Ich bin also fertig (und damit Magister der Philosophie) geworden, war ein halbes Jahr auf Arbeitssuche, habe schlußendlich einen Job als Leiharbeiter gefunden — und zwar genau dort und genau das, wo und als was ich vor 12 Jahren Ferialpraktikant war —, habe (ebendort) Vollzeit angefangen, bin im Begriff, mit fast 29 Jahren mit finanzieller Unterstützung meiner Eltern endlich von zu Hause auszuziehen und gehe (lange und verworrene Geschichte, wie es dazu gekommen ist) zwei Mal die Woche zur Psychoanalyse — ob und wie sinnvoll es ist, keine Ahnung.

Mehr war nicht.

Mehr wird nicht.

Zumindest was den Job angeht. Akademische Karriere habe ich schon vor längerer Zeit für mich ausgeschlossen. — Was macht man denn sinnvollerweise (geistes-, kultur und/oder gesellschaftswissenschaftlich) auf einer Universität? Es hat auch nicht viel gebraucht, um mir klar werden zu lassen, dass ich nicht den ganzen Tag in einem Büro und/oder vor einem Computer sitzen will, und dass ich auf gar keinen Fall jemals der Chef von irgendwem oder irgendetwas sein möchte.

Jetzt bin ich also Lagerarbeiter, gehöre damit zu den 26 Prozent der hier geborenen männlichen Arbeitnehmer, die für ihren Job nach offizieller Definition „überqualifiziert” sind [Jeder dritte Einwanderer im Job überqualifiziert], verdiene das (per 1.1. um heiße 50 Euro erhöht werdende) kollektivvertragliche Minimum, bin so irgendwie über der Armutsgrenze, und so wird es in der einen oder anderen Form hoffentlich auch bleiben.

Oh ja, ich bin ein Gewinner!

Teilweise war es nicht so gut

Und ich dürfte bei der ganzen Sache wohl auch Schaden genommen haben

Aber die Kommission hatte ein Einsehen

Und es sollen schon schlimmere Dinge passiert sein

Wie dem auch sei: Wie es weiter geht? Wer weiß?

Vorerst ist aber jedenfalls erst einmal Sendepause

Sehr ernst

Ich meine richtig ernst

Aber ich bin bereit

Gestern war in der Jungen Welt ein Artikel über (genauer: gegen) die ?Neue Marx-Lektüre?. Kenn ich nicht, weiß ich nicht, war mir bisher immer egal, und wenn Herr Seppmann nicht mit dem Bajonett auf Strohpuppen losgeht ? seine Charakterisierung dieser Sache also zutreffend ist ?, hat das auch seine Richtigkeit und wird auch so bleiben. Jedenfalls: über der ?Neuen Marx-Lektüre? soll der titelgebende ?lange Schatten des Objektivismus? schweben, und das ist eine verdiente Breitseite gegen Althusser:

Noch ein Jahrzehnt älter sind die Vorgaben eines »wissenschaftlichen« Marx-Verständnisses durch Louis Althusser. Grundelemente eines traditionellen Dogmatismus und Objektivismus neu aufpolierend, hatte der Philosoph der französischen KP mit seinem Aufruf »Das Kapital lesen« in den 60er Jahren Furore gemacht. Der Hauptgedanke seines gleichnamigen Buches bestand in der Behauptung, daß das Marxsche »Kapital« als alleinige Basis eines »wissenschaftlichen« Marxismus zu gelten habe und fast alle anderen theoretischen Erörterungen einer »ideologischen« und deshalb zu verwerfenden Entwicklungsphase von Marx angehörten. Althusser konstatiert einen »Bruch« im Marxschen Denken ? den er jedoch kaum begründet.

Einem Vergleich mit den Konstitutionsprinzipien des Marxschen Denkens hält Althussers Sichtweise auf keiner Ebene stand. Schon in seinen sozialtheoretischen Basisbestimmungen positioniert er sich strikt gegensätzlich zum dialektischen Gesellschaftskonzept von Marx, dessen Kern im Begreifen der wechselseitigen Bezüglichkeit von Subjekt (den handelnden Menschen) und Objekt (dem sozialen Strukturgefüge) besteht. Während Althusser gesellschaftliches Geschehen als Ausdruck einer letztlich geheimnisvollen Eigendynamik von »Strukturen« begreift, die er zur »Kraft ohne Subjekt, (?) von Anfang an (als ? W. S.) Kraft von niemandem« stilisiert, charakterisiert Marx Geschichte ? wie es in einem Brief von Marx an Pawel W. Annenkow heißt ? als das »Produkt des wechselseitigen Handelns der Menschen« (MEW 27, S.452)! Während Marx den Aspekt der historischen Selbsttätigkeit der Menschen unterstreicht, werden durch Althussers objektivistische Sichtweise die Handlungssubjekte aus dem theoretischen Vorstellungshorizont entfernt: Die Individuen bleiben nach seinem Verständnis »Gefangene von Texten und Rollen, deren Autoren sie nicht sein können«. Expliziert wird damit nicht Marxsches Denken, sondern die Auffassung des niederländischen Rationalisten des 17. Jahrhunderts, Baruch de Spinoza, der in seiner »Ethik« in Auslegung seines 35. Lehrsatzes schreibt, daß die Menschen die Ursachen, »von welchen sie bestimmt werden, nicht kennen« ? und unter keinen Bedingungen ein Bewußtsein darüber erlangen können.

Auf der Grundlage eines solch rigiden Objektivismus wird eine logizistische Sichtweise als Leitfaden der »Kapital«-Interpretation propagiert, die sich nur noch für das formale Beziehungsgeflecht der Kategorien interessiert: Kapitalismusanalyse wird als geschlossenes System ohne jeden Weltbezug zelebriert, als ein »sich selbst erzeugendes Begriffsuniversum, das den materiellen und gesellschaftlichen Erscheinungen seine eigene Identität aufzwingt, statt mit ihnen in einen kontinuierlichen Dialog einzutreten. (?) Die Kategorie hat das Primat über ihre materielle Entsprechung erlangt; die begriffliche Struktur überragt und beherrscht das gesellschaftliche Sein« (E. P. Thompson).

[Werner Seppmann, Der lange Schatten des Objektivismus, Junge Welt, 21. September 2010]

Das letzte Zitat ist aus einem längeren Abschnitt aus Thompsons Polemik gegen Althusser, ?The Poverty of Theory or An Orrery of Errors?, den ich schon länger bringen wollte. Doch zuerst die Kurzfassung von Thompsons Urteil über die Methode dieses ?wissenschaftlichen Marxismus?, Althussers ?theoretische Praxis?:

He has offered to us less an epistemology which takes into account the actual formative motions of consciousness than a description of certain procedures of academic life. He has abandoned the lamp-lit study and broken off the dialogue with an exhausted table: he is now within the emplacements of the École Normale Supérieure. The data have arrived, obediently processed by graduates and research assistants at a rather low level of conceptual development (G I), they have been interrogated and sorted into categories by a rigorous seminar of aspirant professors (G II), and the G III is about to ascend the rostrum and propound the conclusions of concrete knowledge. ? [?The Poverty of Theory?, Seite 8]

Und jetzt die Langfassung mit den wahrscheinlich (ich bin da noch nicht allzu kundig) notwendigen Seitenhieben gegen Spinoza:

Althusser?s ?epistemology? is founded upon an account of theoretical procedures which is at every point derivative not only from academic intellectual disciplines but from one (and at the most three) highly-specialised disciplines.⁹ The discipline is, of course, his own: philosophy: but of a particular Cartesian tradition of logical exegesis, marked at its origin by the pressures of Catholic theology, modified by the monism of Spinoza (whose influence saturates Althusser?s work ¹⁰), and marked at its conclusion by a particular Parisian dialogue between phenomenology, existentialism and Marxism. Thus the procedures from which an ?epistemology? is derived are not those of ?philosophy? in general, but of one particular moment of its presence. There is no reason why philosophers should necessarily identify their own procedures with those of every other kind of knowledge-production: and many have been at pains to make distinctions. It is an elementary confusion, a function of academic imperialism, and it is a tendency rather easy to correct. And it has been, very often, so corrected.

But not by Althusser. On the contrary, he makes a virtue of his own theoretical imperialism. The peculiarity of certain branches of philosophy and of mathematics is that these are, to an unusual degree, self-enclosed and self-replicating: logic and quantity examine their own materials, their own procedures. This Althusser offers as a paradigm of the very procedures of Theory: G II (theoretical practice) works upon G I to produce G III. The potential ?truth? of the materials in G I, despite all ideological impurities, is guaranteed by a hidden Spinozan monism (idea vera debet cum suo ideato convenire): a true idea must agree with its original in nature, or, in Althusserian terms, G I would not present itself if it did not correspond to the ?real?. It is the business of the scientific procedures of G II to purify G I of ideological admixture, and to produce knowledge (G III), which, in its own theoretical consistency, contains its own guarantees (veritas norma sui et falsi?truth is the criterion both of itself and of falsehood). In a brief aside Althusser allows that G II may, in certain disciplines, follow somewhat different procedures: the discourse of the proof may even be conducted in the form of experiment. This is his only concession: Generality II (he admits) ?deserves a much more serious examination than I can embark upon here.?¹¹ And so it does. For such an examination, if scrupulously conducted, would have exposed to view Althusser?s continous, wilful and theoretically-crucial confusion between ?empiricism? (that is, philosophical positivism and all its kin) and the empirical mode of intellectual practice.

This question lies close to the question of ?historicism? (a matter in which I have my own declared interest), and so I cannot despatch it so quickly. Generalities I include those mental events which are generally called ?facts? or ?evidence.? ?Contrary to the ideological illusions? of empiricism or sensualism? (Althusser tells us) these ?facts? are not singular or concrete: they are already ?concepts? of an ideological nature.? (F.M. 183?4) The work of any science¹² consists in ?Elaborating its own scientific facts through a critique of the ideological ?facts? elaborated by an earlier ideological theoretical practice?:

To elaborate its own specific ?facts? is simultaneously to elaborate its own ?theory?, since a scientific fact?and not the self-styled pure phenomenon?can only be identified in the field of a theoretical practice. (F.M. 184)

This work of ?elaborating its own facts? out of the raw material of pre-existent ideological concepts is done by Generality II, which is the working body of concepts and procedures of the discipline in question. That there are ?difficulties? in the mode of operation of G II is acknowledged, but these difficulties are left unexamined (?we must rest content with these schematic gestures and not enter into the dialectic of this theoretical labour?. (F.M. 185))

This is wise, since the difficulties are substantial. One of them is this: how does knowledge ever change or advance? If the raw material, or the evidence (G I), which is presented to a science (G II) is already fixed within a given ideological field?and if G I is the only route (however shadowy) by which the world of material and social reality can effect an entry (a shame-faced, ideological entry) into the laboratories of Theory, then it is not possible to understand by what means G II can effect any relevant or realistic critique of the ideological impurities presented to it. In short, Althusser?s schema either show us how ideological illusions can reproduce themselves endlessly (or may evolve in aberrant or fortuitous ways); or it proposes (with Spinoza) that theoretical procedures in themselves can refine ideological impurities out of their given materials by no other means than the scientific discourse of the proof; or, finally, it proposes some ever-pre-given immanent Marxist Idea outside the material and social world (of which Idea this world is an ?effect?). Althusser argues by turns the second and the third proposition, although his work is in fact a demonstration of the first.

But we may leave this difficulty aside, since it would be unkind to interrogate too strictly a Generality which has only been offered to us with ?schematic gestures.? It is possible that Althusser is describing procedures appropriate to certain kinds of exercise in logic: we examine (let us say) a passage of text from Rousseau (G I): the uses of the words and the consistency of the logic is scrutinised according to rigorous philosophical or critical procedures (G II): and we arrive at a ?knowledge? (G III), which may be a useful knowledge (and, within the terms of its own discipline, ?true?), but which is critical rather than substantive. To confuse these procedures (appropriate within their own limits) with all procedures of knowledge production is the kind of elementary error which (one would suppose) could be committed only by students early in their careers, habituated to attending seminars in textual criticism of this kind, and apprentices rather than pracitioners of their discipline. They have not yet arrived at those other (and equally difficult) procedures of research, experiment, and of the intellectual appropriation of the real world, without which the secondary (but important) critical procedures would have neither meaning nor existence.

In by far the greatest area of knowledge production a very different kind of dialogue is going on. It is untrue that the evidence or ?facts? under investigation always arrive (as G I) already in an ideological form. In the experimental sciences there are extremely elaborate procedures, appropriate to each discipline, intended to ensure that they do not. (This is not, of course, to argue that scienctific facts ?disclose? their own ?meanings? independently of conceptual organisation.) It is central to every other applied discipline (in the ?social sciences? and ?humanities?) that similar procedures are elaborated, although these are necessarily less exact and more subject to ideological determinations. The difference between a mature intellectual discipline and a merely-ideological formation (theology, astrology, some parts of bourgeois sociology and of orthodox Stalinist Marxism?and perhaps Althusserian structuralism) lies exactly in these procedures and controls; for, if the object of knowledge consisted only in ideological ?facts? elaborated by that discipline?s own procedures, then there would never be any way of validating or of falsifying any proposition: there could be no scientific or disciplinary court of appeal.

The absurdity of Althusser consists in the idealist mode of his theoretical constructions. His thought is the child of economic determinism ravished by theoreticist idealism. It posits (but does not attempt to ?prove? or ?guarantee?) the existence of material reality: we will accept this point. It posits also the existence of a material (?external?) world of social reality, whose determinate organisation is always in the last instance ?economic?: the proof for this lies not in Althusser?s work?nor would it be reasonable to ask for such proof in the work of a philosopher?but in the mature work of Marx. This work arrives ready-made at the commencement of Althusser?s enquiry, as a concrete knowledge, albeit a knowledge not always aware of its own theoretical practice. It is Althusser?s business to enhance its own self-knowledge, as well as to repel various hideous ideological impurities which have grown up within the silences of its interstices. Thus a given knowledge (Marx?s work) informs Althusser?s procedures at each of the three levels of his hierarchy: Marx?s work arrives as ?raw material??however elaborate?at G I; it is interrogated and processed (G II) according to principles of ?science? derived from its mature aperçus, unstated assumptions, implicit methodologies, etc.; and the outcome is to confirm and reinforce the concrete knowledge (G III) which approved portions of Marx?s work already announce.

It scarcely seems necessary to insist that this procedure is wholly self-confirming. It moves within the circle not only of its own problematic but of its own self-perpetuating and self-elaborating procedures. This is (in the eyes of Althusser and his followers) exactly the virtue of this theoretical practice. It is a sealed system within which concepts endlessly circulate, recognise and interrogate each other, and the intensity of its repetitious introversial life is mistaken for a ?science.? This ?science? is then projected back upon Marx?s work: it is proposed that his own procedures were of the same order: and that after the miracle of the ?epistemological break? (an immaculate conception which required no gross empirical impregnation) all followed in terms of the elaboration of thought and its structural organisation.

May I sum up all this in one sentence? This sentence describes a circle: a philosophic reading of Capital is only possible as the application of that which is the very object of our investigation, Marxist philosophy. This circle is only epistemologically possible because of the existence of Marx?s philosophy in the works of Marxism. (R.C. 34)

To facilitate the ?discourse of the proof? we return to some passages of Marx, but now as raw material (G I): the hand is held over all Marx?s ?immature? work, nearly all of the work of Engels, those portions of Marx?s mature work which exemplify the practice of historical materialism, the correspondence of Marx and Engels (which take us directly into their laboratory and show us their procedures), and the greater part of Capital itself (?illustrations?); but between the fingers of the hand one is allowed to peep at de-contexted phrases of Marx, at ?silences?, and at sub-articulate mediations, which are chastised and disciplined until they confirm the self-sufficiency of theoretical practice. Of course. If the questions are proposed in this way, and if the material is called out?already drilled in its responses, and permitted to answer these questions and no others?then we can expect it to offer to the interrogator a dutiful allegiance.

This mode of thought is exactly what has commonly been designated, in the Marxist tradition, as idealism. Such idealism consists, not in the positing or denial of the primacy of an ulterior material world, but in a self-generating conceptual universe which imposes its own ideality upon the phenomena of material and social existence, rather than engaging in continual dialogue with these. If there is a ?Marxism? of the contemporary world which Marx or Engels would have recognized instantly as an idealism, Althusserian structuralism is this.¹³ The category has attained to a primacy over its material referent; the conceptual structure hangs above and dominates social being.

[ ?The Poverty of Theory or An Orrery of Errors?, Seite 9?13, in: E. P. Thompson, »The Poverty of Theory & Other Essays«, Monthly Review Press 1978,2008]

???

9. The other two are mathematics?acclaimed, but not drawn upon?and psychoanalysis, from which certain concepts are confiscated in a most arbitrary way.
10. This influcence, scarcely acknowledged in F.M. (although see p. 78, note 40), is more pronounced in R.C. (p. 102: ?Spinoza?s philosophy introduced probably the greatest philosophical revolution of all time?), and fully declared in Essays, pp. 104, 132?141, 187, 190. See the helpful comments of Perry Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism (New Left Books, 1976) pp. 64?65, 85.
11. See the opaque footnote in F.M. pp. 184?185.
12. Althusser follows Bachelard?s notion of a science which is constituted by an ?epistemological break? with its ?ideological? prehistory. Both F.M. (see pp. 167?8) and R.C. see post-1846 Marxism as constituting a Science (?Theory?) in this way. In his subsequent self-criticism, Althusser takes away this notion with his left hand and returns it (by way of the Party) with his right: Essays, pp. 107?125.
13. For an excellent demonstration of the incompatibility of Althusser?s method with that of Marx, see Derek Sayer, ?Science as Critique: Marx versus Althusser?, in J. Mepham and D. Rubin (eds.), Essays in Marxist Philosophy (Harvester, 1978). I have found this essay helpful throughout, and also the lucid and thorough study by Simon Clarke, ?Althusserian Marxism?, an important study as yet unpublished (copies obtainable from the author, Dept. of Sociology, University of Warwick).