grand old problem of whether propertylessmanagersare part of the
rulingclass under capitalism:

It is the place of capital, defined as the articulationof relationshipsthat

bear certain powers, that determines the class membershipof the agents
who fulfill these "functions" .... The directingagentswho directly exer-
 317

cise these powers and who fulfill the "functions of capital" occupy the
place of capital, and thus belong to the bourgeoisclass even if they do not
hold formal legal ownership. In all cases, therefore, the managersare an
integralsection of the bourgeoisclass.28

People, in other words, form classes only insofar - exactly insofar - as they
are the "agents"of the system, the bearersof a structurewhich defines class
places for them and distributesthem amongthese places.

This seems clear enough. It is an Althusserianversion of the generalsocialist

claim about the objective reality, the intractability,of class and class struc-
ture. It avoids "classes" defining themselvesby the bootstraps, i.e. by their
own images of class-ness,and thus dissolvinginto subjectivityas they do in
much of the modern survey researchon class. And it avoids "classes"which
are shapeless sets of people who merely share a common characteristic,and
thus have no necessaryconnection with an account of social structure,as in
much of the "social stratification"literaturein academicsociology.29

But in escapingthese familiartraps, has the argumentarrivedat a stable and

defensible solution to the thorny problemof definingclasses?It seems to me
it has not. The admirableconcept of structuraldeterminationdissolves in
practice into one of two positions, either functionalistor categorical,or some
amalgamof the two in which the latter finally dominates (as in Carchedi).
They are equally ahistorical;and I will suggestthat the Althusserianapproach
to history is the basic reasonwhy their class theory falls into this dilemma.

The element of functionalism in Althusserian argument has often been

noticed, and I don't want to labor the point here. I merely want to call atten-
tion to its definitional importancein a number of cases where a class is con-
strued, essentially, as the personification of a function-that-has-to-be-per-
formed-for-the-system.Balibar's definition of classes as functions of the
process of production as a whole has just been quoted. If it be objected that
that is merely a phrasereferringto the structuraldeterminationof class, it is
worth recallingPoulantzas' definition of a class by its class place which is
equivalent to its structuraldetermination.(So there can be no doubt about
the matter, Carchediexplainsfor us what dialecticaldeterminationis; and his
first point is that "the determinantinstance . . . determinesthe determined
instances ... in the sense that the former calls into existence the latter as a
condition of its own existence."30 Talcott Parsonscould hardlyhave given a
cleareraccount of a functional imperative.)To move beyond definitions,we
repeatedly find in practical analysis that the places which define classes are
themselvesdefined by a function performedin the system and its reproduc-
318

tion. Poulantzas'solution to the problemof the managers,quoted above, is a

crystalline example of this. Carchedi'ssolution to the problem of the new
middle classes involves a much more elaboratefunctionalistargument,which
developsthe idea of the "globalfunction of capital"and the "function of the
collective worker," and defines this class as those whose jobs involve per-
forming both functions (albeit at different
times). It would not be hard to
give a couple of dozen further examples, but they would lead us away from
the concept of class.

To be fair, both Poulantzasand Carchediare aware that there is something

wrongwith functionalism (Carchedi'svery inadequateattempt to deal with
the problem will be discussed
later), and they claimnot to befunctionalists.
Certainlythe picture of society that they drawis poles apartfrom that drawn
by Parsoniansociology. Like all socialists, they describeclassesas fundamen-
tallyantagonistic,class society as based on exploitation, classpolitics as the
childof conflict. Poulantzas,having located classes in the field of social rela-
tionsin the passagequoted above, went on to explain:

Socialrelations consist of classpractices,in which social classesare placed

inoppositions: social classes can beconceivedonly as classpractices,these
practicesexisting in oppositions which, in their unity, constitute thefeld
of theclass struggle. 31

Afunctionalist definition does not requireconsensus;in this case,rather,it

isimplicit in the way these platitudes about conflict are understood and
developedin actual analyses. Indeed it is implicit in the circularity of
Poulantzas'definition of classes in terms of a field of social relations,and his
definitionof social relationsin terms of classpractices;what gets this circle
movingis the hidden presence("in their effects") of the functional categories
fromthe field of the structures.

Theconception of a "classpractice"could lead in a verydifferent directionif

onetook the trouble to make a close,historicallyconcrete, study (as Mallet,
Gorz,Braverman, Beynon,Sennett and others have) of what various groups
ofworkers actually do in their daily lives. But none of our theoristshas done
this.Their fear of "empiricism,"and the priority they accord to the most
abstractlevels of analysis, insistently pull them back towards a functionalist
understanding of classpracticesand hence of the classcategories.In effect, it
isthe function to beperformedthat decides which of the many actual prac-
ticesof a given group is taken into account in analyzingits classdetermina-
tion.
 319

The functional and the categorical tendency are not strictly separate - in
Carchedi,for instance,the functionalanalysisis the meansby which the main
categoriesare defined - but the latter is the more striking,if only becauseit
was so explicitly rejected from the formal definitions of class at the start.
Again, in practice, the concept slides. This tendency can best be seen by con-
sidering what are the characteristicproblems and debates that arise in the
Althusserianliteratureon class. Two of the most important, indeed perhaps
the two most contested, are the question of class alliancesand the question
of class boundaries.Poulantzas,for instance,has been deeply concernedwith
the former in all his books (his developmentof the concept of the "power
bloc" in Political Power and Social Classes- an alliance of classes and class
fractions in relation to the state - is an early and importantexample). His
critics have dwelt on the latter. The two are essentiallylinked. As Poulantzas
sensibly observedin a recent conferencediscussionon the matter, where you
put the class boundariesdecides whether you need a class alliance or not.32
This is no trivialmatter, either of practiceor theory. The issue is, in fact, how
you basicallydefine a classfor practice,as Hunt realizes:

Any fundamental criteria of class determinationmust meet one essential

test. Does it [sic] succeed in revealingthe most fundamentaland pervasive
boundarieswithin the social structure?33

Now, twist and turn it how you will, I do not see how you can construe a
debate over the theoretical definition of class boundariesas anything other
than a discussion about the defining criteriafor sets of people. It is, to use
an Althusserianphrase,a question that revealsa categoricalproblematicwith-
in the theory of class. And you cannot have alliancesbetween "functions"or
"places," only between groups of people. Normally, indeed, between groups
that have reached a reasonablelevel of organizationand class consciousness,
though the processof mobilizationis hardlyever discussedin the Althusserian
theoretical literature,which usually treats the matter in the abstractform of
an alliancebetween categories.

The categoricaltendency in all this becomes clearestin the work of Carchedi.

An almost chemicallypure example of categoricalreasoningis providedin his
discussionof how to go about "placingthe doctor or the nurse,workingin a
state hospital, in the class structure":there follows a complicatedlist of cri-
teria for the classificationof such people, and then not only the workers,but
the organizationsthey work in. More generally,Carchedielaboratesa system
for classifyingpeople which becomes increasinglyelaborateas we move down
the levels of analysis,producingmany blindingsociologicalinsights,like:
320

In terms of the first element [of the definition] it is no longer just the
producerwho is exploited but we include also the non-produceras oppres-
sed. This is the agent who, even though takingpartin the labourprocessas
a whole, does not producesurplusvalue;this agent should not be confused
with the non-producerwho does not take part in the labourprocess,who
thus performs the (global) function of capital and thus who cannot be
oppressed.34

The system also becomes more elaborate as we move forwardthrough the

stagesCarchediarbitrarilyidentifies in the evolution of capitalism.

This passage was not chosen particularlyfor satiricalpurposes.The bulk of

Carchedi's theoretical effort, and a good deal of Poulantzas', is directed
towards elaboratingand refining distinctionswhich are essentiallycriteriafor
the theoretical classification of people - refinements, in short, of a solidly
categoricalconception of class. I have quoted Laclau'sremarkabout Poulant-
zas' "taxonomic fury" in respect of political theory. This is, if anything,too
mild for the theory of class.We are confrontedhere with a kind of categorical
frenzy, an elaboration of criteria so abstract and intricate that one cannot
even seriouslyarguewith their later stages.One can only starein wonder.(Cf.
Carchedi's66-category table for economic identification,and reflect that this
is only for two classes and only on the basis of productionrelations;35if we
add just one more class, and multiply by three to allow for political and
ideological criteriain comparablenumbers,we get somethinglike 297 criteria
for the identificationof classesunder capitalism...)

Once again, it must be recognized that this is not strictly the same as the
categoricalismof, say, stratificationtheory. The categoriesare built on a con-
ception of necessaryantagonismsinherent in the structureof capitalist pro-
duction relations. Yet even the class struggle,so far as the theoretical work
goes,36seems to occur by definition -

social classes coincide with class practices,i.e. the class struggle,and are
only defined in their mutual opposition37

- rather than by the exertions of real antagonists.Real antagonists,after all,

sometimes get tired, or lose, and stop struggling;without thereby ceasing to
be membersof classes.

For a body of marxist writing, the theoretical work of Althusser,Poulantzas

and Carchedioddly lacks the dimension of political economy, the historical
analysisof the actual course of capital accumulation,the transformationsof
 321

thelabor process and the distributionof the social product, and of course an
analysisof mobilization. When the question of relationshipsbetween classes
hasbeen addressedsystematically,it has mostly been throughabstractmodels
ofthe ways class dominationmay be mediated (Althusseron ideologicalstate
apparatuses,Poulantzason the capitalist state) or through a classificationof
formsof production relations (Carchedi), all governed by a definitional
postulateof classoppositions.

Thethemes of this discussionof class concepts canbe brought together in a

simpleexample. In the CommunistManifesto there is a well-known passage
whereMarxsets out an account of the experience of the Europeanworking
classin the process we might now describe as class formation and political
mobilization.The proletariat,he says, goes throughvariousstagesof develop-
ment, where the struggles of individual laborers with their exploiters are
graduallygeneralizedto the factory, to the trade, to the locality, to increas-
inglywiderspheres,andin so doing, increasinglytake on the form of collisions
betweentwo classes. This is quoted at the beginning of Poulantzas'initial
discussionof class theory,38 where he notes its importance (alongwith other
texts)in suggesting(by "a literaland direct readingof Marx'stexts") a histo-
ricalapproach to class, an analysis of the genesis of social classes and class
structure.The point is Poulantzas' response to this line of thought. It is
utterly,vehemently,and repeatedly,rejected.

MakingIt Work: Historicityand The Field Distinction

Witha literalunderstandingof it strictly ruledout, how does one apply Marx's

Scienceof History? The aim of the enterpriseis, after all, to yield an analysis
of actual historical situations and the ways of transformingthem. Thereis an
answerto this in the Althusserianframework,which is in fact the basic reason
for the tendenciesin the concept of classjust described.Let us go back a step
or two.

Marxismin the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had a profound
intellectualimpact by assertingthe importanceof economic processesin the
pattern of historical change. In the course of polemic and political conflict,
this theme hardenedinto the "economism"which Lenin and others rejected,
and which Althusser wished to oppose in theory. In order to do so, and to
produce credible accounts of the flux of history and the complexity of con-
junctures, while holding to the orthodox marxist doctrine of determination-
by-the-economic, Althusser produced the various translation devices I have
alreadyoutlined: the distinction between instances, the idea of their relative
322

autonomy, overdetermination,and determinationin the last instance by the

economic; and the distinction between logical levels of analysis,between the
level of the structuresand the level of their effects, between the abstract
analysisof the mode of productionand the concrete analysisof conjunctures
in history.

It is the last of these that is crucialin the applicationof the theory of class.
To follow the way it works, and the way it solves the dilemmaof historicity,
it is necessary to go into a bit of detail. I will concentratemainly on one
crucial example, the treatment of the problem by Poulantzasin Political
Power and Social Classes.Analogous distinctions are made by other authors,
and in others of Poulantzas'writings;but it is worked out in greaterdetail
and explicitnesshere than anywhereelse.

Poulantzas accepts the general Althusseriandistinction between three in-

stances (or levels) within a mode of production or social formation; and he
accepts the generaldistinctionbetween an abstractlevel (the mode of produc-
tion) and a more concrete level (social formation) in which severalmodes of
production may be combined. In constructing the concept of class, as we
have alreadyseen, he introduces a third conceptual distinction, which, so to
speak, operates at right anglesto the others: the distinctionbetween the field
of the structuresand the field of social relations.

This distinction is in fact built in to his definition of class in the passage

alreadyquoted (p. 11 above), which continues:

In this sense, if class is indeed a concept, it does not designatea reality

which can be placed in the structures;it designatesthe effect of an ensemble
of given structures,an ensemble which determinessocial relationsas class
relations.39

(To translateroughly: there is a field of social relations,which gets organized

along class lines by the combinedinfluence of all the structures.)The field of
social relationsis "circumscribedby the limits set by structures"- i.e. struc-
tural determinationoperates on classes - and being so determined,it also has
its threeinstances.Yet it is distinct, with its own characteristicsand dynamics,
and is capable of becoming "dislocated"from the structures.For this is the
field in which the class struggleoccurs. This strugglein fact is the opposition
between the practicesof the different classes, which come to a head in class
politics ("political class struggle"),the "nodal point" of the processof trans-
formation of the whole system. The analysisof this field of conflictingclass
practicesrequiresnew concepts (e.g. "interests"and "power")which do not
 323

appearin the analysis of the structures.This field is the site of the "conjunc-
ture," the currentsituation in which classesand other groupingsappearin the
guise of "social forces,"andwhichis the object of political practice - notably,
attempts to revolutionizethe lot.40

As noted earlier,the field distinction at first led Poulantzasto deny that the
concept of "class"was strictly applicablewithin the field of the structures.In
Classesin ContemporaryCapitalismhe retreatedfrom this austerity. But he
retainedthe field distinction,in slightly alteredterminology,as the distinction
between the class "place" in the field of structuraldeterminationand the
class "position" in the conjuncture,addinga little diagram(Table 1) to make
it all clear:41

TABLE1

STRUGGLE
PRACTICES/CLASS

STRUCTURALDETERMINATION/ CONJUNCTURE/
CLASSPLACES CLASSPOSITIONS

| IDEOLOGY
relationsof ideological o
?^ ?)
0 , domination/subordination ;?
< * ,t ideologicalstruggle '~ O
0 0,
D..
0 O POLITICS g-
Z 5 relationsof political 4 to
m ~ domination/subordination X,?D
> S politicalstruggle , ,
Q ^ o3
.< X ECONOMICS ;
U 3 relations of production/ =
. 3 relationsof exploitation Q
o economicstruggle

Poulantzas is very clear that place and position need not coincide; in fact a
greatdeal of his analysis,in both books, turns on the idea that they don't.

It is worth reflecting on what this theoreticalevolution has given us. Starting

from the general analysis of the mode of production, we have (within the
field of the structures)the more concrete level of the social formation,which
need not correspondwith all its constituent modes of productionin the classes
it gives rise to. Withinsocial formations (and within the field of social rela-
tions), we have three distinct and relativelyautonomousinstanceswhich may
324

be, in fact normally are, dislocated from each other, and on each of which a
class may or may not have a distinct existence. We have, beside the field of
the structures,the field of social relations;the two may be, in fact normally
are, dislocatedfrom each other. Poulantzasratherbreathlesslysuggeststhat in
a particularcase we have "a set of relations of dislocation between two sys-
tems of relationsof dislocation."42

To put it in another light, we have here a truly formidableengine for gener-

ating variations on the original marxist themes, while still preservingthe
languageof marxist analysis and the form of ultimate determinationby the
economic. It is, nevertheless, a fairly rigorousdevelopmentof the concepts
of unevenness, condensation, displacementand mutations within the struc-
ture introduced in the later part of Althusser'sessay "On the Materialist
Dialectic," and of his interesting critique of homogeneous conceptions of
historical time in ReadingCapital.Poulantzasindeed appliesit directly to the
question of time in denyingany necessarysequencesin the history of capital-
ism and the capitaliststate:

Because of the coexistence in a capitalist formation of severalmodes of

production and of severalforms of the CMPand because of the complex
articulationof instances, each with its own time-sequence,the dominance
in a capitalist formation of one form of the CMPover another is not ex-
pressedin a simple development.In a social formationwe may find a stage
dominatedby monopoly capitalismand the interventioniststate before a
stage dominatedby privatecapitalismand the liberalstate ....43

The distancethat hasbeen travelledfrom the simpleevolutionismand notions

of ever-deepeningclass conflict in vulgarmarxismis obvious.

With this historicallicense grantedthem, the classes in the field of the con-
juncture become almost sportive.They form alliancesand breakthem, follow
each other in and out of power, appearand disappearas social forces. The
extent of this flexibility is perhaps best seen in Poulantzas'account of the
"power bloc," the set of dominantclassesor fractionsof classesin its relation
to the state. He defines a hegemonic class or fraction, which is the one that
dominates the others in the power bloc and holds state power in its unity.
But it does not always have to be the same one that holds hegemony in the
society at large;nor the one that is actuallythe rulingclass;nor the one that
is in charge of the state! All these "are sometimes identical and sometimes
distinct."44Poulantzasin fact doubles his flexibility by introducinganother,
local, field distinction, between the field of political practicesand the "poli-
 325

tical scene." By this device he is enabled to argue that the hegemonic class
may actually be absent from the political scene; and in certainsituationsthe
ruling class need not even be part of the power bloc. Politics makes strange
bedfellows.

WhatPoulantzasis trying to do in these argumentsis plain enough. He wants

to escape simple-mindedtheories of causality, avoid conspiracytheories of
the state, and make his marxismable to deal with the enormouscomplexities
of history. But, we may ask, if the classesin the field of the conjuncturehave
such flexibility, what connection do they reallyretainwith the firmamentof
the structures,whence their determinationsupposedly issues?Hirst,who has
raised the question of the "place" vs "position" distinction in Poulantzas,
calls it "incoherent and unstable."45This is a bit strong;the distinction is
coherent enough, in its derivationfrom the generalAlthusserianposition. But
it is, I think, fair to call the result unstable.It sometimes stretches the link
between structureand event to the verge of incredibility(cf. the example of
the "ruling class" outside the "power bloc"). More generally,the argument
gives no guide to any systematic pattern in the extent of the "dislocations";
it suggestson the contrary that these are always specific to the conjuncture;
and consequently, the analyses always appear to be ad hoc. On the other
hand, the distinction sometimes collapses wearily into an identity, where the
class-in-historybecomes simply a personification.Odd examples of this can
be found scatteredwidely through Althusserand Poulantzas;a late but fairly
extended and important one is the analysis of monopoly and non-monopoly
capital in Classesin ContemporaryCapitalism,where the structuralcategory
itself seems to have strategiesand desires,form alliances,and experiencesuc-
cesses and failures.

Let us consider why this should be so, how this instability in the analysis
arises. Obviouslyit turns on the nature of the relationshipbetween the two
fields. This is, specifically, a relationshipof determinationbetween the struc-
tures and their effects in the field of social practices, where the classes,thus
determined,interact. It is worth recallingAlthusseron "structuralcausality"
to get a grip on the relationbetween the structuresand history:

the effects are not outside the structure, are not a pre-existingobject,
element, or space in which the structure arrivesto imprint its mark: on
the contrary... the structureis immanentin its effects, a cause immanent
in its effects in the Spinozist sense of the term, that the whole existence
of the structureconsists of its effects, in short that the structure,which is
merely a specific combination of its peculiarelements, is nothing outside
its effects.46
326

The structuresare not entities, things-in-the-worldwhich are separatefrom

other entities called classes or events. Both structureand class are concepts,
and the field distinction is merely a distinction in thought, part of the con-
ceptualapparatusthat we are offered to help get a gripon all these goings-on.

In one of the few discussionsin this literatureof the problems of analyzing

this relationship,Poulantzas observes that classes recognizedin the abstract
analysisof a mode of productionneed not be presentas an autonomousclass
in the social formation, or as a social force in the conjuncture.47A class is
distinct there only when its economic existence is reflected in the other
instances(of structureor practice) by a specific presence. How do we recog-
nize this presence in the ideological and political instances? By "pertinent
effects." Whatare these? The consequences of some "new element which
cannot be inserted in the typical frameworkwhich these levels [instances]
would present without this element," i.e. which change the pattern of class
struggleon these levels. Pertinenteffects only appearin specific conjunctures.

Thereare a numberof difficulties in this notably obscurepassage,but here I

amconcernedwith only one: its circularity,and the light that throws on the
fielddistinction. The object of the whole analysisis to move from the field
of structuraldeterminationto the conjuncturein the field of social practices.
But therelevanceof the structuralanalysis - structures existing only in their
effects - is entirely fixed by the analysis of the conjuncture itself, where
"pertinenteffects" are deciphered.One cannot rest the link with the struc-
tureson the notion of the "typical framework" found at various levels:
Poulantzashas alreadyexplicitly rejected any identification of the structural
withthe temporallypermanent(that suffers from historicism);and anyway,
whatis "typical"can only beknown throughthe analysisof other conjunctures,
whichfirst have tobe decipheredin the sameway, whereuponwe are trapped
inan endless regress. (The first conjuncture, like the last instance, never
comes.)On the other hand, one cannot characterizea conjuncturea priori in
structuralterms (even given a complete analysis of the conjuncturesimmedi-
atelybefore and after the one in question), because that would violate basic
doctrinessuch as on time and relativeautonomy.

Inshort, there is no way of establishingcoherently the relationshipbetween

thefields. The analysis is unstable because it is based on an antinomy em-
bedded in the field distinctionitself, an antinomy that has tobe there because
thefield distinction, in some form or other, is necessary to make the whole
theoretical system work. The dilemma is solved, to the extent that it is, in an
essentiallylinguistic way. A tacit covenant is made to speakabout social for-
mationsand conjuncturesin the same language. The link between the two
 327

fields is that the first provides the linguistic and logical frameworkfor the
definition of the concepts used in the second, and nothing more. "Structural
determination"becomes a logical meta-relationamong the concepts of the
second field, where all that is actually being said about society is said. The
abstract analysis of the first field (based on Marxon the capitalistmode of
production) sharplylimits the number and names of class concepts that can
be deployed in the second field; but puts little other restrainton what can be
done with them there.

If this argumentis correct, I think it goes a good way towardsexplainingthe

peculiarstyle of Althusserianclass analysis,that characteristiccombinationof
a tight-lacedconceptual system with a promiscuousapplicationof class cate-
gories in practice. And it helps specify the underlying attitude to history.
Historybecomes a kaleidoscope,whose pieces can be re-arrangedby a twirl of
the conceptual barrel.Historicalevents can legitimately be picked up if they
are "relevantillustrationsof the subject under investigation,"and put down
again if they are not, like Poulantzas'facts about fascism.48History can be
schematized at will, like Carchedi'sthree stages of capitalism(which never
concretely occurred like that). Indeed history becomes to a considerable
extent redundant.It is much easier to work out class analysison the basis of
purely imaginary examples, which Carchedi proceeds to do in his central
argumentson the definition of the new middle class and its proletarianiza-
tion.49 We begin to see why the categoriesof mobilization and class forma-
tion are absent from the theoretical apparatus.They are not needed: the
class alreadyexists, ahead of time, as a possibility within the theoreticalsys-
tem; it is simplyrecognizedwhen needed in the analysisof a conjuncture.

Some of the early argumentsabout conjunctures,such as Althusser'sremarks

on the condensationof contradictionsin a revolutionarysituation, suggested
that the historicity of class and class relationswas to be taken very seriously.
But the development of the conceptual apparatussystematicallysuppressed
this. Whatis actually realized in the theory of class expounded in these texts
is a radical ahistoricity. The categoricaland functionalist alternativesin the
definition of class discussedin the previoussection, are simply typical forms
of the ahistoricalconceptualizationof class, and completely consistent with
the workingof the theory. They can have no place in socialisttheory.

MakingIt Seem to Work:The AlthusserianTwo-step

Because it has no historical method of proof, this literatureconstantly falls

back on sheer postulation. What appear to be important substantive con-
328

clusions about the world are often analytic

truths, logical deductions from
the definitions and postulates. Let us take a
simple, though important case:
Poulantzas'proposal that "the bureaucracyhas no
power of its own," which
he arguesboth in PoliticalPowerand Social Classes
and Classesin Contempo-
raryCapitalism.This appearsto be an important(and false) claim about the
actualstate of affairs in capitalistsocieties. But on close
examinationit turns
out not to be an expose of hidden impotence beneath
the striped trousers,
buta purely analytic statement, which follows from his definition of bureau-
cracy (whichhe declines to admit as a class or fraction of a
class) and his
definitionof power
("thecapacity of a social class to realizeits specific objec-
tive
interests").50 So when a follower of Poulantzas argues that the state
bureaucracy has no power of its own, all she is really
sayingis that she speaks
aconceptual languagein which, whateverthe state
bureaucracydoes, it will
notcount as "power."

Stillon the subject of the state

organizations,Carchediprovides another
exampleof the solution of a seriousproblemby deft postulation. In
trying to
sortout the class position of state employees, he
distinguishescapitaliststate
activitiesfrom non-capitaliststate activities, and suggeststhat the
formerare
no
really different from privatelyowned enterprises,and therefore
give rise to
thesame class categoriesamongtheir employees. This
would seem on the face
ofit to involve some difficulty: surely private
companiesare owned by capi-
talists
who are trying to extract profits for themselvesfrom the
labor of their
employees, and this process is the basis of class relationsin the
firm?And
surelysuch ownershipis not involvedin the case of state
enterprises- which
is
precisely why they canbe concentratedin
low-profit,infrastructuralareas
of
the economy? But it is, in conceptual world:
Carchedi's
Whilein the individualenterprisethe legal ownership
belongs to the indi-
vidualcapitalist, and in the joint-stock company it belongs to the stock-
holders,in the state-ownedenterprisethe legal
ownershipbelongs to the
wholeof the bourgeoisie,ratherthan to a very limited
part of it. This can
be
seen from the fact that... in the state-owned
company the revenue
to the state, i.e. to the bourgeoisieas a whole . . .51
goes

Thecapitalistnature of the state enterprise,and thus the class

identification
of
itsemployees, is establishedby postulation, in the form of
a tacit defini-
tion
of the state as the agent of ownershipby
the-bourgeoisie-as-a-whole.
Similarly
Poulantzas' stand in Political Power and Social Classes
against
and "revisionist"
"reformist" relianceon the state - a
socialism's profoundly
and very difficult strategic issue for
important
thelabor movement - boils
 329

down to the analyticlinkhe makesbetween the state (in its relativeautonomy)

and the power of the bourgeoisie.By definition, the state cannot go beyond
the limit set by the interests of the bourgeoisie in the maintenance of its
position; though where this limit (the "line of demarcation")falls may shift
from conjunctureto conjuncture.Even if the state is stirringup the masses,
encouragingdominated classesto work againstdominantones? By definition,
this is to the advantageof the latter. And even when governmentand ruling
class hate each other, the government still (by definition) functions as the
political organizerof the dominant classes.52You can't win. In effect, the
kinds of strategiesnow being explored by Europeansocialist and communist
parties, the "revolutionaryreforms" proposed by Gorz and Holland, the
traditional strategiesof the Anglo-Scandinavianlabor parties, the strategies
of local working class mobilizations to gain control of the regional state
machinery,are all ruledout in advance- by definition.

It is instructive to watch the definitional two-step by which a key concept

for the polemic againstreformism,the unity of state power, is presentedby
Poulantzas:

that particularfeature of the capitalist state which makes the institutions

of state power... present a specific internal cohesion: this cohesion can
be perceivedin its effects.53

Following through Poulantzas' argument, we find that this cohesion is a

condition of the relative autonomy of the capitaliststate; and relativeauton-
omy is needed for the state to function as a mediumof bourgeoisclass power,
which in turn is needed because the bourgeoisie, as we learn from Marx, is
incapableof organizingitself politically. State power has unity only so far as
it is the unity of the dominantclasses;the hegemonicclassor fraction among
them holds power in its unity; which is equivalentto the unity of the power
bloc, which depends on the dominance of the hegemonic class or fraction.
But the bourgeoisiecan't organize their own dominance(they can't organize
their way out of a paper bag, it seems), nor, thus, the unity of the power
bloc. Thereforethey requirethe state to be "the factor of the political unity
of the power bloc under the protection of the hegemonic class or fraction."
Finally, "with regard to the dominant classes and fractions, the capitalist
state presents an intrinsic unity, combined with its relative autonomy, not
because it is the tool of an already politically unified class, but precisely
becauseit is the unifyingfactor of the power bloc."

After plodding round this little circle for a while, we are not surprisedto
learn that even when the legislatureand the executive reflect different classes,
state power is still not divided,as one might think.
 330

In this case, in fact, the unity of institutionalisedpower is maintainedby

being concentratedaround the dominant place where the hegemonic class
or fraction is reflected. The other powers function more especially as
resistances to the dominant power: inserted into the unitary function of
the state, they contributeto the organisationof the hegemony of the class
or fractionwhich is reflected as a political force in the dominantpower.54

So the "specific internal cohesion" of the state is still a "unity" even when
there is resistance - or to put it more plainly, class conflict - within the
state; becauseall state powersare "inserted"into the "function"of the state,
which is by postulation unitary.

Poulantzas'treatment of the relation between the bourgeoisieand the state

(the essential logic of which recursin Classesin ContemporaryCapitalism)is
thus essentially a network of definitional arguments.These elaborate some
scathingremarksof Marx on the political incompetenceof the mid-Victorian
bourgeoisie into a general rule ("everythinghappens as if the specific co-
ordinatesof the struggleof the dominant classes contribute to prevent their
political organization"),which defines a function for the capitalist state to
perform ("it takes charge, as it were, of the bourgeoisie'spolitical interests
and realizes the function of political hegemony which the bourgeoisie is
unable to achieve").ss A system of definitions, translationdevices and trans-
formation rules then allows anything and everything to be reinterpretedas
consistentwith these postulates.

When I first came across this kind of thing in Althusserianwriting, I thought

that it was simply a matter of arbitraryargumentsbeing defended from the
obvious criticisms by a certain amount of definitional shuffling. I no longer
think so. The shuffling is there, but it isn't arbitrary.In the casejust discus-
sed, for instance, Poulantzaswas not going round in that circle for nothing.
He wanted people to believe that socialism requiressmashingthe capitalist
state, and a Leninist party to do it, and a dictatorshipof the proletariatto
follow. Andin one way or anotherthe argumentmust yield a way of rejecting
any other strategy. If the hegemonic class always holds state power in its
unity, it is no use doing anything by way of trying to get a little bit of it to
use for other purposes- that only helps them organize. The fact that this is
a definitional trick ratherthan a serious argumenttakes quite a long time to
discover,especially as the logic of the whole thing is buried in the appalling
jargon in which most of this literatureis written. At least Althusseris more
transparent:

Marx thus proves irrefutably that the working class cannot hope to gain
 331

from the modern growth of productivitybefore it has overthrowncapital-

ism and seized state power in a socialistrevolution.56

I have never seen a clearer statement of the usefulness of theory for not
seeingwhat is rightin front of your nose.

We are now, I think, in a position to understandthe much-debated"func-

tionalism"of the Althusserianschool, and the specific form this takes in their
argumentsabout class. To say that their argumentsare functionalistdoes not
just mean that they use the term "function," as when Althussersays that the
IdeologicalState Apparatuses"functionby ideology" and the Repressiveones
"function by violence" (one might as well say "work by ideology," etc.), or
when Carchedispeaks of "functions" performed in the labor process (one
might as well say "operations"or "tasks"). As Merton pointed out thirty
years ago, the term "function" is often used for quite different meanings,
while the essentialidea of functionalismcan be conveyed in other words.57

Though it is not the use of the term that makes them so, both Althusser'sand
Carchedi'sargumentsjust referred to are parts of functionalist analyses, of
ideology and production relations respectively.This follows from the rejec-
tion of "historicism"and the eschewal of historicalanalysis.To giveforce to
the positions taken up by means of definition and postulation, to make it
seem to work as an account of the constraintsin social structure,and not just
as a definitional grid for classifyingthings, they are repeatedly forced into a
functionalistlogic. In functionalism,things are analyzed in terms of the con-
tribution they make to the well-beingor continued existence of a largersys-
tem of a certain kind, and their explanation flows from the idea of their
indispensabilityfor that system (or more mildly, their usefulnessfor it).

That this kind of argumentis common in the works being discussedis hardly
open to doubt. It is even embedded in some of the definitions, for instance
Poulantzas'view that

the state has the particularfunction of constitutingthe factor of cohesion

between the levels of a social formation.58

As Laclauhas noted, anythingthatcan be analyzedas helpingto performthe

function thus becomes part of the concept of the state. Hence the otherwise
extraordinarylist of "IdeologicalState Apparatuses"offered by Althusserin
his essay on that theme, which includes churches, schools, trade unions,
mass media, the family, literature,the arts, sports, "etc." To the extent that
these materializeideology and help reproduce,however indirectly, capitalist
332

relations of production, they must be includedwithin a functional definition

of the state.

The stress in contemporarymarxismon the analysisof the reproductionof

capitalism, if it is not resolutely maintainedas a historical category, almost
inevitablyleads to functionalism.This is true, for instance,of the new marxist
sociology of the city offered by Castells, Lojkine, and others, which is sig-
nificantly influencedby Althusseriantheory. Thereis quite a strongtendency
hereto construethe labor force as being called into existence, and maintained,
by the functional requirementsof capital - by the "necessity" inherent in
the continued existence of the system - which thus providesthe explanation
of urban forms though the need to provide for the collective consumption
needs of the labor force.?9 But a functionalistanalysiscan operate at a lower
level than that of the whole society -for instancewithin Carchedi'sanalysis
of production relations. Carchedi'seconomic definition of his three major
classes rests on the function (or in the case of the "new middle class," the
combination of functions) they perform in production. He starts out by
defining one function - that of "the collective worker" - in a non-function-
alist way, simply as the increasinglycomplex set of technicaltasks involvedin
actually producing a commodity, in short, as the organizationof work in a
labor process. He then uses the same word, "function," to refer to the very
different business of organizingmatters so as to extract surplusvalue from
the production of commodities. This is the function of the capitalist,or, as it
is subdividedand delegated,the function of the "globalcapitalist"(Mr.Fat?),
or, more felicitously, "the global function of capital."

The general, social content of a function under monopoly capitalism is

determinedby either performingthe function of the collective workeror
the global function of capital.60

The features of the second function, e.g. the element of control and surveil-
lance, are deduced from general features of the system, e.g. "the fact that,
under capitalism,the relations of productionare antagonistic."From general
features of the system, also, it is deduced that there is a sharp separation
between the two functions, such that while performingone you can't perform
the other. On this idea rests Carchedi'scharacterizationof the new middle
class and his theories of the determinationof its income and the process of
its "proletarianization".

Now so far as realhistory goes, this is plainly wrong. Thereare many features
of capitalist production which show the labor process as inextricably fused
with processes of social control: among them, the decomposition of tasks in
 333

manufacturingand office work, the centralizationof information and the

useof automated productionequipment,the productionof new technologies
andtheir repressiveimplementation.There is a socialisttheoreticalliterature
on this (inter alia, Marcuse and Habermason technology as ideology), a
recent body of research(notably from Bravermanand his followers), and
formsof strugglein the workplacethat addressit (such as "role contestation"
in the movement for workers' control). But all this cannot registerin Car-
chedi'sanalysis, because his model of the production process requirestwo
distinctfunctionsto beperformed,in orderthat there should be both material
commoditiesand surplus-value.The laborprocessmust thereforebe such that
the functions canbe exclusive.

Herethe element of argumentby postulation is hard to distinguishfrom the

element of functionalism. They merge together in the context of a highly
abstractmodel of capitalismwhich is simply assumedto representthe reality
of the world. The generalpoint in which all this issues, canbe put this way:
the economically-definedclasses in Carchedi, the state in Poulantzas, the
ideologicalapparatusesin Althusser,are all theorizedin termsof the function
they perform in a social order whose class nature is known a priori, as it is
specified in the analysis of "the structures"at the most abstractlevel. The
constraintin the Althusseriantheory of society is the necessity to have those
functionsperformedwhich will preserveor reproducethat known structure.

Since a pattern of causationusually cannot be demonstrated(in the absence

of a historicalmethod), the analysisconstantlyfalls back on "as if" arguments.
Thus Althusser, in his first essay on the subject, explaining the functional
necessity of ideology:

It is as if human societies could not survivewithout these specificforma-

tions, these systems of representations(at variouslevels), their ideologies.61

Or Poulantzas,on a theme alreadydiscussed:

Everythinghappens precisely as if the state permanentlyplayed the role

of political organiserof the power bloc.62

Or on the theme of educationin mass schools:

Everythingtakes place as if, even when the petty-bourgeois agents [i.e.

children] are educated in apparatuses [i.e. schools] that appear from
formal considerationsas overwhelminglydesigned for the working class,
their forms of education are still radicallydistinct from the forms of the
latter.63
334

In this last case, the "as if" argumentallows Poulantzasto evade the facts to
the extent of interpretinga statisticaltendency in intra-schoolstreamingas a
class boundary, and to ignore the specific integrativeimportanceof common
schooling. (The latter is a curious omission, for him.) The converse is the
"only-an-effect"argument. The centralizationof decision-makingin compa-
nies seems to be an importantchangein power structure,perhapslinked with
computers, which might seem to need some reconsiderationof orthodox
marxist views (as observedabove); but don't worry, Poulantzasexplains,it is
only an effect of changesin the relations of production. Classesthemselves,
in economic life, seem to take the form of gradationsof income, not funda-
mental cleavages;but don't worry, the hierarchyof levels of income is only
an effect of the relationsof production.64In the "as if" argument,the missing
but requiredfacts are conjured up in mid-air;in the "only-an-effect"argu-
ment, the presentbut unpleasantfacts are conjuredaway. How these "effects"
are produced is never explained; here the systematic ambiguity of the rela-
tionship between fields, discussedin the last section, is decidedly convenient.

I have given only a few examples of these arguments,though literallyscores

could be produced. The question of forms of argumentis far from being a
verbalquibble,for it is in such dressthat the Althusserianapproach,normally
developed at an extremely abstractlevel, touches ground;and here its funda-
mental charactercan be deciphered.To me, the most telling moment of all
comes when Carchediis expounding his theoretical framework,and explains
that determined instances over-determinethe determinantinstance, but the
determinant one sets the limits to its own overdetermination... One has
heardthis before. But then comes the illustration:

For example, the non-capitalistsector must alwaysbe subordinatedto the

capitalistone, or the capitalistsystem will cease to be such.65

Or the capitalistsystem will cease to be such! There it is, in a nutshell: the

point that links functionalism,definitional argument,ahistoricity, top-down
abstractions, and marxist orthodoxy all together. We know the system is
capitalist;we have a model of it which, becauseit comes from Marx,must be
right;therefore those things which the model tells us about must be there in
reality, or the capitalistsystem will cease to be such. The non-capitalistsector
must be subordinatedto the capitalist,the labor processmust be subordinated
to the surplus-valueproducing process, the state must present an intrinsic
unity, reformist parties must contribute to the organizationof bourgeois
hegemony, the ideological apparatusesmust function to insert workers in
their class places, and so on and so forth, or the capitalist system will cease
to be such. It is, indeed, unarguable- given the definitions,and a completely
closed conceptualsystem.
 335

At a couple of points in his book Carchediaddressesthe question of func-

tionalism. At one, having specified that the capitalist is in fact involved in
doing some of the world's work, he says that neverthelessthe fundamental
role (in the packagedefining the capitalist) revertsto the element of owner-
ship, and that it was necessaryto stress this "in order not to be accused of
functionalism."A little further on he suggeststhat in studyingthe income of
the new middle class, we should avoid "a functionalist explanation"of the
type that says that the more important functions get the higher incomes,
a la Davis and Moore'stheory of stratification.(Carchedipromptly suggests
two functionalist explanationsof his own, however, on the next page.)66 It
would seem that Carchedi'snotion of "functionalism"equates it with con-
sensustheory, and that he thinks if you stressissues of ownershipand exploi-
tation, you are adequately protected from functionalist ideology. Plainly,
that is an adequate protection from the specific versionof functionalismthat
we find in Parsonsor Davis and Moore. But as Merton pointed out in the
essayalreadymentioned, functionalismas such does not depend on postulates
of social consensus, and is not necessarilyalignedwith political conservatism.
There canbe a marxist functionalism.Whereit differs from Parsonsianfunc-
tionalismis in its a priori assumptionof class society, in its analysisof every-
thingin terms of its functionalrelationto the reproductionof the postulated
classstructure,and its implicit relationshipto the Revolution.

Tocoin a term, this is a bipolarfunctionalism.By this I don't mean anything

to do with Carchedi'stwo "functions" in the production process, which is
indeeda simpler conception and quite compatible with orthodox function-
alism.It is ratherthe position implicit in his remarkthat:

Inthe case of the labouraristocracies,it is the economic which assignsthe

dominantrole to the ideologicalbecause the capitalisteconomic structure,
inorder to reproduce itself, needs to introduce within the working class
several
types of bourgeoisideologies (e.g. reformism).67

Whatis implicit here is, shadowingthe successfulperformingof this function,

akind of anti-functionwhich negates it, whose functionariesare the bearers
ofthe revolutionaryline. Indeed this was mentioned only a few lines
before,
whereCarchedisuggestedthat a complete definition of the proletariatmust
involvethe ideological and political as well as the economic, and therefore
wouldinclude only that part of the working class which had developed a
proletarianclass consciousness,and also had joined "theworker'sparty" and
joinedin proletarianpolitical practice. (Incidentally, if Carchedi
means by
"theworker'sparty"whatmarxistsusually do, then in a country like Australia
hisdefinition of the proletariatwould embrace one-fortieth of one
per cent
336

of the economically active population, approximately.On the loosest defini-

tion possible,it embracesa little over one per cent.) A more elaborateexample
is given when Poulantzas, running down his version of Althusser'slist of
ideological state apparatuses,comes to "the political parties,the unions," and
adds, in parentheses,

(with the exception, of course, of the revolutionaryparty or trade union

organisations).68

The naiveteof this, in a world where 57 different sects each proclaimthem-

selves the revolutionaryparty, is charming;but the implicationsare not. The
effect of Althusserianbipolar functionalismis to claim that every practice
outside that of the revolutionarypartyactually subservesthe reproductionof
the capitalist system. I am not makinga merely logical point here, but a very
practicalone, becausethis theoreticalposition comes throughagainand again
in the statementsthat Althusserians,or other marxistsinfluencedby Althus-
seriannotions, make about all kinds of practicalissues. Examplesthat come
immediately to mind are urban politics, where, as Pickvance notes, this
approachrefusesever to see "the authorities"as a sourceof changeor conces-
sion until they are forced, and hence systematicallydevaluesany strategyof
working-classmobilization to capture local state power; and welfare, where
the effect is to make any achievablewelfaremeasuresappearonly to stabilize
and help reproduce capitalism.69The obverse of this is to claim scientific
justification for one line and one line only; in short, to imply that anyone
interested in moderate reform, let alone socialism, must join "the" revolu-
tionary party. The specific form of Althusserianfunctionalism,then, has a
definite political point. It is closely connected with a conventional,October-
in-Petrograd,big-bangtheory of the transitionto socialism.

The Politics of Theorizing

If class analysisis, as I suggestedat the start, fundamentallythe social theory

produced by and for socialist politics, the ultimate significanceof a line of
class theoryis political.Thisviewwould undoubtedlybe acceptedby Althusser,
Poulantzas and Carchedi;so let us consider the political tendency of their
theorizing about class. Althusser of course began with a political act in the
realmof theory, the campaignto defend marxismagainsthumanism.It was in
the course of this that he developed his critique of the "problematicof the
subject,"and his melancholydoctrinethat the socialisttheory of class society
cannot be about people and their action on history, but that:
 337

the structureof the relations of production determinesthe places and the

functions occupied and adopted by the agents of production, who are
neveranythingmore than the occupantsof these places, insofaras they are
the "supports"
(Trager)of these functions.70

Whatis the political significanceof this apparentlyabstruse

epistemological
doctrine?It beginsto be spelled out especiallyin Althusser'sand Poulantzas's
work on ideology. Whatideology is about, is "inserting"people into a place
alreadydefined for them by the structures,a classplace. Classes can not be
understoodproperly as created by a processof mobilization,in which people
struggleto take control of their own destiny. Wehave alreadynoted Poulant-
zas'srejectionof Marx'sview on this: construingclassesin termsof a processof
classformation is historicist, empiricist, subjectivist,ultimately idealist, and
not quite comme il faut. Beingthus inserted,the working classcannot formu-
late correct theory on its own, because it is (by definition) permanently
dominatedby bourgeois and
petty-bourgeoisideology. Marxistscience must
beimported from outside to criticizewhat the working classitself thinks, set
itstraight,and rescueit from the "deformations"to which it is naturallyheir.
Guesswho will do this? Why, folks, our old friend the revolutionaryparty,
whichwill eventually lead us forward to "the socialist democracy of the
dictatorshipof the proletariat."71

Themethodological position from which classtheory is constructed thus

leads,indirectly but inevitably, to an account of the working classthat justi-
fies the vanguard-partytheory of socialist organization,and systematically
discreditsany strategy based on spontaneity,
self-management,and popular
mobilization.This trend of logic is strongly supported by an atmospheric
effectin Althusserianwriting which is quite important,though I have mostly
ignoredit in order to concentrate on explicit ideas about class. I refer to its
convolutedmethods of argumentand its abominableliterarystyle. It may be
thatthe French texts suffer somewhat from bad translation into English,
thoughI am informed that they are not regardedas examples of classically
limpidFrench prose either. But no one cansay it is an effect of translation
(orwriting in a foreign language)when Carcheditakes forty mortal pagesof
definitionalwaffle to introduce the banal observation that in advanced
capitalism some people do the work, other people organizethem in orderto
extracta profit, and other people do a bit of both. (No satireintended - this
is,literally, the guts of his theory of the economic identification of
classes.)
Thewhole literature has almost totally corrupted the language of a good
manyEnglish-speakingfollowers of the AlthusserianSchool.

Thepolitical point of this is that there is no way that people who write class
338

analysis like this can be intending to addressthe working class, or even the
socialist movement at large.People who do wish to servethe massmovement,
and be corrected by it, must constantly struggleto clarify, to speak in the
plainest possible language.If someone doesn't, then there must be a different
audienceand role intended.

The cultural characterof the putative vanguardis sufficiently indicated by

the Althusserianattitude towardsotherintellectuals.I have alreadymentioned
the re-readingof Marx to purge him of anything smacking of passion and
humanity; and the purification of marxism which purified it of most of
Gramsci, Lukacs, Korsch, Sartre, Reich, the Frankfurtschool, Trotsky, in
short most of what was interesting and innovative in marxism in the last
sixty years. The attitude to Trotsky is particularlyinstructive.To Althusser
he is practicallya nonperson, not mentioned at all in For Marxor Lenin and
Philosophy, and only once in his contribution to Reading Capital,in passing
in a list of marxist political leaders. In Political Power and Social Classes
Poulantzasadopted the same attitude. Trotsky is mentioned only once in its
text; and it is worth quoting the passagein its entirety:

Moreover,theoretical research [on the state apparatus]has been widely

distorted because of the errors of Trotsky's analyses and in particular
because of the ideological rubbish churned out by his successors.I shall
therefore try to avoid the ideological terrainof this discussionby staying
close to the scientific analyses provided by Marx, Engels, Gramsci and
Leninon this subject.72

Keep close to mother! By 1970, when he wrote Fascism and Dictatorship,

Poulantzaswas adopting a much kindlier attitude to Trotsky. Partly he had
to take him seriously because there is simply no way you can miss Trotsky
in discussingcommunist views of fascismin the 1920s; but also, in the mean-
time, Poulantzas had moved politically towards a position which made
criticismof the Soviet Union more acceptable.

In makingthese attitudes credible, some importancemust be assignedto the

ahistorical functionalist theory of class and the state. Havingsuch a theory
allows one to go back throughthe history of socialismwith a kind of timeless
mark-sheet,handing out awardsfor strategy and tactics: this person is right
here, that one is wrong there, someone else is inevitably wrong. The reason
for being wrongpolitically alwayshas to do with having"deviated"in theory,
failed to appreciatethe relative autonomy of the state, or built too much on
the spontaneity of the workers. Fighting over lost battles this way is a great
pastime among marxisttheorists,which has the useful effect of bolsteringthe
 339

importanceof theory in the present. Above all it confirmsthe impressionof

there being one and only one line which will bring about the overthrowof
capitalism,which is awfully difficult to discover and hold to even within the
revolutionaryvanguard.

The political effect of the bipolar functionalismdiscussedin the last section

is to reinforce a particularview of the transition to socialism, a big-bang
theory of revolution.In Carchedi'swords,

The characteristicelement of the transitionfrom capitalismto socialismis

that the socialist production relations can be establishedonly through a
revolution which gives first of all the political and ideologicalpower to the
proletariat.73

Remembering that Carchedi's "proletariat"is a tiny politically-organized

minority, this easily fits with an elitist view of how the revolutionaryrupture
is to be encouraged:

... it is impossible for the working class to achieve a developed class

consciousnesswithout an organisationwhich wages an economic, political,
and ideological fight against the class enemy under the leadership of a
vanguard.74

All of this is good grey marxist-leninistorthodoxy, and was there long before
Althusser and his school. Their originality was not in producing any new
political strategies(as they have produced few new ideas of any kind), but in
building a massivetheoreticalsystem which made this strategyappearnot the
dubious choice it actually is, but a logical necessity stemmingfrom the inner-
most natureof capitalism.

To be generous, the functionalist tendency at least encourages a kind of

militancy, a focus on changing the whole class system rather than getting
bogged down in the bits. The effect of the categoricaltendency in the con-
ception of class is to render this an abstract militancy. To the extent that
classes are understood essentially as sets of people (or even "production
agents") who meet a particularcriterion (as in the whole debate over class
boundaries), they are not seen as groups that in any sense constitute them-
selves by their actions and hence by a transformingpractice.The necessity of
militancy, in other words, is not generatedfrom the lived experience of the
class. (The categorical logic of theory here correspondsto the traditional
bolshevik disdain for the limitations of the spontaneousconsciousnessof the
working class.) Rather it hangs in the air, as a kind of categoricalimperative
deduced from the structures.
340

Whenwe now take into account the distinctionin the theory of classbetween
the field of the structures(whence this militancy about social transformation
arises) and the field of practice and conjunctures,a further political conclu-
sion emerges: it is that no political conclusion can be deduced from the
structuralanalysis, except the demand for militancy itself. The conjuncture
is, as Althusserand Poulantzasmake very clear,the site and object of political
practice;and, as they also make clear,the characteristicsof a conjuncturecan
never be deduced from an analysis of the structuraldeterminationsof the
classes in it. In short, we have a militancywithout substance,in the sense that
it cannot ever, of itself, propose what is to be done. At least in the present.
The game Poulantzasplays, of going back and correctingtheoretically the
strategy and tactics of the socialistswho actuallyhad to improvizea response
to fascism in the heat of a complicated, violent, and unexpected struggle,
can only be done retrospectively.And we cannot draw from it rules for the
future. As Althussersaid - and it is one of his most profoundinsights - "are
we not alwaysin exceptional situations?"

Let me draw these points together. The implicit politics of Althusserianclass

theory as theoretical practice, is an abstract militancy, without a political
"line" of its own, providinga generaljustification for a revolutionaryvanguard
party led by an educated but fairly intolerant elite who are the bearersof
marxist science; and a general devaluation of strategies connected with
spontaneity, mobilization from below, incremental change, or use of the
existing state.

That sounds, on the whole, pretty familiar.It soundsnot very different from
what Althussercameout of, i.e. EuropeanStalinism.Theear-marksof Stalinism
are visible enough: the justification for a revolutionaryelite within the labor
movement;thedenunciationof most of the creative(and thereforeheterodox)
work in twentieth-centurymarxism;the bland assumptionthat there is one
proper revolutionaryparty, and so on. At a deeperlevel, the theory works in
the same direction: the priority of the structures,the bipolar functionalism,
the abstractmilitancy that they produce;in the Althusserianworld, the revo-
lution itself- a transformationof the structures, scientifically speaking-
seems to occur behind the backs of the workers.That terribleinterventionof
living, sweating,bleeding human beings in their own history, that is the basis
of all radicalism, is methodologically ruled out of "marxist science" by
Althusserianmarxism.Here, I think, is its fundamentalaffinity with Stalinist
politics, which is precisely characterizedby the combination of a notional
militancywith a practicalsuppressionof grass-rootssocialism.

I stress "fundamentalaffinity" ratherthan makinga direct equation, for two

 341

reasons. First, it is plain enough that Althusserand the others do not mean
deliberatelyto defend Stalinism.Althusserpersonallyhas had a complicated
and ambiguousdebate with the ghost of Stalin, in the course of which he has
attempted to identify Stalinism as a deviation (basically economist) within
authentic marxism.Opinionsmay reasonablydiffer about this exercise;I am
inclined to agree with Callinicosthat the distancinghasn't gone very far, that
the fundamental affinity is still there.75 The second reason is more general.
The political meaningof an intellectualposition cannot be read directly from
its content. To do that would be to adopt an ahistoricalmethod, exactly the
kind of essentialisminto which the Althusseriansfall in denouncinghumanism,
historicism,and the rest. Rather,its political significancemust be judged also
in terms of its context, the situation in which it is active, and the possibilities
and intractabilitiesof that situation.

Generalizingvery rashly, I would like to suggest that there is at least one

important difference between situations in which Althusseriantheory has
recently been active, which gives the system significantlydifferentmeanings.
In contexts where there is a mass communist party, Althusseriantheory
providesan abstractjustification for a mainstreamStalinistleadership;to the
extent that its theoretical militancy inflames young intellectuals, it will tend
to urge them into political activity in such a party or on its fringes, trying
to change its direction if it appearsto be lacking a little in orthodoxy or
militancy. But in contexts where there is no such party, where all the mass
labor organizationsplainly fall under the ban of "reformism,"the result is
likely to be very different.Herethe theory is most likely to lead to sectarianism
or political alienation.

As this is the situationin those English-speakingcountrieswhere Althusserian

theory has had a significant impact (i.e. Englandand Australia),this is the
effect that must concern us here. I have mentioned one of its forms already.
The impact of the Althusseriantheory of class, the state and ideology on dis-
cussions of the education and social welfare systems in which a majority of
our radical intellectuals actually earn their daily bread, is systematicallyto
undercut any hope of achievingsocial change through them. The impact of
the Althusseriantheory of class and political organizationis to undercutany
motive for participatingin the availablemass organizations,and any hope
that the working class will generateits own socialist consciousnessand thus
transform the organizations.The impact of Althusserianepistemology is to
discourageintellectuals from doing researchthat might actually be useful to
unions and parties; and the impact of Althusserianlanguageis certainly to
discouragethe workersfrom talkingto them. Whatit does positively encourage
them to do is sit aroundand theorize, militantly.
342

The reception of Althusseriantheory was undoubtedly a response to a need

felt by many intellectuals, in the context of the backwashfrom the radical
mobilization of the late 1960s, for a systematic,solid, incorruptibletheory of
the social world and the need for revolution.I have no doubt that it did some
good by way of encouragingpeople to readMarxand Lenin carefully;and of
course there are things in Althusserworth readinganyway, such as his discus-
sions of historical time, and the workingof ideology. Therewere some things
to be gained. But in supplying them, the system led its readers nowhere
politically, and never will. As a generaltheory of society, it is incapableof
development except by ever more intricate exegesis of ever more abstruse
concepts. For the sake of the workingclass,who do actuallyneed (and often
want) a decent contribution to socialism from the intellectuals,it should be
ditched, as soon and as thoroughlyas possible.

Afterword
This discussionhas been almost exclusivelycritical,which is in itself unfortu-
nate; the main point is to do better. Of course the criticismis implicitly based
on a view of how to do that, though in a paper of this (already overblown)
size I can do no more than gesture towards it by way of slogans. It would
imply a concrete rather than an abstract militancy, that is, commitments
rooted in a knowledge of the actual situations that make up this violent and
exploitative society, a thoroughly historical understandingof class, whose
core is the relation between collective experience and the structureof situa-
tions, and an approach to socialist strategy in advanced capitalism that is
based on the remobilizationof the working class and generalizationof local
strugglesfor workers' power and sexual equality, and which, among other
things, has some respect for the workers'own views in the matter and for the
organizationsthey have built. Of course this is no privateposition of mine; it
correspondsto the practicesof a largepart of the socialistmovement, though
it has not been very articulatein theory. It includes, I might say finally, the
political practices of some socialists who have formerly been adherents of
Althusserianpositions in theory, and this tendency is important. The more
people who move in this direction from the positions criticizedin this paper,
the strongerthe socialistmovementwill be.

NOTES

1. L. Althusser,Essays in Self-Criticism(London: NLB, 1976), 146. A word, before

launchingout, on the sense in which one can talk of an "Althusserianschool". It is
notable that almost every memberof it, includingAlthusser,has at some point or
other announceda departurefrom the originalpositions. There are divergencies
between the texts, some of which will be exploredlater. Yet I think it would be
 343

widelyagreedthat these aredifferencesin the working-outof a commonapproach,

ratherthan fundamentallydistinct positions;and it is the common groundthat is
thesubject of this essay. Though the point of the argumentis political, it is not
meantin any sense as a commentaryon the political vicissitudesof Althusser,
Poulantzas,and the others in their personalsituations.It is strictly an attempt to
evaluatethe significanceof that part of their work that has gainedinternational
circulation,and that has had a considerableimpact on the moderntheory of class.
Inwhat follows, "Althusserian"can be readas meaningsimplywhat is commonto
thetexts underdiscussion.
2. E.O. Wright, "ClassBoundariesin AdvancedCapitalistSocieties",New LeftReview,
1976, no. 98, 3-41; A. Hunt, "Theoryand Politics in the Identificationof the
WorkingClass",in A. Hunt, ed., Classand ClassStructure(London: Lawrence&
Wishart,1977), 81-111; S. Clarke,"Marxism,Sociology and Poulantzas'Theory
ofthe State",Capitaland Class,1977, no. 2, 1-31.
3. L. Althusserand E.Balibar,ReadingCapital(London:NLB, 1970), 119.
4. L. Althusser,Lenin and Philosophy (London: NLB, 1971), 72; cf. L. Althusser,
ForMarx (London:Allen Lane, 1969), 12.
5. Lenin andPhilosophy, 100. The "Rudimentsof a CriticalBibliography",in which
thissplendidremarkoccurs, illustratesAlthusser'stendencyto refusediscussionof
a question on which he actually adopts a rigid andrestrictiveposition.The recom-
mendedreadingon Capitalconsistsexclusivelyof texts by Marx,Engelsand Lenin,
andends, without explanation,at 1917. The explanationis all too obvious.
6. For Marx,13-14.
7. D. Wrong,"TheOversocializedConceptionof Manin ModernSociology",American
SociologicalReview, 1961, vol. 26, 183-193.
8. Leninand Philosophy,47.
9. Essaysin Self-Criticism,110.
10. Ibid.,117.
11. I do not want to burdenthe text with examplesof suchpoints;yet, lest the remark
be thought unfair,see the following examplesin one book alone: G. Carchedi,On
the Economic Identificationof Social Classes(London: Routledge& KeganPaul,
1977), 13, 34, 35, 48, 75, 140, etc.
12. ForMarx,110.
13. Leninand Philosophy,129; cf. ForMarx, 231-2.
14. N. Poulantzas,Classesin ContemporaryCapitalism(London:NLB, 1975), 14-15.
15. N. Poulantzas,Fascismand Dictatorship(London:NLB, 1974).
16. ForMarx, 104.
17. E. Laclau, "The Specificity of the Political: the Poulantzas-Miliband Debate",
Economyand Society, 1975, vol. 4, 87-110, at 102.
18. Classesin ContemporaryCapitalism,198-9.
19. ForMarx, 99-100.
20. Economic Identification, 50; T. Dos Santos, "The Concept of Social Classes",
Scienceand Society, 1970, vol. 43, 166-193.
21. N. Poulantzas,PoliticalPowerand Social Classes(London:NLBand Sheen& Ward,
1973), 66.
22. EconomicIdentification,82.
23. ReadingCapital,233.
24. PoliticalPowerand Social Classes,67-8.
25. Classesin ContemporaryCapitalism,14.
26. EconomicIdentification,50, 107 n25.
27. ReadingCapital,267.
28. Classesin ContemporaryCapitalism,180.
29. For the former,cf. A. Davies, Imagesof Class(Sydney: Sydney UniversityPress,
1967); for the latter, see the discussionin R. W.Connell, "Logic and Politics in
344

Theoriesof Class",Australianand New ZealandJournalof Sociology, 1977, vol. 13,

203-211.
30. EconomicIdentification,47-8, 143.
31. PoliticalPowerand Social Classes,86.
32. N. Poulantzas,"TheNew Petty Bourgeoisie",in A. Hunt, ed.,Classand ClassStruc-
ture(London:Lawrence& Wishart, 1977), 113-124, at 114-16.
33. A. Hunt, "Theoryand Politics in the Identificationof the WorkingClass",in Class
andClassStructure,81-111, at 92.
34. Economic Identification,83.
35. Ibid., 86.
36. By this I mean to except Poulantzas'often insightfuland concrete - but not very
theoretical- discussionof the courseof eventsconnectedwith theEuropeandicta-
torships.At such moments he seems to abandonthe theoreticalframeworkalto-
gether,greatlyto his advantage.The point is raisedagainbelow.
37. Classesin ContemporaryCapitalism,14.
38. PoliticalPowerand SocialClasses, 58-60, 75.
39. Ibid., 67-8.
40. Thisexpositionis a summaryof points fromibid., 68-98, wherethe quoted phrases
willbe found.
41. Classesin ContemporaryCapitalism,15.
42. PoliticalPowerand Social Classes,91.
43. Ibid., 154.
44. Ibid., 240-250.
45. P. Q. Hirst, "EconomicClassesand Politics", in Hunt, ed., Classand ClassStruc-
ture,125-154, at 133-42.
46. ReadingCapital, 188-9.
47. This paragraphis based on the discussionin Political Power and Social Classes,
77-84. There seems to be an ambiguityin this text as to whether thesocialforma-
tionandthe conjunctureareactuallyin separatefields, as impliedby other passages.
Ihaveused a terminologythat assumesa resolutionof this.
48. Fascismand Dictatorship,13.
49. EconomicIdentification,90-1,181-2.
50. PoliticalPowerandSocialClasses,351 etc. (104 for the definitionof power);Classes
in ContemporaryCapitalism,169 etc.
51. EconomicIdentification,129-30.
52. PoliticalPowerand Social Classes,191, 272-3, 285, etc.
53. Ibid., 255. The followingpoints canbe found on pp. 282-300.
54. Ibid.,305.
55. Ibid., 284.
56. Leninand Philosophy,82.
57. R. K. Merton,Social Theoryand Social Structure,revised ed., (Glencoe, Ill.: Free
Press,1957), 20-25. (Thisessay was first publishedin 1949.)
58. PoliticalPowerand Social Classes,44.
59. See the papersby Pickvance,Lojkineand Castellsin G. C. Pickvance,UrbanSociol-
ogy (London:Tavistock,1976).
60. EconomicIdentification,59.
61. ForMarx,232.
62. PoliticalPowerand Social Classes,299.
63. Classesin ContemporaryCapitalism,260-1.
64. Ibid., 130, 182, 18, 20.
65. EconomicIdentification,48.
66. Ibid., 88, 95-6.
67. Ibid., 145-6.
68. N. Poulantzas, "The Problem of the CapitalistState", New Left Review, 1969,
no. 58, 67-78, at 77.
 345

69. On the formerpoint G. C. Pickvance,"Onthe Study of UrbanSocialMovements",

inUrbanSociology, 198-218, at 204; on the latter,B. Trainor,"Epistemology,the
Stateand Welfare",Arena, 1977,no. 47-48, 146-162.
70. Reading Capital, 180.
71. Political Power and Social Classes, 183-4, 204-6, 356; cf. For Marx, 254.
72. Political Power andSocial Classes, 325.
73. Economic Identification, 148.
74. Ibid., 41.
75. A. Calinicos, Althusser'sMarxism(London: Pluto, 1976), 89ff. This brief and
wittybook is, with Laclau,the best analysisof the AlthusseriansystemI have seen,
andI would like to acknowledgea generaldebt to its ideas.

Acknowledgment

I am indebted to a number of friends and colleagues who have commented on

and argued with the ideas advanced here; above all to Teresa Brennan, whose
critical intelligence and political perception have profoundly influenced the
view of marxism on which this argument is based.

Theoryand Society 8 (1979) 303-345

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