Althusser Lucien Sève

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Lucien Sève, Althusser and

the contradictions of the
PCF
Paddy O'Donnell
Published online: 08 Nov 2007.
To cite this article: Paddy O'Donnell (1986) Lucien Sève, Althusser and the
contradictions of the PCF, Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory, 15:1, 7-29,
DOI: 10.1080/03017608608413298
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Lucien Sève, Althusser and
the Contradictions of the PCF
Paddy O'Donnell
Introduction
In the mid 1960's a debate took place in the PCF in which the main
protagonists, Seve and Althusser, argued the merits of humanistic Marxism.
The hidden agenda was the Euro-communisation of the French Communist

Party. If the criteria for the importance of a debate is the actual outcome of
real events, then Seve's secure status within a party which now holds cabinet
office should testify to the power of the arguments for a psychological version
of Marxist theory.
In retrospect that debate proved to be a turning point for West European
Marxism. The French, Spanish, Italian and British parties have made
faltering steps down the social democratic road. A more flexible set of
theories has emerged which draw heavily on psychology. It would be easy for
some to conclude that both Seve and Althusser. in their different ways,
contributed to the break up of Stalinist theory and thus opened the way for
political strategies which could realistically bring about a transition to
socialism in Western Europe.
This paper argues against such an interpretation. Both Seve and Althusser
represent Stalinist adaptations; Stalinist because they recommend the
defence of national capitals in a political context where the Communist Party
is a dominant force. Their theories are a rationale for corporatism in one
country.
Humanistic and psychological Marxism is characterised by its ignorance
of political economy. The presence of'ethical' socialism in the Bennite left in
Britain indicates the tenacity of the belief that a new humanism can be grafted
onto an East European command economy. Part of the argument of the paper
is to show the hidden political economy of humanistic Marxism in its
Western and Eastern European forms. It is clear that it calls at best for an
ethically rejuvenated socialism in one state.
Althusser's structural anti-humanism is not a better option. It represents a
different Stalinist adaptation, one which is more sensitive to the contradictions of
Western European communism. However, a real knowledge of psychology
is no more to be found in Seve than it was in Althusser; the terms 'humanism'
and 'psychological' play an ideological role. Such theories have to be located
in the objective position of the Western Communist Parties. In the case of the
PCF, this is its contradictory nature as a party which organises the working
class on a platform to the left of the P.S., but which is impelled by the needs of
its bureaucracy and its debts to the Soviet Union into a position of
Government power where it may have to oppose working class interests.
Althusser and Seve merely offer different opinions as to how to square this
circle at the level of both theory and practice.
8 CRITIQUE
Seve's Psychology
Since its publication in 1969, Seve's Man in Marxist Theory has found
popularity both in capitalist Europe and in the Soviet countries. The reason
for this is that it occupies what has been considered a gap in the Marxist
tradition, namely, a theory of individual development, i.e., a Marxist
psychology. Seve argues that the main contribution of his work, is to have
begun research in a neglected field and that consequently it has to be judged
by its capacity to move people towards a Marxist Psychology and not by its
provision of the finished product.
Continuing the apologetic tone Seve admits his lack of qualification as a
psychologist and protests that it is only the decrepit state of the bourgeois
discipline which causes him to give psychology the benefit of his philosophical
skills. Although these gestures of appeasement are the well exercised
routines of professional academic debate, they would not by themselves cast
suspicion on Seve's project, if it were not that despite his self-appointed
status of guest-worker cum under-labourer, he manages to complete over 500
pages in the English edition without considering in detail what might appear
to be critical questions about psychology. For example: Is western psychology no
more than an ideology; What form did professional psychology take in the
US SR; How did it survive the Stalinist period; Why does Marxist theory lack
a psychology; What effect has this had politically? The fact that Seve spends
at best a few vaporous paragraphs on these matters, in which he shows a lack
of empirical knowledge of both Soviet and Western psychology, indicates
that the issues at stake are not those descibed on the book's dustjacket.1
The image of western psychology put forward by Seve is both idiosyncratic
and anachronistic. Allowing for the fact that it is the psychology of
personality which he identifies as being important, the choice of Piaget,
Lewin and Sheldon as representatives shows a bizarre ignorance of the state
of the subject. Piaget is probably a justified choice since he is a key
development theorist. However, Piaget's main interest has been intellectual
development and not social, emotional or personality development. Lewin,
on the other hand, whose work dates from the 1940's, was a physicist turned
student of group dynamics, a creator of the historical curiosity called 'field
theory', and is now numbered amongst psychology's honoured but irrelevant
dead. Sheldon has less posthumous honour. His dubious fame was earned by
providing a theory which related body type, through the intervening link of a
spurious development embryology, to personality. His mesomorphs, endomorphs
and ectomorphs have entered the broader cultural vocabulary but are
discredited theoretically. Whatever the merits of these individuals they
1. A glance through any textbook of Psychology would provide more information than Seve's book.
Even at this introductory level the chapter on the Psychology of Personality would demonstrate the
idiosyncracy of Seve's choice. Most of the work covered by such introductory texts is, of course, English
speaking in origin and the bulk of that is American. But this is what constitutes the modern subject and its
influence has by now penetrated to professional Psychology in the Soviet countries. This has happened
to such an extent that if it were not for minimum citation level requirements for Soviet and East European
authors, their textbooks would look very similar to English language ones. The work of Soviet
psychologists themselves is less a mystery to Western psychologists than it has been previously since
there are frequent translations and some very good collections of representative articles. See for example
Michael Cole and Irving Maltzman: A Handbook of Contemporary Soviet Psychology, Basic Books
Inc., New York, 1969.
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE PCF 9
hardly represent the activities of current psychologists let alone personality
theorists. Seve shows surprising lack of knowledge of the empirical realities
of the discipline.
The Soviet version of psychology is represented by Leontiov, who is by his
elite status, a purveyor of" the talmudic Marxism characteristic of Soviet
ideologues and has little in common with the less prestigeous empirical
researcher. Overall Seve is comprehensively vague about psychology's
precarious career in the Soviet Union. He offers no explanation of its recent
resurgence nor does he analyse its relationship with its western version. He
operates with an ad hoc and unexplicated three-way distinction between,
first, physiological psychology, second, social psychology, and third the
psychology of the personality. It is never made clear where or why the lines of
division are drawn.

Such a combination of selectivity and vagueness about the practice of
professional psychology is an.obstacle to tackling the questions surrounding
a Marxist psychology. What, after all, can the word psychology mean
outwith some organic link with the work of its proponents? Seve claims to be
intervening in the sphere of professional psychology and not simply to be
creating a new area of Marxist theory unrelated to the existing discipline. In
this he is consistent with those theorists who have acknowledged in
psychology no matter in what distorted form, a body of knowledge1 which
should be interrelated with Marxist theory2. The absence of empirical
psychology from Seve's work, in contrast with Mandel's creditable if
simplified knowledge of psychological literature, constitutes a threat to the
success of his project.
Consequently Seve's work is useless to a psychologist, Western or Soviet,
trying to understand the political context of his discipline or trying to develop
new lines or research. Despite the praise that gushed from the GDR, (which
is quoted in Seve s postscript), this is what is said even by his supporters. The
suggestions for research, the German contributors say politely, are naive and
impractical. This is justified, for the section referred to is one of Seve's more
embarrassing efforts, where (setting aside his under-labourer's uniform) he
tries to lay a few bricks on top of one another. He argues that there is a parallel
phenomenon under capitalism, between the growth in the organic composition of
capital and a growth in the organic composition of abilities on the one hand,
and on the other between sector I and sector II in the economy and a sector I
and sector II of the human personality. Beginning with a remark made by
Marx in the Grundrisse, where he compares the reproduction of fixed capital
in the economy with the repair and renewal of body tissue, Seve infers from
this example 'a materialist rhythm analysis of the personality*.
'... it becomes possible to approach scientifically the development of a
fixed capital of the active personality, articulable directly with the rhythms,
the progress and the courses of the biography, subject to risks of social
depreciation and of temporally varied requirements of reproduction, but also
capable of expanded reproduction* In particular it will be a matter
2. E. Mandel. Marxist Economic Theory. Merlin Press. 1962.

10 CRITIQUE
of closely studying the problems of proportionality every increase in
capacities (sector I) requiring both so that time can be made available for
learning, and also for the investment of the new capacities of elaborating the
theory of the simple and expanded reproduction of the personality'.3
Coupling his division between sector I and sector II activities with a further
distinction between concrete and abstract activity, Seve produces a dimensional
model of the personality complete with an arrow laden diagram.
It is difficult to take much of this seriously. The passage quoted above
displays two features which recur throughout the pages of Seve's'Hypotheses'
section, where he offers specific suggestions for empirical research in
psychology. First there is a core of psychological theorising, such as the
suggestion that some forms of activity produce new cognitive structures

whereas others are the simple exercise of already existing capacities. This
core of theory is usually based on some well-known theory of Western
psychology, in this case Piaget's distinction between assimilation and
accommodation in cognitive development. The second feature is to state the
notion in vocabulary and concepts which are impeccably Marxist, but which,
when applied so inappropriately, make the original idea either trivial or
meaningless. At no point does Seve consider whether the psychological
theory in its original unacknowledged form is true, and rarely does he
question the wholesale application of 'off the peg' concepts drawn from
Marxist economics to a psychological subject matter. The result is vacuousness on
a grand scale.
The question therefore arises: how is it possible for work of such calibre to
elicit respect? Why has Seve been so well received in East Germany and the
USSR as a contributor to a new psychology? The deafening silence from
professional psychology in the West has not dented his status within the PCF
nor within the intelligentsia of the European Communist Parties. That kind
of welcome would itself suggest that the book has a covert political meaning.
Even the casual reader untutored in the esoterica of French hermeneutics
would suspect that Seve's psychology related to the political choices which
have preoccupied the official Communist Parties for the past twenty years.
In effect the book deals with issues arising from debates within the PCF in
the middle to late 1960's, on the theme of Marxist humanism.4 Nearly a
quarter of the book is devoted by Seve to an exposition of the Marxist
conception of man and constitutes an attack on both abstract speculative
humanism personified in Roger Garaudy, and theoretical anti-humanisn,
identified with Louis Althusser. The arguments around structural anti-
humanism were located immediately in the political metamorphosis of the
PCF. The broader context of the debate, however, was the history of de-
Stalinisation in the USSR and its consequence for the large western
Communist Parties. It is within this framework that terms such as 'Marxist
humanism', 'individual development' and the 'psychology of personality'
must be understood. Furthermore it is this context which explains the
popularity of Seve's work in the Soviet countries. This popularity is due to
3. Seve, ibid.
4. The important points of the debate were featured in La Nouvelle Critique in 1965-66.
the importance in the USSR of a brand of psychology, distinct from the
ideologically protected Pavlovianism. which incorporates important elements of
the western discipline.
Marxist humanism, the search for a Marxist psychology, the emphasis on
the 1844 Manuscripts, the growth of psychology within the USSR, the
faltering eurocommunisation of the PCF arc all interrelated phenomena. A
debate within the ranks of PCF intellectuals can have widespread international
resonance. E. P. Thompson was correct, if limited by parochialism, in
interpreting Althusser"s/?c77/r/ci./(7/;/; Lewis as an implicit attack on the post
1956 New Left in Britain. In so far a*; the New Reusoner represented a form
of non-Stalinist socialism which challenged the CPGB's prerogative to the
use of Marxist theory then it was part of a world-wide phenomenon. This
phenomenon was the challenge to Stalinist theory and the attempt to build a
non-Stalinist Marxist tradition. Opposition to the official orthodoxy came in
the shape of the humanist critique, a psychological Marxism which
emphasised both the value of the individual and the role of the subjective in
history. Why the critique took this form, why it had such an impact on the
western Communist Parties to the extent that Althusser's whole project can
be seen as its counterweight, and why it gained a hold even within the Soviet
Union. - answering these questions contains the key to understanding the
popularity of Scvc.
Marxist I In man ism
The list of names attending the Praxis summer schools from 1963-68
included those both in the West and in the Soviet countries who would be
identified as attempting a humanistic transformation of Marxism. As well as
the Praxis group itself, there were Fromm. Marcusc. Habcrmas. Goldman
and Heller. Despite the difference between the schools represented, this
intcrnationalisation of anti-Stalinist theory was important. All of them
shared an emphasis on the liberty of the individual, on the development of
human potentiality, on the importance of the 1844 Manuscripts, on the
oppressiveness of Stalinism, and to a greater or lesser degree, on the
irrelevance of the working class as the agent of historical change.
The abandonment of classical Marxist political economy was the key
feature which held together these various groupings. Some like Marcuse.
Fromm. Habermas and the descendants of the Frankfurt school gave up the
working class as any real force for development and instead turned to other
groups, particularly the enlightened intelligentsia." Others like the Praxis
group, gave ethical approval to the proletariat (a feature not exhibited by the
Frankfurt school), and saw them as the beneficiaries of a Utopian socialist
solution based on self management and decentralisation. But. despite their
ethical concerns their advocacy of self management in enterprises which
would eventually came to bear the brunt of international competition, was no
benefit to the working class.'1 Allied intellectually to the Frankfurt school, the
5. Marcuse states this explicitly in an interview given to Telos: Marcuse. Habermas. Lubasz & Spengler.
Theory & Politics', Telos 38, Winter 1978-79.
6. A. Carlo makes this point in his article on the Yugoslav economy. Telos 36. Summer 1978.
7. I. Szelenyi. The Hungarian Left. Critique 8.
12 CRITIQUE
Hungarian intellectuals emphasised ethical and political change, with a key
role for the intelligentsia.7
Two questions about this Marxist humanism arise. First why did an ethical
Marxism lacking political economy develop as the opposition to Stalinism?
Second, why did it find such international expression? Part of the answer to
both lies in the physical liquidation by Stalin of the post-revolution Bolshevik
Theorists. A fuller answer must point both to developments within the
Western economies which made the contradictions of capitalism less
obvious, and to changes in the Soviet system which made limited political
change seem possible.
The identification of the capital labour relation as the source of the basic
contradiction of capitalist societies was consciously rejected by the Frankfurt

school and this rejection has been affirmed by modern exponents of the
tradition. Marcuse saw the turn to Freudian theory as necessary to explain
the failure of the European revolution and the decade of defeat. Not only did
the rise of the Nazis obliterate the working class as a revolutionary force but
the dynamics of their coming to power seemed to demand a theory based on
socialisation and psychology8 What began as an explanation of defeat in the
1930's became, in the trouble free years after the second world war, a
strategy for revolution which would rely on those groups which seemed least
satisfied with the rising living standards of the post war boom. The
psychological aspect of the theory was important because it explained the
possibility of revolutionary change in societies where the class struggle was
muted, if not eradicated, by rising living standards, lack of unemployment
and reduction of numbers in traditional manual jobs.
The appeals of the Marcusian New Left to the dissident intellectuals of the
Soviet world was genuine enough both in terms of its theory of society and of
the life style it advocated.9-l0 What is problematic is why intellectuals in the
- Soviet countries should respond to a theory which had its origins in the defeat
of the working class in capitalist societies and which achieved a mass base in
the educated young of those societies. At first sight it might appear that what
joined the intellectuals of the Soviet and non-Soviet world was the desire for a
non-Stalinist Marxism, and with the tradition of the left opposition nearly
obliterated the Frankfurt version was the main extant example. It accepted
the existence of the post war economic growth, revealing the nonsense of the
'impoverishment' thesis, and implied that the establishment of a welfare state
had modified capitalism from its classical form. While these factors go some
way towards explaining the popularity of neo-Frankfurtian theory, they
ignore that its appeal was to the intelligentsia and that it nominated them
rather than the working class as historical agents.
Such a feature explains its impact on both the Soviet and Western
intelligentsia. The expansion in higher education in the Western economies
produced students, especially in the non-vocational diciplines, who would be
8. Marcuse, ibid.
9. Heller in an interview to Telos affirms the identification that exists with the Marcusian left in the West.
A. Heller, 'Marxist Ethics and the future of Eastern Europe', Telos 28, Winter 1978-79.
10. Szelenyi argues that the escapist life style has been emulated by the sections of the Hungarian left, cf.
Critique 8.
denied the privileged status they had been led to expect. Their frustration
came not in the form of mass graduate unemployment but of routinisation and
ultimately proletarianisation of their work, and consequently the theoretical
response was the demand for more control within their work role and the
appointment of themselves as the group with privileged knowlege of what the
human race needed for its fulfilment. All these elements had their attractiveness to
the left wing intelligentsia of the Soviet world and could prove appealing to
even wider sectors of that group.
It is this latter phenomenon which has made Marxist humanism crucial in
Seve's analysis. Seve's purpose is to rescue Marxist humanism from the
errors of Garaudy, Schaff and the like without falling into the excesses of
Althusser. The vocabulary of a humanistic Marxism could not be left to
become the exclusive property of a dissident group. For Seve and the official
communist parties it had to be integrated into the general melange of Party
orthodoxy. The dissident philosophies of the Praxis group, of Heller,
Hegedus etc., sprang from changes in the Soviet countries and expressed
goals which were not incompatible with the changes desired by a sector of the
intelligentsia - a group to which the elite were directing concessionary
policies.
The oppression suffered by the humanistic Marxists, tends to prevent left
wing intellectuals in the West from examining the class content of their
theories, which have a characteristic history." Their ideas developed during
the post-Stalinist thaw as an expression of the interests of the intelligentsia.
The mechanism for change was to exert influence on the party to produce
new policies. The material reality within which the party is located is never
analysed. Lacking any real understanding of how change can occur, lacking
an analysis of the production and control of the surplus product, and
excluding the working class from any effective historical role, the theories
must end in moral rhetoric directed to an audience of privileged listeners.
None of this was mortally dangerous for Soviet regimes in the immediate
post-Stalinist years. The theorists began to encounter repression when
concessions to the intelligentsia began to pose a threat to stability.
The initial compatibility between the vocabulary of the dissident Marxists
and the requirements of the regimes of the Soviet world anxious to rebuild an
ideology suitable for societies no longer organised on terror, explains why
much of the surface phraseology of the former was incorporated into the
orthodox apologetics. It is this aspect of'humanism' which Seve wishes to
protect.12 In part therefore Seve is a contributor to the post-Stalinist facelift
on Soviet ideology. A fuller understanding requires an examination of the
specificities of the post-Stalinist period in the PCF.
11. Szelenyi describes this process for the Hungarian left (ibid). Markovic provides a similar picture for
the Yugoslav Marxist humanists in his short history of the Praxis group, Markovic, M. & Petrovic G.
(eds), Praxis, D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, 1979.
12. The PCF central committee pronouncement on Marxist humanism illustrates the point. 'There is a
Marxist humanism that is distinct from the abstract humanism by means of which the bourgeoisie
camouflages social relations and justifies exploitation and injustice'.
14 CRITIQUE
The PCF Althusser and the Debate on Humanism
When Althusser attacked humanist interpretations of Marx his target was
not the humanism of bourgeois critics but the socialist humanism developed
within the ranks of communist intellectuals.13 What was suitable for the
C.P.S.U.. and for some sectors of the Western communist parties, was
judged inappropriate by Althusser for the PCF. Socialist humanism
according to him makes sense within the realities of the Soviet Union where
'The end of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR opens up a second
historical phase the state is no longer a class state but the state of the
whole people (of everyone)', but there are dangers in making it part of general
Marxist theory.
The reasons behind Althusser's reluctance have to be grasped within the

framework of the PCF's history in the period after the 20th Congress of the
CPSU. In this context it becomes clear why the ideological slogans which
suit the elite of the Soviet Union can pose a threat to the stability of a Western
European Communist Party like the French one.
The essence of West European Stalinism has never been fully grasped
theoretically. Academic commentators have focussed first on one then on
another of a national Communist Party's contradictory aspects. Usually
they have identified two main opposing features, the revolutionary and the
social democratic, and have concluded that the task of analysis is to identify
which of these is the real nature of the party.14 Occasionally attempts have
been made to conceptualise their existence as an inherent contradiction, with
the poles of the contradiction composed of ahistorical fixed categories.15
There have been few attempts, however, to locate the tensions in the material
base of the organisation. Even the Trotskyist movement has been more
concerned with the task of exposing Stalinist leadership than with analysing
the real forces which perpetuate their existence.
The task of analysis poses the problem of method. Bourgeois theorists
come to the reality with fixed categories of political analysis (the economic
categories being in the possession of another discipline) such as 'a
parliamentary party', 'a party of government', 'the tribune function', and then
proceed to see which description fits best in any given period. They also
assume a degree of voluntarism in the party's existence as if it could choose to
be any one of the categories identified. In the decision as to which label fits,
certain features are judged indicative of a given description. Thus 'parliamentary' is
judged appropriate if the party seeks electoral alliances, behaves 'responsibly' in
parliament and so on. For Marxist theorists the inadequacy of this method is
clear. However, a verbal rejection of that method is easy; it is more difficult to
avoid using it in theoretical work. Thus, Eurocommunism is often analysed
13. Of course Althusser hadjoined battle with the bourgeois humanist interpretations of Marx which had
used the 1844 Manuscripts to construct a Marxism consisting in nothing more than an ethical theory.
This threat had been easily brushed aside and even Garaudy had played his part in the struggle. Only
when some degree of humanism appeared within Stalinist Marxism itself did Althusser sense real
danger.
14. For example, John C. Campbell, 'Eurocommunism: Policy Questions for the West', in
Eurocommunism & Detente. R. Tokes (ed) 1978.
15. For example: RonaldTiersky, French Communism 1920-1972. Columbia University Press, New
York, 1974.
by the left as just another neo-social democratic movement with little
attention either to the historical particularity of that category or to its
appropriateness in application to a movement which has its origins in
Stalinist organisations. An adequate method must begin from the realities of
capitalist accumulation, from a consideration of the role which the Communist
Parties have played there, and must develop the categories by which to grasp
events.
Stalinist parties, if they are more than tiny groupings external to the
society, exist as a contradiction.16 They take root in the labour movement
and must justify this position objectively by defending the working class and
subjectively by demonstrating the advantages of their theory to that of the
competing social democrats.17 On the other hand since they are not
revolutionary the bureaucrats in the apparatus settle down to enjoying the

advantages of office. Thus they will be attracted towards some compromise
with capitalism which will provide a secure career structure for the
apparatchiks.1" The compromise which social democracy made to this end.
while attractive to the party's leaders is not possible for them, because such a
compromise already exists based on a section of the working class. The
Stalinist parties had to recruit support on a non-social democratic platform
and had to continue to define themselves against the socialist parties and
socialist unions.19 Thus the PCF is conscious that the CGT should always
16. This will be most true of the present French. Italian, Spanish and Portuguese parties. The smaller
parties show the dual feature of slavish following of the Moscow line by the financially dependent
appartchiks coupled with frequent deviations and defections by the non-bureaucrats. This latter group
since they float free of any base in the society display a shifting kaleidoscope of ideologies.
17. The social base of the PCI is broader than that of the PCF. Overall it draws a larger proportion of its
electoral support from the middle class and although its support from the ceti medi is weak in many
regions, in the Red Belt and especially in Emilia-Romagna. it draws a sizeable minority of the
comrnercianti and a majority of the artisan small producers. Of all categories of the ceti medi, it is this
latter one, the small producer, a designation covering the owners of 1 -2 million small firms which employ
more than half of the manufacturing work force, and which play a critical role in the Italian economy. The
PCI's dominance in local government gives them powers of licensing and zoning which attracts artisan
support. Furthermore their influence on the working class can make them an ally of the small producer in
his labour disputes. Not surprisingly Emilia-Romagna provides the social base for revisionism in PCI
ideology. It has been strongest in support of the goal of the party participating in national government and
therefore represents the social base for Eurocommunism, cf. G. Galli, 'Italian Communism' in
Communism in Europe, Griffith (ed) Pergamon Press, 1964. A. J. Stern.' The Italian Communist Party
at the Grass Roots', Problems of Communism, 1974.
18. There are many stories about the psychology of party bureaucrats when in power. The most famous
is one told of Thorez. As a member of parliament he possessed a pass for public transport which allowed
him admission even when the vehicle had its full complement of passengers. Thorez enjoyed waiting
until the vehicle was full in order to show his special pass. Francois Billoux. Quand nous etions
minlstres, Paris, Editions Sbciale, 1971.
19. Because of the need to compete with the socialists for party members and for electoral support the
PCF attacks the PS and the CFDT as revisionist and defines itself as the true representative of the
working class. However, its electoral ambitions can only be met by a policy of alliance. This poses the
dual problem that militants may become disaffected by having to negotiate agreement with previously
vilefied socialists and that peripheral supporters, finding the PCF policy in effect indistinguishable from
the socialists, drift towards the latter. For example, the peace movement of the late 1940's was resisted
by some militants because they resented having to make overtures to the very people who had excluded
them from power, cf. Marshall Shulman, Stalin's Foreign Policy, New York, Atheneum 1969. Denis
Lacorue describes the difficulties of persuading Cadres to follow through the electoral alliances formed
in 1971-72. 'Left-Wing Unity at the Grass Roots',/n Communism in Italy & France, (ed) Blackmer &
Tarrow, Princeton University Press 1975. As forthe other aspect of the problem, the loss of support to
the PS in the run-up to the 1978 election and the collapse of their vote in 1981 illustrates the point.
16 CRITIQUE
appear more realistically militant than the CFDT. By their nature they must
be defensive organisations of the working class. Any attempt to act
otherwise, as did the PCF in the immediate years after its expulsion from
government, or as did the PCI in the same period, seriously threatens this
position in the labour movement. It was the disastrous results in the FIAT
elections of 1955 which produced a turn around in the PCI's strategy in the
unions.20 The consequence is a tension within the party expressed in two
incompatible strategies; on the one hand militant wage defence, and on the
other the active seeking for parliamentary power and government position.
The two strategies can be temporarily pursued separately as they were in
both the PCI and PCF after the early 1950's but since they are part of the
same whole their incompatibility must in the end manifest itself.
By the late 1920's the Western Communist Parties had become centrally
controlled organisations in competition with the socialist parties for the
leadership of the working class. Their task was to place themselves in key
positions in the union structure and to draw members towards their own
organisation. The purpose was not to understand the real movements of the
working class but to build an organisation institutionally rooted in the
domestic labour movement which was firmly linked to the new ruling group in
the Soviet Union. The failure to objectively defend working class interests
had catastrophic consequences in the KPD. The PCF was saved by the
Popular Front and began to take real control of the working class
organisations. Although the 'class against class' tactic had reduced its
membership from 110,000 in 1921 to 30,000 in 1932, to the benefit of the
SFIO (50,000 in 1921 and 138,000 in 1932), and although its presence in
the labour movement was mainly through the control of the small CGTU, its
discipline left it poised to take advantages of the opportunities offered by the
Poopular Front. The CGTU was absorbed into the CGT, and PCF militants
manoeuvred into key positions in the larger structure which they occupied
until their eviction in 1939 with the Nazi-Soviet pact. In 1943 the
communists were rehabilitated into the CGT and by 1945 had achieved
parity with the former CGT representatives on the federal executive.
No party of any size can exist simply as paid agents of a foreign power.
Stalin bribed, threatened and murdered to control the leadership of the
Communist parties, but even the leaders he corrupted needed a firmer basis
than special access to Soviet fur coats.21 In France by 1945 the PCF had
become a party promising a career in government, a career in the labour
bureacracy and favouritism in employment.22 To the extent that it manages
the spoils of the system it is a classic social democratic party. But its capacity
to gain access to those advantages springs from its ability to control the
20. c.f. G. Galli ibid.

21. Stalin's method of gaining control of the KPD in the thirties involved systematic bribery and
corruption including, the offer of fur coats. Cf. Ruth Fischer, Stalin & German Communism, Harvard
University 1948.
22. Communist influence in the nationalised industries was greatly aided by the Communist presence in
government. This involved preferential hiring policies in favour of party members. Reiker reports that,
for example, jobs in the aircraft industry would be advertised only in L'Humanite or in other sympathetic
publications. A. J. Reiker, Stalin and the French Communist Party, Columbia University Press, New
York, 1962.
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE PCF
French labour movement. It is this means of control which makes it
impossible to be social democratic.
The PCF is tied to a working class which has a long history of Marxism
dating from the end of the 19th century. When the SFIO split at the Congress
of Tours in 1920, the majority of delegates chose affiliation to the Third
International, and founded the newly named PCF with a membership of
110,000. The French labour movement employs the language of Marxism as
common currency. While the version of Marxist economics which the PCF
has promulgated is orthodox Stalinism this still encourages a consciousness
which is not fetishised.23 In order to form any base in the working class
Stalinism had to distinguish itself from social democracy both in language
and action and the features which it emphasised all marked it out as left of the
SFIO. Paradoxically, while opposed to real revolutionary movements they

could only realise that opposition by using the language of revolution. In
order to control the labour movement the PCF had to claim to be organising it
for a revolutionary task. Thus Stalinism in the French working class has
proved a contradictory phenomenon. While acting as a force for deceit and
obfuscation yet it has served as a stimulus for the development of Marxist
thought. This works on two levels. First it had to educate its militants to a
view of economic reality which, whatever its sterile formulations, is
anticapitalist and linked to working class experience. Thus debate in the
working class used categories not given within the social democratic world
view. Second, its presence as the largest organisation of the working class
drew to it intellectuals who attempted to systematise the crude theoretical
formulations, and who introduced into mainstream French intellectual life an
openly revolutionary system of thought. Once this had occurred it became
widely evident that Marxism had a history different from that indicated by
the PCF, that it has an intellectual grasp of the world unrepresented by the
party ideologies, and a non-Stalinist Marxism took root. Since it was not the
ruling party, there was a limit to the degree of censorship it could exercise
over such a development.
The essence of the PCF's ambition to be a party of government could only
come about through an electoral alliance guaranteeing second ballot
withdrawals. The PCF needed to demonstrate its social democratic
23. Evidence on the consciousness of particular groups has to be treated cautiously, particularly when
that evidence is survey material. However, Almond's 1954, evidence comparing Italian and French
Communists is significant. The majority of the French sample has been drawn to the PCF by the
experience of economic hardship, i.e., by the perceived exploitation of capitalism, whereas the Italian
group laid more emphasis on the experience of Fascism. Hamilton's analysis of the IFOP polls
conducted in the 1950's confirms the non-fetished perception of the PCF members and moreover
indicates that this consciousness was widespread in sections of the French working class. The
experience of economic oppression aids directly to a revolutionary consciousness. To a question on
whether change would come about through revolution 54% of the unskilled sample and 40% of the
skilled agreed. (IFOP, 1955). To the question 'Should the party take power through unconstitutional
means'? 28% of all workers replied in the affirmative, (IFOP, 1952). Despite statistical problems with
the sample and despite problems of interpretation this evidence indicates at least a sizeable minority of
workers who were well to the left of social democracy. The militants at the base of the PCF who
confronted the beginnings of alliance politics in the early 1960's would come with the political
perspective so described. G. Almond, The Appeals of Communism, Princeton University Press 1954.
R. H. Hamilton, Affluence and the French Worker in the 4th Republic, Princeton University Press,
1967.
18 CRITIQUE
credentials in order to attract the cross over votes from SFIO voters, it being
easier to get PCF voters to vote for socialist candidates than vice versa.
Moreover the PCF already possessed the experience of being thrown out of
government, and realised that to form part of a governing block would involve
proving their ability to offer only a limited challenge to French capitalism.
Yet the very forces which had brought it poised for the transition to a social
democratic form pulled it back from the change.
The party was based in the defence of working class interests, primarily
workplace defence and wage bargaining. For a lower order European
capitalism, emerging from behind tariff barriers to compete with German
manufacturing, the scope for manoeuvre was small and the chances of being
involved in administering an austerity programme were high. Such an event
could weaken its base and open the way for the far left.
The PCF has always tried to steer its way between these two poles. As the
quid pro quo for its collaboration in the rebuilding of French capitalism from
1944 to 1947, it used the now communist dominated CGT to hold down
wages and restrict strikes while prices were allowed to rise.24 Only a wildcat
strike in Renault, which it eventually failed to contain, forced it eventually to
push for a wages increase. The subsequent events showed the precise nature
of their dilemma. The communist's new position on a wage rise forced it into
a vote against government economic policy. A clear case of working class
defence taking priority over being in power? But Thorez and his ministers did
not volunteer their resignations, expressing their wish to remain in government
The dilemma was resolved on their behalf when Ramadier dismissed them on
May 4th 1947.
Excluded from power the communists tried to direct the strike wave of
November 1947 towards the political goal of their reintegration into
government. This was to be the first move in a strategy which attempted to
use the trade union movement in the pursuit of the political goals of the PCF
leadership. Its consequence was a divided and demoralised union movement,
a decline in the level of unionisation generally, and the most successful period
of extensive exploitation in French post war history.25 In the period up to
1955 the PCF tried tactics such as 'the unification of the democratic forces',
and sacrificed on behalf of its political ambition the material interests of its
CGT members. But the erosion of its real base in the union movement forced
it to change tack.26
24. Cf. A. Tiano and M. Rochard, L'Experience francaise des syndicalisms ouvrier, Paris, Editions
Ouvrieres 1956. De Gaulle was quite explicit in wanting the PCF in government to ensure industrial
discipline. Cf. De Gaulle, Le Salut, Paris, 1959.
25. J.S. Carre, P. Dubois & E. Malinvand, French Economic Growth, Stanford University Press,
California, 1976.
26. Ross interprets Thorez's 'pauperisation' campaign as an attempt to combat optimism about the
future of French capitalism. In practice it amounted to putting clear emphasis on wage bargaining and
allowing the CGT to pursue these goals in a relatively untramelled way. Ross has been the first to
develop an empirically based account of the relationship of the PCF and CGT in the postwar period. G.
Ross, 'party and Mass Organisation: The Changing Relationship of PCF and CGT', in Communism in
Italy and France. In Italy the CGIL underwent a similar transformation at the same time. The issue
which sparked this off was the failure of the CGIL to obtain a majority on the Commissione interne at the
Turin Fiat works in the 1955 elections. Peter Weitz. 'The CGIL and the PCI; From Subordination to
Independent Political Force, in Communism in Italy and France, ibid.
CQSTRADICT10NS OF THE PCF 19
By 1965 with the arrival of Mitterand as the left unity candidate in the
SFIO the contradiction became acute. The PCF had looked to alliance with
the SFIO to escape their exclusion from representative power. In the 1962
legislative elections they initiated a non-reciprocal tactic of standing down on
the second ballot if the Socialist candidate was more popular. The move was
in fact reciprocated but its main effect was to show to the Socialists the
benefit of such an alliance. A last minute attempt by Gaston Deferre, the
anti-communist Mayor of Marseille, to organise the Socialists into a Centre-
Left alliance failed, and the PCF became the obvious electoral partners. The
onus was now on the communists to show that they could act acceptably. In
the pursuit of re-integration into mainstream social democratic politics,
Rochet controlled the forces within the PCF which were pushing for a
common programme as the basis for any electoral alliance over Mitterand's
presidential candidacy. The result of the ballot (Mitterand 45.5% of the vote,
de Gaule 54.5%) showed the plausibility of the left alliance and the
communists prepared for further concessions.27 The first gesture was one on
doctrinal flexibility, as can be seen in the diverse speakers invited to the
'Week of Marxist thought' mounted by the PCF in 1966. The next step was
the construction of a common programme with the newly formed FGDS,
which was ready by 1968, and which eschewed discussion of socialism or
revolution but relied on the key phrase 'an authentic and modern democracy'. The
path on which the PCF had now set out had taken it away from the traditional
policies on which it had organised large sections of the French working class.
In the mid sixties it was not clear that it could contain this tension.
It is in this period, from the beginnings of discussion with the socialists
through to the first common programme, that Althusser's key works were
completed. The debate with Seve, which formed the basis of Seve's Man in
Marxist Theory, also dates from this time. Althusser's work and Seve's
response have to be considered as part of those events. How the tension
within the PCF could have and has developed since then, helps cast light "on
the problem.
Basically the range of solutions open to the PCF is always the same and
covers the following options; first, abandoning any hope of being a governing
party; second, changing its method of control over the base; third, developing
a broader base in sections of the middle class.
Let us consider these choices in more detail. Firstly, the PCF could have
settled for permanent status as the party about to bring off the revolution. It
could rally its traditional support around anti-capitalist slogans, defend the
working class at the work place, emphasise its distinctiveness vis a vis the
Socialists, and rely on the chiliastic vision of the USSR as the fatherland of
socialism. This can always be a temporary regroupment stage but it has no
long-term stability. The membership loses heart and drifts away as it did
during 1947-52.
Secondly, it could work on the other pole of the contradiction and create a
new relationship with the working class. This tactic can be combined with the
third possibility of extending its base, meaning that the party re-educates its
27. Cf. Tiersky ibid.

20 CRITIQUE
working class supporters in the virtues of advanced democracy, the value of
the human personality, the essential unity of purpose of all men of good will,
and hopes to draw towards it large sections of the middle classes. The
problem here is that rhetoric without material concessions to the middle
classes is likely to be ignored. What those concessions might constitute will
depend on the structure of the middle class groupings, but in the end they
involve managing labour relations and wage claims. At this point the working
class base, who may till then have dismissed humanistic Marxism as an
electoral ruse, can become disaffected.28 Some way has to be found to satisfy
working class demands which is compatible with broader electoral appeal.
The foundations for just such a solution had been laid in 1955 when the
PCF had given the CGT relatively free reign in the pursuit of wage claims.
The 1963 miners strike added a new dimension to the strategy. The strike
was organised in cooperation with other unions mainly the CFTC. Unity
between the CFDT and CGT was formalised in the 1966 pact. But what the
C G I wanted was to use lower level struggles to build towards high level
agreements between unions on the one hand and on the other the Conseil
National de Patronat Francais and Government. Tactically they pursued
days of mass action rather than backing local disputes.29 The purpose was not
control of working class action just for the sake of being in control, but to use
it as a lever to manoeuvre themselves into the position of representatives of
the working class in national negotiations, and from their conduct of such
negotiations to justify the PCF to a wider audience. By this strategy they
hoped to be seen as both the bonafide working class party and a reliable party
of government.
The actual operation of this plan has presented the PCF with grave
problems. Its natural tendency has been to strengthen organisations where it
already exists, viz., in the skilled workers in the public sector, and to avoid the
unpredictable outcomes which might result from stirring up militancy
amongst what the PCF see as 'marginals', viz., the unskilled women, and
immigrants. This strategy carries the danger of being outflanked by wildcat
strikes as it was in 1967-68 and in 1972. It then left the door open for the
CFDT to establish a reputation as the militant organiser of previously
forgotten groups of employees.30 Such a development is a constant risk of the
strategy, and it is doubtful if the PCF's vituperative equation of gauchisme
and reformism will be enough to inhibit the influence of the CFDT. One
effect which is certain is to force the CGT and the PCF into explicit anti-
capitalist rhetoric. Any possibility of the PCF having a different relationship
with the working class then becomes excluded.
The dilemma of a party which is always verging on social democracy but
which relies on an anti-capitalist working class was pondered over by the
28. Hellman argues for the case of the PCI which did develop a clear alliance policy with the middle
classes that a quarter of fulltime party functionaries expressed doubt or cynicism about the alliance
strategy. A majority reported that the policy caused disquiet amongst the worker militants. S. Hellman.
'The PCI's Alliance Strategy and the Case of the Middle Classes, in Communism in Italy and France,
ibid.
29. G. Ross, ibid.
30. G. Ross, ibid.
CONTRA D/C TIONS OF THE PCF 21
protagonists of the debate on humanism of the mid 1960's. The humanists
like Garaudy represented a helter-skelter rush towards alliance politics and
the explicit commitment of the PCF towards social democracy. The
leadership were prepared to go cautiously down this road but realised that
such a commitment would cut them off from their base with no guarantee of
attracting the sought after social democratic voter who, if he wanted such a
party, always had the real thing available in Mitterand's organisation.31
However, some degree of concession on dogma was necessary and debates
with the Catholics might indicate to the public sincerity of intent. Seve's
approach was to find the right ideological formula which could rationalise the
move. Much of Man in Marxist Theory is simply that: a long winded account
of how Marxists can be humanists too. Thus his objection to Althusser is
mainly that structural anti-humanism is not a help in forming political

alliances.
Finally from the political point of view, the' fierce campaign which big capital with all its
resources is conducting in an effort to discredit socialism and the struggle of communist
parties in the very name of men's fundamental aspirations, cannot easily get a fitting reply
from Marxists if, when they take up their stand on the terrain of humanism, they are held
back by the fear of turning out to be in contradiction with the theory to which they appeal,
(p. 482.)
He defends this objection by two sets of tactics. First by extensive

quotations from Marx which demonstrate that real men and their needs are
the source of historical necessity ('in order to assert themselves as
individuals, the proletarians must abolish their own former condition of
existence'), second, by making great play of the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach viz:
'the human essence is the ensemble of social relations'. The former tactic
allows Seve to reject Althusser's anti-humanism while the latter avoids the
drift into abstract speculative production and at the same time legitimates the
use of the key word 'humanism'. The two ploys as they are used are
contradictory. Seve's 'excentration of the human essence' by his analysis of
the 6th Thesis ends with an assertion of the primacy of social relations. His
argument must then rest on how he conceptualises 'social relations', and,
despite his earlier rejection of Althusser, his analysis of this term comes very
close to Althusser's own concept, 'the social formation'.
In terms of their capacity to grasp the basic contradiction which faced the
PCF, it is Althusser who is the more astute. Seve's work has the defensive
thoroughness of an ideologue who finds that his party's prerogative to
theoretical rectitude is threatened. Althusser, on the other hand, senses the
basic forces at play in the post-Stalin period. He himself has never
understated the political purpose of his philosophy. In the public defence of
31. In this context the belief that France like other developed countries were producing a post-industrial
society (on whose new social classes a renovated PCF could build a different base), is proved wrong by
the statistics on job classifications. The manual worker strata grew absolutely throughout the post-war
period. The 'technican' ,lass which was to be the basis for Mallet's new working class represented under
3% of the employed population by the end of the 1960's.. M. Larodi. L 'Economie et la societefrancaise
de 1945 a 1970, Editions du Sevil 1965.
32. Cf. 'Dr. Althusser, Radical Philosophy, 12 Winter 1975.
22 CRITIQUE
his doctoral submission, an event reported to English speakers by Radical
Philosophy, Althusser argues that the leadership of the PCF has always been
his intended audience.32 Moreover, he implies that his power to influence
came from his apparent capacity to marshall forces to the left of the party.
From his explicit statements, Althusser's purpose has been to act as a left-
wing brake on a party which seemed to be drifting towards a compromise with
social democracy rationalised by the ideology of humanism.
The left face of Althusser may appear chimerical when viewed in the
context of his intellectual descendants, Balibar, Poulantzas, Hindess &
Hirst. Mandel has argued that his political economy bears a resemblance to
the evolutionary socialism of Kautsky.33 Simon Clarke argues that Althusser's
use of the concept 'economic' is technicist and ultimately Ricardian.3* Both
Mandel and Clarke identify the same elements in his work which merit this
interpretation. inReading Cap/Va/Althussertreatsproduction as atechnical
process on which is superimposed certain relations of production. He regards
constant and variable capital not as a value relation, but as a distinction
arising from the technical nature of production. In his preface to Capital he
rejects the theory of value except as a general law of the distribution of labour
power among different branches of production. When his rejection of
commodity fetishism and his refusal to acknowledge the contradictory nature
of the commodity are considered, the charge that he is simply a revisionist in
the tradition of the Second International looks plausible. It is difficult then to
understand his own left facing persona.
On the other hand, Althusser shows none of the political features
consistent with Ricardian economics. He strongly rejects Utopian socialism
and an ethical rejection of capitalist distribution, which are the normal
political expressions of this economic theory. His avowed political theory is
Leninist. He talks of the seizure of power, the dictatorship of the proletariat,
and eschews theories of a gradualist transition. His political thought is in
apparent contradiction to his economic theory. This is epitomised in his
attack on Marx's Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy, where he criticises its Hegelianism and evolutionism, basically a
Ricardian criticism, and at the same time praises Lenin for ignoring these
influences and for consequently being able to fight the treachery of the
Second International. Thus Althusser seems to combine, if inconsistently, a
technicist theory of production with a Leninist theory of politics.
On closer examination, however, Althusser's Ricardianism is less
complete than it appears. He allows an element of class struggle to enter his
theory. His objections to capitalism are not only to the ethics of its
distribution but to its production also. He needs class struggle in his theory to
a limited extent. This latter point is the key to Althusser's analysis. His main
objection is to the thesis that the capitalist mode of production is necessarily
contradictory, and that the bourgeoisie are their own gravediggers. He
accepts that class struggle exists in capitalist societies, but instead of seeing
the totality by which the production of capital is also the reproduction of
33. E. Mandel, 'Althusser Corrige Marx', in Contre Althusser, Univ. Generale D'Editions Paris, 1974.
34. S. Clarke, in One Dimensional Marxism, S. Clarke, T. Lovell, K. McDonnell, K. Robins, V.
Jeleniewski. Seidler. Allison & Busby, London, 1980.
('OXTRA l)K T10XS OF Till: PCI 23
capitalist social relations, he separates out the struggle into different and
independent spheres of operation. His main purpose is to maintain the
autonomy of the political or in other words to legitimate the party as the
crucial agent for, and interpreter of, historical change. His Ricardianism is
associated with his intent of creating this privileged role for the PCF. Thus,
there is nothing in capitalism that produces its own downfall. The working
class is limited to defensive economic demands and cannot escape its
ideological limits. The class struggle continues but it has no forward
dynamic. The possibility for revolution must then be totally with the party.
What Althusser produces as a final theory is a curious amalgam. There is a
class struggle of which the wage struggle is one manifestation but this cannot
produce an objective revolutionary situation. There is a need for a
revolutionary party and a revolutionary transition, but since it is not clear

what constitutes a revolutionary situation the tasks of such a party are
difficult to describe. In fact this analysis is clearly not Leninist although it
makes this claim. Neither, however, is it social democratic.
What Althusser is describing is a party which is organised as a
revolutionary party rhetorically but not objectively. This is exactly the
position of the PCF. Unlike social democracy the PCF does not organise on
the basis of Keynsianism. Even neo-Ricardianism constitutes only one
strand in the Western Communist Parties thought. It is not the basis of the
PCF's appeal to the working class. Theoretically it needs the class struggle at
the point of production. But it needs that struggle to be under its direction and
control. What it least wants is the idea that the development of the class
struggle will sweep the PCF away. Thus Althusser's rejection of the
contradictions embodied in the commodity, of variable and fixed capital as a
value relation and of the 'Hegelian' negation of the negation is an astute move
within the belief system of such a party.
Althusser's theory encapsulated the essence of the PCF's contradictory
nature. More than Seve, Garaudy and the other proponents of the humanism
debate, he perceived that its continuing existence depended on containing the
contradiction rather than suppressing one of its poles. The rightwards drift
could be fatal. He responded to the threat by reminding the leadership that
they could be out-flanked on the left. His work in the mid 60's is predictive of
much of the PCF's development in the next decade including the break with
the socialists prior to the 1978 elections. It describes the dangers inherent in
its participation in Mitterand's government. Seve's contribution to the
debate is less profound.
Developments within the PCF since the late 1960's confirm this relative
assessment of Althusser and Seve. All during the seventies the party pursued
the inherently contradictory task of employing the class struggle as a lever for
their insertion into government, in a context where they had to define
themselves as to the left of social democracy. The PCF could maintain this as
a coherent strategy by means of their policy of co-ordinated mass action
directed towards the goal of high level agreements. Paradoxically this policy
can work only as long as the goal is being marched towards and not when it is
achieved; thus the retreat from the Union of the Left in 1978. One difficulty
of operating the policy is that the pull of locally based industrial disputes is a
strain on the integrity of the orchestrated 'days of action' approach.
24 iinrioii:
Moreover the policy of a corporate solution to industrial disputes goes hand
in hand with an appeal to lower levels of management. Even as a prospective
policy this causes dissension in the militants, who see this strata as their
immediate opposition in wages and conditions negotiations. The offer of such
a policy also draws towards the party those sections of the middle class who
see their interests identified with the expansion of the state sector.'5 While
the numbers of this category can never be large they can be enough to
influence policy and threaten the party's control of its working class base.
The collapse of the electoral strategy of 1978 revealed the contradiction
more obviously than before and brought to light two opposing solutions'6.
Ellenstein represented the right wing approach. futherEuro-communisation,
i.e.. social democratisation of the party, involving a move into non-economic
issues, such as bureaucratisation. urban decay and feminist demands.

Althusser. on the other hand, provided the distinctive solution which he had
first developed in the mid 1960's. viz: the rhetoric of Marxism-Leninism
combined with a political economy which emphasised the class struggle but
deprived it of any historical dynamic'7. By separating the political and
economic 'processes' into their own eternal spheres which barely act on each
other, Althusser removed the contradiction between the economic defence of
the working class and the political strategy of the party. Consequently more
fully than anyone else he expresses the PCF dilemma.
Seve, Althusser and the Subject in History

Critics of Althusser disagree on the importance of Althusser's rejection of
man the subject. Simon Clarke sees the issue as marginal.38 Best and
Connolly argue that the political implications of deciding on 'a process
35. For the social base of Euro-communism in the PCF see Jane Jenson & George Ross. 'Strategies in
Conflict: The Twenty Third Congress of the French Communist Party', Socialist Review 47.
September-Octber. 1979.
36. Cf. F. L. Wilson. 'The French CP's Dilemma, Problems of Communism. July/August, 1978.
37. Simon Clarke in One Dimensional Marxism argues that Althusser's theory of wages is neo-
Ricardian. This is to imply more of a system to Althusser's economics than actually exists. His
economic thought seems rather to have been worked out in an opportunistic post hoc way to suit his basic
philosophical position that the economic and political exist in a state of relative autonomy. Given this
supposition he eeds to challenge those aspects of Marxist economics which see the capitalist system as
inherently contradictory and which foresee its eventual suppressin. Since philosophically Althusser
objects to the negation of the negation, then in terms of economics he objects to the contradictory quality
of the commodity, to the capacity for the struggle over surplus value to produce crisis in the system and
eventually to the way in which surplus value is calculated. In his contribution to the conference organised
by Il Manifesto, Althusser objects to Marx's 'simple arithmetic' in the section of Capital dealing with
surplus value 'this (arithmethical presentation) of surplus value may be taken for a complete theory
in exploitation, causing us to neglect the conditions of labour and reproduction'. Crisis of Marxism in
Power and Opposition in Post-Revolutionary Societies. Ink Links 1979. Noticeably Althusser still
wants to retain the concept of exploitation, that is he still retains the idea of the class struggle at the point
of production. Again this feature of his economics fits his philosophy. He needs a society which has
oppositions but no necessary development. On the issue of his Leninist rhetoric consider his views of a
party which has been more Euro-communised. 'Beware of electoral cretinism The electoral
campaign is an episode.... Why does the PCI officially declare itself a'mass party' and not a proletarian
vanguard party". M. A. Macciochi, Letters from inside the Italian Communist Party, NLB 1973.
38. Simon Clarke, ibid.
( OXIRAD/CTIOXS 01 Til I- PCI' 25
without a subject" are vast.'9 Since Althusser assuredly intends all his
philosophy to be political it is Best and Connolly who were the more correct.
Unfortunately their analysis of his political purpose is inadequate in that they
see structural anti-humanism as "a refusal to accept the moral inhibitions to
political struggle embodied in (humanism)'. Opportunist though Stalinist
politics may be, they hardly need a theory of Althusser's calibre for their
justification. Althusser's rejection of the subject has to be understood in a
more sophisticated way.
The argument which will be advanced here is that Althusser's 'process
without a subject' position was primarily a response to the political
difficulties of the world Communist Parties in the face of the post-Stalin
revelations Althusser advanced a philosophy of history which allowed

acknowledgement of the political distortions existing in the superstructure
of the USSR, while preserving the economic categorisation of the country as
socialist. Theoretically this was a major political advance over the 'cult of the
personality' explanations preferred by the PCF leadership. Politically it
allowed a degree of criticism of the USSR and permitted the PCF a degree of
independence from the CPSU, a fact noticed by the French electorate. What
began as an attempt to cope with the history of Stalinism had to generalise
into a philosophy of history. This philosophy could then be applied to
capitalist countries and was used by Althuser himself to justify PCF
separation of trade union and political action in France.
The changing relationship of the national Communist Parties and the
CPSU must be grasped as the unfolding of a contradictory process.
Originally the Communist Parties were formed as the agents of Stalin's
foreign policy; this policy being to bring political pressure to bear on the
national governments in the interests of the USSR. The formation of united
fronts and the development of parliamentary representation was a natural, if
unpredicted, outcome of this purpose. In this sense the adventurist phase
after the PCF's exclusion from government in 1947 represents a tactic which
found no long term favour. This very process of increasing parliamentarism
is the heart of the contradiction. The parliamentary strategy has a logic of its
own which threatens the control of its initiators. Although the official
Communist Parties were the creation of the CPSU, the need for a mass base,
electoral alliances and so on, developed these creatures to the point where the
relationship with the CPSU constituted a bar to their own development.
In the PCF's case the close relationship with the CPSU has had
advantages. The 'fatherland of socialism' vision was one which helped
sustain the militant cadres in the early 1950's.40 It was suitable in a period of
defence such as the Cold War, but became an electoral albatross once the
policy of alliance politics was begun. Too close a link with the USSR became
an embarrassment, and some way of distancing the PCF which did not
challenge the USSR profoundly, was a political priority. A straightforward
critical stance on the Soviet Union would have been impossible. The essence
of the party lay in its ideological claim to the legacy of Marxism. The
39. M. H. Best & W.E. Connolly, Politics and Subjects: 'The Limits of Structural Marxism', Socialist
Review 48. November-December, 1979.
40. G. Almond, ibid.
26 CRlTIOUi:
leadership still had close links with the CPSU and owed their position to
Soviet influence. The organisation of the party, including the privileged
position of the bureaucrats, depended on those links. Basically, a critical
stance would have to have been from a left or right wing perspective. Since
the PCF could hardly have picked up the standard of the Left Opposition, the
critical stance needed to be a right wing ethical humanist version. For
reasons enumerated earlier this carried danger.
Althusser offered a compromise: a critical distance from the Soviet Union
and a guarantee that, whatever the superstructural distortions, the Soviet
Union, the Third International and the official Communist Parties of the
world represented the essential current of the Marxist tradjtipn. In three
essays in the early sixties he mapped out his philosophical solution.41 The
key concept was the simple Stalinist orthodoxy that economically the Soviet
Union is socialist but that politically (because of the particular difficulties of
the USSR, because of the ideological lag, because of what he calls
'survivals') it may display aspects apparently incompatible with socialism:
.... a revolution in the structure does nolipsofacto modify the existing superstructure and
particularly the ideologies at one blow .... for they have sufficient of their own consistency
to survive beyond their immediate life context, even to recreate, to 'secrete', substitute
conditions of existence temporarily.42
Althusser attempted to give this Stalinist dictum a degree of consistency.

The first step was to drive a wedge between the forces and the relations of
production. Instead of Marx's own formulation which saw them as the
contradictory expressions of the same unfolding essence they become, for
Althusser, two separate entities. Having separated them Althusser then
poses the false question of how they are linked. Is it one of causal efficacy
from the economic to the political? Phrased like this the question can rightly
be labelled, as Althusser does, economistic, even technologistic. His own
solution, 'determination in the last instance', is a solution to a fake problem.
Having separated the forces and relations of production into two separate
realms, Althusser reinforces the division by introducing an epistemological
rationale. This takes him on a path contrary to Marxism, and, as some critics
have argued, towards idealism. Marxist epistemology assumes the existence
of entities knowable by the human mind. These entities have a real essence.
The essence of things is contradictory and this unity in contradiction
produces change. By introducing his Generalities I to HI Althusser
challenges the Marxist position that the mind directly confronts obj ects in the
world. His reasons for this move are astute. His real target (what he refers to
as the Hegelian idea) is the argument that objects have an essence.... 'an
original unity that constitutes the fragmented unity of the two opposites in
which it is alienated, changing even as it stays the same'.43
41. L. Althusser, 'Contradiction and Over-determination' La Pensee, December, 1962; 'On the
Materialist Dialectic', La Pensee, August, 1963; 'Marxism and Humanism', Cahiers de 1' ISEA, June
1964. All three essays appear in Althusser's collection, For Marx, Penguin, 1969. All page references
are to this publication.
42. For Marx, p. 116.
43. For Marx, p. 197.
He rejects the idea of a simple unity 'which will produce the whole
complexity of the process later in its auto-development'. He rejects all the
Hegelian concepts: 'essence, identity, unity, negation, fission, suppression,
totality, simplicity, etc \ 4 4
Althusser here tries to dismiss these key features of a materialist
epistemology as Hegelain. His reasons for the rejection are made explicit. If
entities are unities in contradiction, and if the complexities of their
appearance are just the unfolding of the basic contradiction, then the kind of
separation Althusser wants to create between the forces and relations of
production, between economics and politics, is impossible. What Althusser
needs is an epistemology and an ontology which allows the relative
autonomy of each of these spheres of operation.

'There is no longer any original essence, only an ever-pregiveness,
however far knowledge delves into its past'.45
For unity in contradiction Althusser substitutes a structured complexity
with the separate parts tied together in a loose coalition. The essential unity
of opposites isfragmentedinto a 'complexly-structurally-unevenly-determined'46
process. While this formulation allows him the politically suitable argument
that limited criticism of the Stalinist period is possible, it produces further
conclusions which by the logic of his argument he must follow through.
In Marx, the worker's surrender of his labourpower reproduces notjust the
instruments of production but the social relations of production. The two are
aspects of the same process. Breaking their organic link leaves Althusser
with the problem of explaining the reproduction of social relations. Thus a
new device is introduced, viz: the 'Ideological State Apparatus'. To say that
organs of propaganda can reproduce social relations is to produce a passive
view of man's cognitive capacities. If the suppositions about man's nature
inherent in this theory were explicated, the resulting picture of man's needs
and capacities would be obviously untrue. Althusser avoids this conclusion
by introducing structural anti-humanism.
The capital-labour conflict of capitalist societies rests on an assertion
about the nature of man's needs, of his psychology, of his human capacities.
Without such a view why would men resist forced labour? Why would wage-
labour be a surrender of their birthright? Without a psychology of man, how
could it be accounted for that men form collective organisations, identify with
a universal goal, resist their oppression as a class? If he could be socialised by
the ISA's into doing and believing anything, then therewould be no conflict,
no dynamic for change. In Marx's Capital the collision between human
needs and the capacity of the system to fulfil them is focussed on the
contradictory nature of the commodity. The fact that the commodity has use
value as well as exchange value grounds it in the world of human needs.
Althusser, however, has rejected just this contradiction and therefore cannot
cope theoretically with man's needs.
44. Loc. cit.

45. For Marx, p. 199.
46. For Marx, p. 209.
28 CRITIQUE
Althusser had other reasons for deploring the emphasis on man which had
appeared in Marxist theory. Humanistic Marxism was related to the social-
democratisation of the PCF, and was to be resisted on those grounds alone.
However, he would have been led to his position anyway by the logic of his
theory, and this provokes a further observation. Any systematisation of the
short-run opportunism which constitutes Stalinist thought, must produce the
kind of separation which Althusser constructed, and must conclude with his
structural anti-humanism. Seve avoids this by stopping his thought with the
formulation that 'the essence of man is the ensemble of social relations', and
concluding that since there is an essence of man postulated here by Marx,
then Marxists are also humanists, and the alliance strategy is viable. Seve
here settles for the more traditional Stalinist tactic of meeting a real problem
with an empty verbal formula.
Conclusion
There can be no question that psychology is important to Marxist theory.
Marx's account of history is logically premised on assumptions about man's
needs and capacities. With the development of Marcusian theory, with the
birth of humanistic Marxism in Eastern Europe, and with the publication of
Seve's work, the goal of a Marxist psychology has continually receded.
There is in the classic works of revolutionary theory a view of real men and
their needs which despite its naivety is worlds removed from the vaporous
clouds of neologisms into which human action has been transformed by neo-
Marxist writers. This dissolving of man's nature has been done in the name of
psychology as by the Frankfurt school, or against psychology as by
Althusserians. Either way they provide an account of human behaviour and
motives which is so intuitively implausible as to be unacceptable to all but
adolescents or those who have led a very sheltered life.
This lack of intuitive plausibility in their accounts of human behaviour
represents more than an accidental phenomenon. The contrast between the
classical tradition of Marxism prior to the defeat of the revolution in the
USSR, and the partial views which have emerged since then is striking. The
feeling that the former deals with human motives while the latter deals with
conceptual categories remote from reality is an intuitive response, but it
points to a more rationally based conclusion.
The emergent Stalinist theory of the late 1920's reflected the attempts of
the new elite to consolidate their power. Since their goal had to be achieved
against the natural movements of the economy, the theory which emerged
was voluntaristic. Consequently, voluntarism of one kind or another has
always characterised Stalinist theory. Sometimes the voluntarism takes the
form of including the secret police as a factor of production, i.e., relying on
force to extract the surplus. At other times it takes the form of relying on
propaganda, ideology and socialisation as instruments of control. The post
1920's Marxist theories which developed in the West, even when they were
explicitly anti-Stalinist, were often affected by this voluntaristic strand of
thought. The basis of Marxism in political economy was eroded and instead
voluntaristic aspects such as 'socialisation', psychology and even ethics
came to play a dominant role.
29
The Frankfurt school, the New Left, the dissident humanistic Marxism, all
share the feature of relegating political economy to a secondary position in
theory. However since the essence of human societies lies in their economy,
any theory which avoids confronting this fact must develop an air of
unreality. Thus the sense of ethical wishful thinking which they emit
indicates a basic flaw in their construction.
Specifically, Seve and Althusser represent a response to the failure of
Stalinist political economy in France which reached its lowest point with
Thorez's immiseration thesis. By its nature Stalinist theory cannot know the
real world of the economy. Yet it has to provide a rationale for a political
response. Psychologically based theories fill this role superbly. The
differences between Seve and Althusser are less important than their
similarities. Althusser may seem to reject psychology but re-introduces it via
the Ideological State Apparatus. Seve is firmer on the appearance of
marching down the social democratic road. Althusser sees dangers in this
strategy. Neither wants, what the PCF by its nature could not accomplish, a
real social democratic transformation of the party.
There'is one final point to be made about psychology. Its role in Marxist
theory has been to compensate for the failure of neo-Stalinist political
economy. The assumption made is that it adds to, explains gaps in,
humanises, the over-simplified theoretical concepts of economics. In seeking
a psychology to fulfil this function people have latched onto the Freudian
tradition. The argument must be stated briefly here that such a function does
not do justice to psychology. Despite its partial nature as a science, it
represents more than this. The identification of psychology as isomorphic
with Freudianism indicates complete ignorance of the subject. A closer study
of its content might eventually produce an organic link with Marxist political
economy.

Althusser Lucien Sève

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The hidden agenda was the Euro-communisation of the French Communist

division are drawn.

2. E. Mandel. Marxist Economic Theory. Merlin Press. 1962.

suggestion that some forms of activity produce new cognitive structures

contradiction of capitalist societies was consciously rejected by the Frankfurt

The reasons behind Althusser's reluctance have to be grasped within the

revolutionary the bureaucrats in the apparatus settle down to enjoying the

20. c.f. G. Galli ibid.

SFIO. Paradoxically, while opposed to real revolutionary movements they

27. Cf. Tiersky ibid.

mainly that structural anti-humanism is not a help in forming political

He defends this objection by two sets of tactics. First by extensive

revolutionary party and a revolutionary transition, but since it is not clear

issues, such as bureaucratisation. urban decay and feminist demands.

Seve, Althusser and the Subject in History

revelations Althusser advanced a philosophy of history which allowed

Althusser attempted to give this Stalinist dictum a degree of consistency.

autonomy of each of these spheres of operation.

44. Loc. cit.

with an empty verbal formula.

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