5

Structural Causal ity,Overdetermination,and Antagonism

Etienne Balibar

Some timc ago, a very rich and interest ing vo lume was dedi ca ted by someItalian sc ho lars and ac tivists to the " Ma rx ism of Lou is Althusscr" (Giacomett iet al. IYll6). At a time when the very name of Althusser see med to hecomplete ly forgotten (more like ly it was care fully rep ressed ), thi s was the firstattempt to show that some of the orig inal question s di scu ssed by Althusser inthe tie ld o f Ma rxist theo ry had not reall y been addressed . I bel ie ve thatAlthu sscrs concepts are st ill provocative for con temporary phil osoph y. 1 alsobelieve that many of those who today c laim that Mar xism is outdated can doso only because they preten d to ignor e the ques tions raised by Althusser ­questions that, in their ow n way, took Mar xism beyon d the trad ition al road s of"orthodox y" and " rev isionism:' It is only too easy for many o f ou r co ntempo ­rarie s to redu ce the history of Marxism to these ra ther ex hausted fig ures.

I am not a rep resentative of " the Althusse rian Sc hool"-for the simplereason that that school never existed as such. Therefore , I have no intention todiscr im inate among var ious, often co ntrad ictory readin gs of Althu sser 's work .What I wa nt to do is to jo in the d iscussion by try ing 10 revisi t some notionsthat seem to me to encapsulate the more central and therefore also moreproblem at ic aspects of his legacy.

As I said, there was nothing like an Althusser ian "school," with :1 more orless unified doct rine. a research program. or an institutiona l fra me (like the

This paper is a revised and enlarged version of my contribut ion to the co llec tive volume Ifmarxism» di LOI/;,I' ,II ,IIII.I·.I ('r (1 990 ). w ith paper s hy Maria Giacom elli. Grahame Lock . Fili ppoPoglia ni. C() .' t ~II 110 Pn.'vc' , Mar ia Tu n.h cuo.

109

110 Totality, Causality, and Explanat ion Bal ibar: Struc tural Causa lity II I

Fra nk furt Sc hoo l or. in other d isc iplines , the Annales Sch oo l and to so meextent a lso the "Ana lytica l Marx ism " school today) . Wh at existed was, rath er,a series of pe rso na l collaboratio ns, each lasting a longer or shor ter period o ftime according to the ind ividu als involved, and this makes it difficult for thosewho were invo lved to hav e an objective view of Althusscrs contribution.There is in Alt husscrs epistemo logy an element- of cle ar Freudian or igin ­that can serve here as a warning. Th e " letter" of Althusser's te xts is ce rta inlyvery differe nt from the se lf- interp retations (including his self-c riticis ms) thatthe autho r him self proposed . It is rea sonable to expect that ot her read ers, whoarc serious and accurate but were not part of (if not untouched by) theintc tlectual ad ven ture of the au tho r, will be in a bette r position to c larify "whatAl rhusse r reall y thou ght" and to discu ss how his work can possibly betrans formed and ca rried on further today. What Althusscr " thought" is, ofcourse, not what he "wanted to think." It is what he act ua lly wrot e , with all theco ntradic tions and apo rias of the written text, which we may call its "uncon ­sc ious": nei ther a subje ctive key to be unr ave led nor a mystical sec ret behindthe door but an objective meaning to be pro duced by mea ns of a sy mptomaticreadin g. However, eve n if there are these ob stacles, there is no interdiction topreven t me from proposin g some tracks for the discu ssion .

Theoretical Pract ice in the Conjuncture

The spec ific point on which I want to resume the o ld deb ates is structuralcaus alitv. But given Althu sser 's "self-critical" remark s on structuralism , aprel imina ry reflection is inescapable. It see ms to me that when Althusser in hislirs! matur e writings tried to give a definition of this con ceptu al co nj unction,placing it at the very heart of his readi ng of Marx, he was not moved by "pure"phi losoph ical reasons. Wh at pushed him in that direct ion was an ac ute aware­ness of the "current" cri sis of Marxism , which found few eq uivale nts in hislifet ime . Admitted ly, the ex pression "cris is of Marxi sm " is oft en used in toofacile a way, which deprives it of any rea l critica l effe ct. But this should notpreven t us from unde rstanding it in a more serious way. Th e cris is o f Marxismis nothing new; in its modern form it has ex isted at least s ince the 1930s.which means that even a theoretician like Gramsci can be und erstood ;;-nlyagainst its back ground . We shou ld also understand that the cris is of Marxism:, inseparably polit ical and theore tical. But the theoret ica l crisis is roo ted inMarx' s ow n original problema tic : in his basic concepts and in the opposi tetrad ition s that deri ve from the contradic tions in his thcory.

I am certa inly not claiming that Althu sser is more profound than or goe sbeyond Gramsc i in his atte mpted resolut ion o f the crisis of Marx ism . Bu t Ith ink that, co mpa red with G ramsci-and no doubt owi ng to his co ming a

generation later and in a different cultural env iron ment -Althusser gai ned asuperior de gree of lucidity on the ph ilosophical side of the que stion .,Wh at tie Junder stood' is ' that, to co me out of the cris is with out destroying Mar xism , it isin some sense necessary to cross the boundaries of Marxi sm itsel f. It isnecessary to extri ca te onese lf not on ly from the Marxi st ort hodoxy, not on lyfrom the co nflic ts between right and left cu rrents o f Marxism . but above allfrom the probl em atic of Mar x as he himsel f understood it, from Marx'sphilosophical self-consciousness . In the beginning . this idea of Althu sser;stook the well -known '(iind j1{itly deb ated ) thesis o f a line of demarcationbetween the phil osophical co nscious ness of the "young Mar x" and the politi ­ca l and scien tific co nsciousness of the "m atu re Marx." The polemi cs co ncen­trated mainly around thi s formulation , thc fam ous "break" in Mar x' s inte llec ­tua l evo lution. But as Costanzo Prcve has co rrec tly observed, I ' Althusserhimsel f clearly indicated that the " line" of dem arcation between the Marx whois not yet Mar x and the Mar x who is already Marx cannot be found cm piri-

" ca lly, as a simple date. It existed . rath er . as an inne r. theoretical ten sion. -::I Marx's conceptual tho ugh!:the'rc"fore, nev~r found a stable form·u laiion .-i·r~~-:

ever, stabil itiis a requ irement ofany "systematic" con~'iruc't i ~n in sc ie~ce andphilo sophy: that is wh y Marx needed to invent a figure of stability, that is, heneeded to imagine it, amid the conditions of his time. It was to th is imagi narystable figure , or problematic , that the nam e " histori ca l Inaterialism" wa sfinally given:- " _

~~s;;;;.;~ initia l idea, then . was that it had becom e necessary to provideMarx' s thought wi th a coherence it could not reac h origina lly. A completerecas ting o f the basic conce pts was necessary, which meant maki'n-g their

, philosophica l prerequi sites e xplic it and at the same tim e correcting them oncruclal 'polnts. Th is would lead Alt hu sser to oppose what Marx himself hadWiltteii-andthought. in order to develop the material ist tend ency that is theoriginal part of his work . No do ubt this strategy put Althusser on a dange rou spath. But perhaps on ly dange rou s pat hs ca n allow us to ove rco me the cris is ofMarxism without destroyin g it. Th e idea was Althusscr 's way of anticipa tingthe coming effec ts of the crisis o f Marxism wit hout engag ing a simpleliquidation of Mar x 's theoretical and political legacy. Rut this is also clearlyan idea di fficult to formulate in a rigorou s and dem on stra tive mode. Weshould not ex clude the possibilit y that Althu sser himsel f did not achie ve a fullconscio usness o f it and a clear und erstanding of what it imp lied .

To th is we mu st add that , qu ite obvious ly, the pol itical conjuncture- "over­determined " the si tuation. It is not ce rta in that the ef fect was posit ive in every

l . Costanzo Prcvc , " La ricostruzionc dcl marxismo fra lilosofia e scicnza : Un pcrcorso d ireflessionc dalla rivoluzionc epistcmologica di Louis Althusscr alia nfondazionc filosofica diGyorgy Lukacs ," in Gia comelli ct aL. ( 19X6. X7- 14} \.

2. Cr. Mar ia Tu rchetto, "Per la critica di uri'autocr itica: riflessioni suI signi fica te di ' tilosotia. ''sc ienza.' ' ideologia ' ncll' c laboruzione teor ica di Louis Althusscr,' in Giacomelli et al. ( l9Rei).

--113

-Balibar: Structural Causal ity

-

Structural Causality and the Dilemmas of "Change"

I can now address the que stion of "s tructural ca usality." It should be cle arright from the beginning that , with respect to this question, Althu sser followeda path that progressively shifted the emphasi s from an epistemo logical prob-

personal experience , which in fact was shared by a whole generation , Al­I ~h~sser drew the conc lusion that, if the solution is difficult t!' achieve insideI the" existing organizations, it wo uld be pract icall y impossible outside any.) orgamzation and inst itution.

- He nce,-i"he second po int : on "science." We ca n obse rve that Althu sser wasmoving in the direction of a critique of any positivist conce ption of seience ­including those form s of positivism that are still influencing the traditi onof critical rationali sm , notabl y, in France, the tradition of Bachelard ianepistemology - of which a linear orde ring of theory and practice (or anunderstanding of practice as "applied theory") is an essential part . This cr itica lorientation , as I reca lled, was clear in his "new definiti on" of phil osoph y as"class struggle in theory. " At the same time, the pressure of eve nts in Franceand the world pushed him (like others) tow ard a radi cal critique of those form sof working-cla ss organization that came from the Second and Th ird Intema-

. tionals. Neverth eless. he could never make up his mind to aba ndon these ;~I "~ign i fi-=rs" I~d~(r wi t~ p~l.iYi cai !'inpl l~ai IOris': scienc~ and party or o.rganittr-. _ .

l tion. No C10UDt he was convinced that , m the current mtellectual con uncture,tOJetllson these telms wmrr a e rocfii'CCd""1ii'iiY'Sif lcatlOn, the illusion of animaginary 'satisfaction, not a liberat ion from do 'mati sm. ._-

a co nseq uence . Althusser co nfro nted the cris is of Marxism with untime­ly fomlUlations. It was not wit hout consequences. rega rding both his rela tions

'With the academi c institution (on the side of "science") and his relations withthe French Communist Party (on the side of polit ical "organization") . :rhe

~ result was a schizophrenic situation, in which , altl].\.l..uglJ criticizin almostI e~e~ p. 'cl ott li" 'pi-a'cti ' "~lhe ommull ist organization and the function­i ing of the bourgeois academic institution, ' w u ~ so ule

necessity to rem ain a member of the organization and to work in the inst itu­ti n. woulO ce rtainly agre e that such a schizophre l1lc snuatron Imposed

... Iie;~y limitations on Althu sser 's endeavor to overcome the crisis of Marxi sm .But it is also an aspect of histor ical (Machiave llian) " materialism" on whichwe must reflect. Maybe we can displ ace these limi tations ourse lves, accordingto the new co ndi tions we face, but we cannot hope to rem ove the necessity tocope with the constraints of the inst itution as such. The logic of historicalpractice is a logic of coincidcn tia oppositorum , in oth er words. a logic of

finitude.

Totality, Causality, and Explanation112

respe ct; witness the discussion of "cl ass strugg le in theory." Still. the politicalbackgro und was not simply a negat ive factor. I have no dou bt tha t Allhusserwo uld not have reached clarity on his obj ectives if he had not been imm ersedin this conjuncture. if he had not been submitted to the shocks it producedfrom all sides . However. when he tried to rect ify what he ca lled his - J" theo reticism" - tiiai"is-;-'h isseparaliOh-of " tI1eoretlcal p; aZtice" and';:pOlitical ;practice" (therefore, also, ilis descr iptfon of-an -exrem u( opposition' between"science" and "ideology'tj-s- he could not escape to some' extent hi;/";; 'illg "his'own dec isive break with epi stemological relativism and histor ic ism. rei.:lf'trodlieing a "class determination" of the :" line's of demarcat ion iil theory" tlmt)could he read in a soc iologica l rnanne r.? The pol itica l con juncture led AI­thusser himself to do what. in the preface to For Marx. he h;,d defined as theworst possible thing for any theo retician, namely. to react to certain quest ionsin the very language in whic h they are pose d, to reply in a symmetric mannerto interrogat ions and pressur es either from individuals, from the ideo logicalenv ironment , or from the organizations to whic h one belongs.

In this respect, Althusser was indeed in a very delicate situation. squeezedbetween the Co mmunist Party and the group of yo ung French Maoists, inwhich he saw two disjo int members of the Intemation al Co mmunist Move­

ment. whic h had bee n split by history. There!.~re,"~e was not so much PlaYing la "double game" between them (as he was acc used of t as trying to ma iii1i!fnrela tionships with both sides in order to prepare the ir reun ification through h~sJ

" theoretical interv en tion." Th ese reasons, so it seems to me. allow us tounderstand the ambiguity that many readers saw in Althusscrs texts. when hestarted "correcting" his posit ions. The difficul ties arc co nce ntrated in twoclearly related points: the question of "organ ization" and the quest ion of"scie nce ."

- (}n 'iY;e flrst point, let lTIe say that All husser-ri htl or wro n ' l - neveraba;ldoned the idea that the i~;;;;i~ii-;);:;;ry stru~ains l ca pital islllJ-2L­proletarian oliti . be or anized. Therefore , to some extern it must beinstitutiona lized. Without an organization . . the proletari at is disarmed andpowerless. not only because it lacks the strength given by the concentration offorces agains t the state but especially because it is deprived of any possibilityof achieving a real " fusion" with theory. Now, for the workers to personall yestablish links with theory is obviously very difficu lt in the "revo lutionary"organizations that we kno w or knew, because they tend to re produce internallyexactly the same forms of division between " intellec tual" and "ma nual" labor.the same socio logica l distance between the intellectu als or the scie ntists andthe workers, that we find everywhere in cla ss soc ie ty. Neverthe less , from his

114 Totality, Causality, and Explanation Balibur: Structura l Ca usa lity 115

lcrn to a political one and finally to a question regarding social and histori calonto logy." Was this shifting merely speculative? Althusscr started with a 'J

\ concept of "s tructural ca usa lity" that add ressed an e-pistemofqgi caid~c~nma ., i'he, i "hc r~a'li;~d t'hai the implica ilorls 'wc;.~' basic ally' -i;;I'i' t i~ai:Fina lly-:thc

'-- questions as ked in this general framework (notabi;' 'tile q;;;;i'i~i;-~ f the consti­union of the subject as it was posed in the paper on Ideological StateApparatuses) revealed an eve n more deci sive subst ratum: the ontologicalquestion of the individual and of transindividual structures .

In my view. this was not a process of mechanica l disp lace ments. Thro ughsuccessive rectifications. a principal preoccupat ion rem ained as a guidingthread. Essential clements are preserved. to be ex pressed in a new guise. Butthe question of structural ca usa lity remained at the hea rt of Althussers init ialepis temolog ical enterprise. his new reading of Capital. Everyone agrees onth is point. But this reading of Capital did not aim at introducing a newErkcnntnisthcorie, another scientific methodology. It had a more am bitiousgoal. Althusser was ex plicit that his proje ct was to ex press the origina lity ofthe co ncept of histor ical movement. which is the real content o f the revolu ­tionary " break" achieved by Marx . It was not a question of simply describingthe discursive form s or the scientific methods of exp osition and verific ation. asa theo ry of knowledge or a positivistic ep istemology would do. On thecontra ry, the kind of question that was at stake is : in which sense did Mar x' srevolution ary standpoint open a new "continent." that of the histor ical pro­cess? Also. is there here a possibility of ove rcoming the classical alternative ofthe natural and the social sc icnces 'r' But such a possibility exists only if thequestion is asked at a more basic l evcT:thci~v el of the nature and models ofcausality.

Let me recall here Althusser 's emphas is on the idea that the concept ofcausality that can be found in Mar x's theo retica l developments (especially inCapital ) d iffers rad ically from all the classical mod els of causa lity. T his isparticularly the case with the two great models Althu sser referred -to as" mechanical causality" (whi ch rema ins present in the posi tivis tic concept ofdete rm inism ) and "e xpress ive causal ity" (w hich can be retrac ed in vita listconce ptions of biology and spiritualistic co nce ptions of history as we ll).

To be sure . Althusser himself spoke of an (articulated) "whole" in order todefine the Marxi st notion of causality. T his would seem to place him on thesecond side of the alternative; it is verYdiflicult indeed to distinguish themeaning of " whole" from the meanin g of "total ity" in the philosophicaltrad itio n (Spinoza is the great exception here). For this reason. I prefer to

J . Th e re are e xce lle nt remarks on this poi nt in the paper by Costanzo Preve (G iacomell i e t al ,t ')K{lI. In the " line col lective vo lume, sec Aug usto Illu minati, "R ileggcre Althus scr,"

-I. Maria T urchei to very c learly indicates this perspective in her paper (G iacomelli ct al.

IlJK61.

emphasize other idea s: first o f all. the idea of overdetermination. But it isnecessary to point out that. for Althu sscr, ovcrdc termi nation was never separ­able from unde rdcterrnination." The two reciprocal point s of view of ove r­determ inat ion and unde rdetermination alw ays come into play at the sametime. What this means is that in a give n conjuncture the ex planation of ./

~ histori cal phenomena. above all the eme rgence of a new soc ial form . is in the1 fast analysis never redu cibl e to a single or uniform ca usa lity. It is alw ays\manifested in the comple ment arity of different modes.I Th is should not bec kon us to move in an irrational ist, eve n myst icaldirect ion . for other eleme nts mus t also be considered. First of all. this concep ­tion of an ove rde termined and undcrdctcrmincd causality immedia tely rc- ~moves the trad itional opposition of "s tructure" and "conj uncture"; better sai( r:it sugges ts that these two terms arc reciprocal. It is no longe r a question ofviewing the conj uncture as a short mom ent in the life of the structure or /

I transition betwee n successive stages of the structure , because the real ity of thet stl}lclL! re_iU .lo thin bUL~he unp[edict ahl~ successio;'-of co~junc.t~ res ; ~~n ­~ vcrscly , the conjuncture IS merely determin ed as a certain ell posui on of theI structure. (No tice that such a formul ation is on ly the " temporal" co unterpart of

what. in Reading Capi tal. Althu sser had called the "absent cause ." combiningit with a conce pt of "differential temporal ity" for the elements of the structure:the whole is nothing oth er than the reciprocal act ion of its " parts .")

Th is change has a potenti al consequence : it lead s to a complete transforrna ­tion in the traditional pro blem of histo rical " transition" (and more profoundly.of historical time, which ca n no longer he represe nted as a successi ve orde rwith uniform dura tion). But here we must admit that Althusser him self and.r above all. his disciples (my own contribution 10 Reading Capital be ing a clear

l example) had litt le awareness of what all this rea lly meant. Many of usdesperately kept trying to apply thc device of Althu sseri an ove rde terrninat ion(rather than undcrdcterm ination) to analyze " transitions" or " passages" fromone structure to another. follow ing the clas sical mode l of periodi zat ion thatcomes from eighteenth- and nineteen th-century philosophy of history. Indeed .Marx him se lf, when dea ling with such entities as " feuda lism," "capi talism: 'and "commun ism" (whether defined as " modes of production" or "socialforma tions" ). never ceased to re fer to this model in his evo lutionary picturesof universal history.

On the othe r hand. if, against the traditio nal understandin g of the distin c­tion betwee n long and short time spans. we push to the ex treme Ihe idea thatthe distinction mere ly refers to the fact that conjunc tures arc "s tructurally

[

5. Althou gh the n.olion ot.· ov. crd..~~n~i ~_I.~~! ~~~! .\..\""a"'.C!",ICi.al i!!J!.~" !'J~~~'~~~~~l.~~P.~t.:~I)' ]with Uil'lICi1letenll llliitiOil-W';lsinaoc ex plici t onl y 111 "Souic nancc dA mic ns." repri nted in AI-mu" e! ( 1976h.- r:!T.:nnr:ng,1iStl· framn:iTIiiii;"1, li 'Siillple lo'Be-a-M;;xT;lill Philosophy?" in

Alihusse r [1970a . t6J - 207 \).

116 Total ity. Causality. and Explanation Balibar: St ruc tura l Causa lity 117

unpredic table" or that it is their unpr edictabl e char acte r which ex press es the irt;, st ruct ura l necessity . ~.~ canno t avoid critica l conse quences for the donl lna nt

represen tations of politics. I am thinking here pa rticularly of Althu sser 'sconstantly mui ntuincd thesis that "socialism doe s no t exist," in the sense thatthe re can he nothing like a "socialist mode of production." Instead. there is theproblem ofcommu nism, whi ch emerges (or becom es ac tive) in eac h and e verysuccessive conj unc ture of the history of ca pita lism. If we disc uss th is in termsof possibi lity (neg lec ting the ambiguities of the ca tego ry of the " poss ible ,"aga inst wh ich Althussc r had bee n warned by his readin g of Spinoza), we cansay that communism was possible at the tim e of the Communist Manifesto(a lbe it pro bab ly not as the " apocalyptic" transition that mo st revo lutionaries,incl ud ing Marx an d Enge ls, imagined ); it \I'lIS possible at the time o f the ParisComm une; it WI/S possible at the time o f the 1917 revolut ion. And to someex tent these possibi lities were realized : co mmunism beg an to eme rge as akernel. or a network of soc ial relati ons. which later on wa s ove rcome by othersocia l forc es (so me of them ac ting under the nam e of offic ial "com mun ism").Of course, this comm unis m eac h time was historically si tuated; it was not thesame at the end of the nineteenth ce ntury and at the time of the Oc toberRevo lution. Althusser concluded that , if a ce rt ain communism is to be aga inpossib le today, it must be very d ifferent from the communism of Lenin' sepoch or the communis m of Ma rx 's epoc h, that we may perhaps not even beable to recognize it because it eme rges under diffe rent nam es and with ad ifferen t "consc iousness ." As a "c ritical and revo lutio nary tendency" in thesing ul.n: history of capitalism. co mmunism mu st al ways differ from itsel f. itcannot be an ident ical ess ence .

In gene ral terms, we could say that there arc possible bifurcation s inhistor y. T hese bifurcat ions, or alte rnative path s, are stopped sooner or later.and there is no way to mak e sure that they will not be stopped definitivel y. InallY case , once they have started , they result in a developm ent that differs fromthe " law" or "te nde ncy " that co uld be obse rved in the past. O r to put it ano ther Iway. tl~lil.w" o.!:.-h~~~!>:: is 'lQ.!...c_Q.nverg~1lge _tg_wa.l9~.'!!.c. prcdi <:t~~_~~d: it I

is cun tinuo us dive rgence from any preestabli shed orienta tion.But this leads us to introd uce the not ion o f antagonism in a new way . It

see ms to me that Althusse r co ncei ved antagonism as the core of structuralcausality. that he read in Marx a preeminence of the ca tegory o f ant agonism.The difficulty co mes fro m the fac t that (very much as in the case of " ideolo­!,:y" , he attribu ted to Ma rx himsel f a co nce pt of "antago nism" that was almostcomplete ly inverted with respec t to its original meaning. Not only the youngMarx hut a lso the mat ure Marx had conce ived of irreco ncilable co ntrad ictionsin capi tali sm. but they were irreconcil able on ly in a pro visional man ner,according tn the law of the " negation of the negation," beca use they ant ici­pated a fina l " reconci liation" in co mmunism. The future Co mmunist soc iety

was imagined as a free. tran sparen t "as soc iation of humans." whi ch mean s, asAlthusser ex plained right fro m the begin ning. that Mar x never really ab an­doned the pat tern of alienation, even when he was prod uci ng concre te an­alyses o f the ca pitalist re lations of pro duction that. de fac to , contradicted thisidea list pattern . As he himse lf co nsistently maintain ed , Althussc r 's projectwas 10 ge t rid of the no tion of alienatio n in a defin itive mann er. Under thename o f antago nism, he wo uld think what he himself called a "processwithout an O rigin or an End" : an irreco nci lab le contradiction that does notrequ ire eithe r an or igina ry subjec t (e .g.. the ide ntification of labor as thehuman esse nce ) or a final suppression of antagonism .

Hence, fro m the poli tica l point of view, there was an ama zing co ntradictionin Althusscr, whic h his critics perfectly gras ped. Ilow 10 co mbine the idea ofirreconc ilable antagonism and the idea tha t at every mom en t there is incapi talism the possibi lity o f its ow n overcoming, in the fonn of class conflic tand mass co nflict '! Ho w to combine the idea that capita lism is not an "ete rna l"mode of prod uction and the idea that there is no " reconc iliation," that antago ­nism should not be co nce ptua lized agai nst the backgro und of social unity as a

univer sal tclos?Now, if we take some distance from Althusscrs text. we might perha ps

suggest the foll owing interp retat ion: the root o f ant agon !sm. n~~~f~I1 I , .i:~ the -

[

~c t th at _~xpl oi t a t ion is something 11 11 1~c(ii 'lii)h-;- foi -i li~liv ~ d uals a~(! ,. ~~?~e all. ~'forcorrec tivities . T his would mean that, although capitalism actua lly succeedsin imposin g iiI; forms o f " real subsumption" upon the labor force- tha i. ,transforming labor power into a commod ity- there is an actual lim it to thi sprocess. In the last analys is. the form of human l abo~..(both ind ividu al and

[

cOllec tiverrl;;l,l lns . il"I"edll(~'ilJlc to the ('linditi6ii"oi' -ii' co mmo di ty. which iscx;i~il;ll~wC..Jllu~ t understand under. the nam_e_ .< ~f_·"the unbearabJ e,:"

\ - This ;-ould mean . then . that the ca pitalist mode of product ion can never bejreproduced in an identica ! man ner. It is impossible for capitalism to keep ihe'relations o f prod uction in the same form in whi ch they ex isted at a certainmomen t in history. in a ce rtain phase of acc um ula tion. I ag ree on th is poi nt

\ with all those Mar~ i s t ~ who ins ist on t h~ nece~s i ty at' ·.· h is to ric i~ i n~" t1~e\ analysis of the capita list mo de and relat ions 0 1 product ion . Ca pita lism IS

\ forced to transfor m itsel f. its ow n modes of ex ploi ting the labor force, itsmode of soc ializing ind ividual s. It is therefore impossible for ca pitalism 1/0110 I

l,/(' 1'01,'(' . and this is the onl y poss ible form o f its " reproduction." Th is is

capitalism's neccssitv . ,

As a conse quence , for us, too , it is im possible not to evolve. At ev~y1[

moment (not _ ~J_n l ~_! I~_..:~!me " 'inal" or ."ca t as t.rop~l ic" stage.) t l ~e caeitali ~t

~ys tem is m~.':i!~g.il!-I~ ~5~~'<:s . A baSIC instab ility IS underlying Its ap parentstability (or in less natura listic . more political. Machiav ellian terms. the reasonfor its stahi lity is not its intrins ic coherence or its product ivity: it is onl y its

118 Totality, Causality, and Explanation Balibar: Structura l Causality 119

abi lity to ga in social streng th through antago nism, its success in using antago­nis tic forces as its ow n means of reproduction in the class strugg le). We mu st ]

f~d.n. :i ~ : _~~~r~f?~e , that the ~eC~SSilY. for :ap.i ~~ I.iS~. t.?_~~~!!!~ u.~. ~:~_lt!~~I~S\ o~n rel ;~t.lOn s .?:prod,u.~t~?~ .I.S a~? t~e 'p?.s.~J ~~~~y' .OL~•.~EI~"'p'r!::!~:~hat ISl lllcompallble WIth the "system." It is the possibi lity for those anticap iliiTist

forces that the Marxist tradition identified with the working class or the

pro letariat , and also for other unpred ictable forces or mo vem ent s, to insert I...'them se lves into the play o f the co ntradiction.

In other words, structura l ca usality introd uced anothe r way of thin kin g ~.

abo ut the rela tionshi ps of historical time and prac tice , at least in principle. lHist orical time can no longer remain the externa l, "cosmo log ica l," frame workin which prac tice becomes inserted a pos teriori (in this respect , Althusser isprobably more of a Hegel ian than he thought or than he initia lly said).Prac tice , ill fact, escapes the traditional oppos itions of philosop hy , parti cu lar lythe binary opposition with theory, because it esc apes the op pos ition of repro­duc tion .and tran sformati?n. The basic histo:ical pr:oblem is never a dilemma \\of Identity and change ; It eme rges a lways III reality as a problem "of w ntchchange becomes effec~{l'e:-JAnd we should not imagin e that there ' exTsis i.iify jguarantee tha t the "s pontaneo us" tend en cy of change is for the best, not eventhat there are only two possibil ities in every situation. On the contrary, thevery logic of overdeterm inat ion and underd etermination would sugg'estthatthe alternative is never as simple as that, alth ough it is almostoO iiwaysideologically pict ured that way.)

T his leads me to a final qu estion: to what ex tent does such a concept ofstructural causality, in whic h antago nism is decisive and yet escapes everytotal ization , imply the not ion of negativity? Th e qu estion is imp ort ant be­cause, from Hegel onwa rd , th is not ion was a cr iterio n of de marcation betweendia lec tics and positivism, with its cult of "o bjec tive tendencies" (more oftenthan not ano ther name for the existing sta te of affairs, the reason that man ycritical Mar xists insis t on the necessity of " utopia") .

I wo uld agree that things here are probab ly more difficu lt than Althusse rhimscl r had bel ieved, at least at first glance . His critique of Hegel ian andhumanistic Marxism wou ld suggest that the Hege lian pict ure of negat ivit ywas inseparable from a (founda tional) ca tego ry of the subject of history,whet her conceived as Sp irit, Hum ankind, or the Pro letariat. In other words, itwould see m imposs ible to de fine negativity apa rt from alienatio n- the aliena­lion of an e mpirical subject or the alienation of the metaph ysical subjec t thatemerges in universal his tory. It see ms to me that, althoug h he prob ab ly neverround the bes t phi loso phica l formulations for it, at least in his publishedwr itings, Alth usser progressively realized that the co nce pt of negativity (better ' )sa id: a certain co ncep t of negati vity) ca nnot be spared . Withou t s uc h- aco nce pt, there is no rea l possibility of form ula ting st ruc tura l antagonis m as

References

Althusser, L 1976a. Essays ill Self- Cri ticism . Lon don : New Left Books.---. 1976b. Positions. Paris: Editio ns Socia les ,Giacomelli, M., A. Illuminati, M. Poreavo, C. Prcve, and M. Tu rcheuo . 1986. La

cognizione del/a crisi : Saggi sulmarxismo eli LOII ;s Al thusser. Milan: Centro Studidi Mater ial ism o Storico ,

___ . 1990./1 marxismo di LOllis Althusscr. Milan: Centro di Matcrialismo Storico.Pisa : Vallerini Edit rice.