louis allthuser - on marx and freud

8/11/2019 Louis Allthuser - On Marx and Freud

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On Marx and FreudLouis Althusser & Warren MontagPublished online: 05 Jan 2009.

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Reth inking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society, 4:1, 17-30, DOI:10.1080/08935699108657950

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Rethinking M R XIS M Volume 4. Number (Spring 199

On Marx and FreudLouis Althusser

Translated by Warren Montag

It is generally recognized today , despite sym ptom atic resistances which must beexamined, that two previously unheard of and unforseeable discoveries in theorder of the social or human sciences disturbed the universeof the culturalvalues of the classical age, the agein which the bourgeoisie rose to power. Thediscoveries were those of historical materialism-or the theory of the,conditions,forms, and effects of the class struggle-Marxs oeuvre , and the unconscious,Freuds oeuvre Before Marx and Freud, culture rested on the diversity of thenatural sciences, complemented by theideologies or philosophies of history, society, and the human subject. With Marx and Freud,scientific theories sud-

denly came to occupy regions until then reserved for the theoretical forma-tions of bourgeois ideology (political economy, sociology, psychology) or ratheroccupied surprising and disconcerting positions in the interior of these re-gions.

It is, ho wev er, also gene rally recognized that the phenomena addressed by Marxand Freud , who soughtto grasp the effectsof the class struggle and the effectsof theunconscious, were not unknown before them. n entire tradition of politicalphilosophers and above all practitioners, as Spinoza saidof Machiavelli (whodirectly addressed the class struggle and to whom we owe the thesis of the

anteriority of contradiction in relation to contraries), the most familiar being thephilosophersof Natural Law, who spokeof class struggle indirectly in the guise ofjuridical ideology, recognized well before Marx the existence of classes and theeffects of the class struggle. Marx himself recognized the bourgeois historiansof theRestoration and the economistsof the school of Ricardo, like Hodgskin, as direct

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18 Althiisser

ancestors from whom he demarcated himself through his critiqueof the bourgeoistheory of class struggle: these authors recognized the existence of classes andofclass struggle. In the same way, the effects of the unconscious that Freud studiedwere recognized in some form from the time of high antiquity, in dreams, prophe-cies , the phenom ena of possession and exorcism consecrated by definitive pra cticesand treatments.

In this sense, neither Marx nor Freudinvented anything: the objects, the theoriesthat they respectively produced existed before they were discovered. What did theyproduce? A definition of their object, its limitation and its extension, thecharacterization of its conditions, its formsof existence and its effects, a formula-tion of the conditions necessary to a knowledge of the object andto any action uponi t , in brief, its theory or the first forms of its theory.

Nothing could be more banal than this observation since it is true that, formaterialism, a discovery doesno more than produce the formof knowledge of anobject that already exists outside of thought. But things become more interestingwhen we re cogn ize that the cond itions of these disco ncerting discoveriescompletelyoverturned the cond itions previously recognizedus normal fo r any discovery. Andit is certainly not by chance that the two discoveries that upset the cultural worldwithin the spaceof fifty years pertain to what is conveniently called the human orsocial sciences and that they break with thetraditionul protocol f discover?, inthe natural sciences and in the theoretical formulationsof ideology. Nor is it bychanc e that from the mo men t Marx and Freud w ere sufficiently kno wn a num berofcontemporaries experienced this rupture as the manifestation of a certain affinitybetween the two theories. From there, given that certain of these contemporarieswere prisoners of the ideological prejudice of the monismof all objects ofscience, it is not by chance that they were led to see the nature of this affinity asnidentih, of objects: Reich, for example, sought to identify the effects of theunconscious isolated by Freud with the effects of the class struggle isolated byMarx.

We still feel, or at least many of us do , the sa me presentiment: too many thingsconnect them. A4ur.r and Freud must h aw something in common. But what? And ifReich s failure has show n us where and how notto seek their point of encounter ( inthe identity of their ob jects ), the conviction persists that there exists so meth ingincommon in this double experience, something unprecedented in the historyofculture.

In the first instance i t can be argued that Freud offered us, exactly like Marx, anexample of a materialist and dialectical thought.

If the most minimal thesis that defines materialism is the existenceof realityoutside of thought or consciousness, Freud is truly a materialist insofar as he re-jects the primacy of consciousness not only in knowledge butin consciousnessitself, that is, insofar as he rejects the primacyof consciousness in psychology inorder to think the psy chic apparatus as a wholein which the ego, or conscious-ness is only an instance, a part or an effect. On a more general level, Freuds

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Marx and Freud 19

opposition to all idealism,to spiritualism and religion, even disguisedas morality,is well known.

Concerning the dialectic, Freud furnished it with some surprising figures that henever treated as laws (that questionable formof a certain Marxist tradition): forexample, the categoriesof displacement, condensation, overdetermination, andsoon as well as in the ultimate thesis,a meditation on which would takeus a long way ,that the unconscious doesnot know contradiction and that the absence of con-tradiction is the conditionof any contrad iction. The re is in this every thing necessaryto explode the classical model of contradiction,a model too inspired by Hegeltoserve the method of Marxist analysis.

Do these philosophical affinities sufficeto allow us to grasp the theoreticalcommunity between Marx and Freud? Yes and no. We might well stop there andretire in silence; the philosophical balancesheet is already rich and leaves eachscience to function on its own side , that is, to con front its own o bject, irreducibleasan object, to the philosophical affinitiesof which we have just spoken. However,anothe r phen om enon, still more aston ishing, must eng age our attention: it is whathave called the conflictuul characterof Marxist theory and Freudian theory.

It is a fact of experience that Freudian theory isa conflictual theory. From thetime of its birth, and the phenomenon has not ceased to reproduce itself,it hasprovoked not only strong resistance, not only attacks and criticisms but, what ismore interesting, attempts at arinexution and revision. I say that the attempts atannex ation and revision are more interesting than simp le attacks and criticism s, forthey signify that Freudian theory contains, by the admissionof its adversaries,something true and dangerous. Where there is nothing true, there is no reasontoannex or revise. There is therefore something truein Freud that must ge appropri-ated but in ord er that its meaning may be revised, for this truths dungerou.s: it mustbe revised in ord er to be ne utralized. The re is a relentless dialecticin this cycle. Forwhat is remarkable in the dialectic of resistance-criticism-revision is that thephenomenon that begins outsideof Freudian theory (with its adversaries) alwaysends up within Freudian theory. t is internally that Freudian theory is obliged todefend itself against attemp ts at annexation and revision: the adversary alwa ys endsup by penetrating it and producing a revisionism that provokes internal counterat-tacks and, finally, splits scissions). conflictual science, Freudian theory isalso ascissional sc ience and its history is marked by incessantly recurring splits.

Of course the idea that a science could by its very nature be conflictual (andscissional), g overned bya dialectic of resistance-attacks-revisions-splits, isa verita-ble scandal for rationalism , eveni f this rationalism calls itself materialist. Rational-ism can certainly admit that a completely new science (Copernicus, Galileo) cancom e into conflict with the established pow erof the Church and with the prejudicesof an ignorant age but this happensas if by accident andonly for the moment ittakes to dissip ate ignorance: in principle science, w hich is reason, alw ays carries theday, for the truth is all-powerful (Lenin himself said Marxs theory isallpowerful because i t is true ), and more powerful than all the shado ws of the world.

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20 Althusser

For rationalism, the idea that there can exist sciences conflictual by their verynature, haunted or eve n constituted by contestation and stru ggle, is pure non -sense: these are not sciences but simpleopinions, contradictory in them selves likeall subjective points of view and therefore dubious.

Before Freudian theory, Marxist science offered an example of a necessarilyconflictual and scissional science. It is not a matterof an accident, or of theastonishment of ignorance caught short,of the ruling prejudices pushed from theirposition of comfort and power: it is a questionof a necessity organically linked tothe very objectof the science founded by Marx. The entire historyof Marxist theoryand of Marxism proves it, above all the history of Marx himself. Beginning inHegel and Feuerbach in whom he thought to find a critiqueof Hegel, Marx onlycam e to occu py the philosophical positions from which h e could d iscover his objectthrough a long internal and external political and philosophical struggle. He came tooccupy these positions only by breaking with the dominant bourgeois ideology,after ideologic ally and intellectually experien cing theantagonistic relation betweenthe dominant bourgeois ideology and the political and philosophical positions thatpermit the discovery of what the immense edifice of bourgeois ideology and itstheoretical formulations (philosophy, political economy, etc.) aredesigned to dis-simulate as they p erpetua te the exploitation and dom ination of the bourgeois class.Marx was convinced that the adversaryof the truth that he discovered was notaccidental error or ignorance but the organic system of bourgeois ideology, anessential component of the struggle of the bourgeois class. This particular errornever had any reason to recognize the truth (class exploitation), since on thecontrary its organic class function is to mask, in its class struggle, the system ofillusions, indispensable to their sub ordination,to which it subjects the exploited. Atthe very heart of the truth, Marx encountered the class struggle, a pitilessirreconcilable struggle . At the sam e time he discovered that the science he foundedwas a partisan science (Le nin ), a science representing the proletariatCapital),and therefore a science that the bourgeoisie is incapableof recognizing but that theynevertheless will combat to the death and by any means necessary.

The entire history of Marxism has verified and continues to verify every day thenecessarily conflictual character of the science founded by Marx. Marxist theory,true and therefore dangerous, rapidly became oneof the vital objectivesof thebourgeois classs struggle. We see the dialectic referredto earlier at work: attack-annexation-revision-split; we see the attack directed from the outside pass into theinterior of theory which thus finds itself invested with revis ioni sm . In response thereis the counterattack and, in certain limited situations, splits (Lenin against theSecond International). It is through this implacable andinescapable dialectic of anirreconcilable struggle that Marxist theory advances and is strengthened beforeencountering grave, always conflictual crises.

Th ese things are w ell k now n but their conditions are not always fully understood.It will be admitted that Marxist theory is necessarily involved in the class struggleand that the co nflict that opp oses it to bou rgeois ideology is irredeem able, but that

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Marx and Freud 21

the conflictuality of Marxist theory is constitutive of its scientijkity and objectivitywill be admitted only with difficulty. One will fall backon positivist and economistconceptions to distinguish its conflictual conditions ascontingent in relation to itsscientific results. This is to fail to see that Marxist science and the Marxistresearcher must take a position in the conflict of which Marxist theory is theobject and must occupy proletarian theoreticalclass positions , antagonistic to anytheoretical position of the bourgeois class,to constitute and develop their science.What are these theoretical class positions, indispensableto the constitution anddevelopment of Marxist theory? They arephilosophical positions, dialectical andmaterialist, that permit one to see what bourgeois ideology necessarilyoccults: theclass structure and class exploitation that characterize the social formation. Forthese philosophical positions are always and necessarily antagonistic to bourgeoispositions.

Thes e principles, if not this specific formulation (theoretical class positions), aregenerally accepted by Marxist theoreticians in their general sense. But we cannotavoid the suspicion that they are only superficially recognized without their realmeaning and all its consequences being understood.Is it necessary to use a lessfashionable but more striking ex pression ? Th e idea is, at bottom , thatto see and tounderstand what happens in class societies, it is indispensableto occupy proletarianclass theoretical positions; there is the simple postulate thatin a necessarilyconjlictual realit?, such as a society one cannot see everything ,from everyw here;theessence of this conflictual reality can only be discoveredon the condition that oneoccupies certain positions and not others in the conflict itselj. For to passivelyoccupy other positions is to allow oneselfto participate in the logic of the dominantideolog y. Of course , this cond ition flies in the face of the entire positiv jp traditionthrough which bourgeois ideology has interpreted the practiceof the natural sci-ences, since the condition of positivist objectivity is to occupy no position, toremain outside conflict whatever it may be (o nce the theological and metaphysicalage has passed). But there is another tradition traces of which can be found amongthe greatest thinkers, for exam ple, Machiavelli wh o wrote thatit is necessary to bethe people to know the Prince. Marx said in substance nothing else in his entireoeuvre. When he writes in the preface to Capital that the work represents theproletariat he dec lares in essenc e that only on the basisof proletarian positions canCapital be known. If we take Machiavellis phrase in its strongest sense, we maysay that it s necessary to be proletarian to know Capital. Con cretely, this meansnot only having to recognize the existen ce of the proletariat but alsosharing itsstruggles as Marx did for four years before theManifesto, having participated in thefirst organization sof the proletariat to be in a position to know Ca pital .To adopt theclass theoretical positions of the proletariat there is no other way in the world thanpractice, that is, personal participation in the political struggles of proletarianorganizations. It is through this practice that an intellectual becomes proletarian,that is, begins to move away from bourgeois or petty-bourgeois theoretical classpositions towards revolutionary theoretical positions, that heor she can know

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22 Althusser

Capital-as Machiavelli said , it is necessary to be the peopleto know thePrinces. For there is no other way fo r an intellectual to become par tof the peoplethan through the practical experience of the peop les struggle.

If I may be permitted h ere a wordon a well-known form ula: it is Kau tskys anditis taken up by Lenin in Wh at I s to B e Done. It concerns the fusion of the workersmovement and Marxist theory. Accordingto this formula, Marxist theoryis elabo-rated by intellectuals and is introduced into the workers movement from theoutside . have always been convinced that this form ula is unfortunate. For thatMarx and Engels were formed asbourgeois intellectuals outside of the workersmovement is an obvious fact: they were trained like all the intellectuals of their timein the bourgeois universities. But Marxist theory has nothing in common with thebourgeois theories with which the intellectuals were endowed; on the contrary, itsays something totally foreignto the world of bourgeois theory and ideology. Howthen were highly educated bourgeois intellectuals able to forge or conceive arevolutionary theory which serves the proletariat by telling the truth about Capital?The answer seems simpleto me and hav e already said itin so many words: Marxand En gels did not fo rge their theoryoutside of the proletariat and its positions butfrom within the positions and revolutionary practice of the proletariat. It is becausethey became organic intellectuals of the proletariat through their practice in thewo rkers mov em ent, without eve r ceasing to be intellectuals, that they were a ble toconceive their theory. This theory was not imported from outsideinto thewo rkers movem ent; it was conceived through an im me nse theoretical effortwithinthe workers movement. The pseudo-importation of which Kautsky spoke wassimply the expansion. within the workers movement,of a theory produced outsideof it by the organic intellectuals of the proletariat.

Th ese are not sec onda ry questions or mere curiosities but problem s that touchonthe very m eaning of M arxs entire work. For this displacement (as Freud liked tosay in relation to his ow n ob ject) toward s revolutionary theoretical class positionsnot only has political consequences but theoretical consequences as well. Con-cretely the politico-theoretical or philosophical act of aband oning bou rgeois andpetty-bourgeois theoretical positions is heavy with theoretical and scientific con-sequences. It is not by chance that Marx wrote the simple formula critiqueofpolitical economy as the subtitle ofCapital. And it is not by chance that themeaning of this critiqu e is often mistaken for Ma rxs judgem ent c oncern ing anuncontested and incontestable reality. whether or not, for example, Smith orRicardo understood the relation of surplus-value to rent, andso on. Matters areconsiderably more complicated. In the displacement that led Marxto occupyproletarian class positions in theory, he discovered that, despite all the meritsof hisauthors, the existing Political Economy was not fundamentally a science, but atheoretical form ation of bou rgeois ideology.playing its role in the ideological classstruggle. He discovered that it was not simply the details of the existing PoliticalEconomy that had to be criticized but that the very idea, the project, the existenceofPolitical Economy had to be called into question and rejected: it could only be

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thought as an autonomous, independent disciplineon the condition that the classrelations and class struggle that it had as its ideological mission to obscure werethemselves distorted. Marxs theoretical revolution thus resultedin the conclusionthat there s o Political Economy (except for the bourgeoisie whose interests areonly too clear) and even more that there isno Marxist Political Economy. That isnot to say that there was nothing there, but that Marx suppressed the supposedobject of Political Economy in favor of an entirely different reality that becameintelligible o n the basis of very different principles those of historical materialism,for which the class struggle becomes determinant inunderstandirig so-calfed eco-nomic phenomena.

There are many other examples in Marx that show that his theory of classstruggle differs utterly from bourgeois theory and that his theory of ideology and ofthe state was equally disturbing. In any case, the displacement towards classpositions in theory, the revolutionin the object (that becomes something completelydifferent of which not only the limits but the very nature andidentity have changed)and the practical-revolutionary consequences can all be set in relation. It is certainthat this overturning of the traditional protocol of knowledge has not made the tasksof Marxs readers any easier. But what they have not failed to notice is thetheoretical and scientific fecundity of a conflictual science.

But what of Freud in all of this? It will be found that Freudian theory, in asom ew hat different way andon another l evel, is in a similar situation by virtue of itsconjlictuality

By constructing his theory of the unconscious, Freudin effect touched anextraordinarily sensitive point in moral, psychological, and philosophical theory,calling into question through the discovery of the unconscious, a certaip natural,spontaneous idea of man as sub ject. Th eun ty of which is assured or crownedby consciousness.

For it may also be seen that this bourgeois ideology can only with great difficultyrenounce this key conception without also renouncing its very function. It (or itsfunctionaries, as Marx would say) resists, criticize s, attack s, and finally invadesFreudian theory, revising it from within after having attacked it from without. Wewill here recognize the dialectic that we have already analyzed.It is the dialectic o nwhich th e necessarily conflictual charac ter of Freudian theory is based.

Bu t, it will be ask ed, w hat is the common denominator that allows us to relate thehostility of the bourgeois theoryof man in the face of the theory of the uncon-scious to the hostility of bourgeois ideology towards the theory of class struggle?Isnt what is necessarily the case for Marx only accidental for Freud? How can wecompare what emerges from the class struggle of a society to the defense mech-anism of the ideology of man?

In fact, the com parison is not as arbitrary asit seem s. The ideology of man as asubject whose unity is assured and crowned by consciousness is not just anyfragmentary ideology; it is quite simplythe philosophical form of the bourgeoisideology that has dominated history for five centuries and that, even if itno longer

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has the vigor it once had, still reigns in large sections of idealist philosophy andconstitute s the implicit philosoph yof psychology, m orality, and political eco nom y.It is not useful here to recall that the great idealist tradition of bourgeois philosophywas a philosophy of consciousness, whether empirical or transcendental, for every-one knows this, even if this philosophy is now giving wayto neopositivism. It ismore importantto recall that this philosophyof the con scious subject constituted theimplicit philosophy of the theory of classical Political Economy and that its eco-nomic version, which Marx criticized by rejecting any notionof homo economi-cus (according to w hich man is defined asa subject conscious of its needs) andthis subject-of-need, is the ultimate and constitutive elem entof any society. Ac-cordingly, in man as subject of his needs can be found not only the finalexplanation of society, but also, and this is crucial, the explanation of man assubject, that is, as a unity identical to itself and identifiable through itself, inparticular, by the throu gh itse lf that is self-consciousness par excellence. Th eGolden Rule of materialism: never jud ge a being by its con scio usness of itself Forevery being is other than the consciousness it has of itself. But it is perhaps evenmore important to point out that this philosophical category of the subject consciousof itself is naturally inca rna te in the bou rgeois conception of morality and psycholo-gy. It will be understood that a subject conscious of itself, responsible for its acts,may be obliged to obey norms in good conscience, a method more economicalthan impos ing them on the subjec t by force. A nd it will be understood accord ing tothe simp le definition of the moral subjec t (the subject-of-its-actions) that this subje ctis merely the necessary complementof the legal subject subject-de-droit)whichmust be a subje ct and be co nsciou s in order to have anidentity and to be accoun tableto laws (ignorance of whichis no excuse), a subject who must be co nscious of thelaws that constrain it (K ant) but which it is not obliged to ob eyin good con-science. We may surmise that the famous psychology of subject that was andremains the object of a science, psychology, is not a natural, brute given but astrange problematically mixed nature revealed finally in the philosophical destiny ofall the subjects that comprise it: the legal subject, the subjectof need s, the moral (orreligious) subject, the political subject, andso on.

It would be e asy if we had the tim e to show th e ideological conspiracy that takesshape under the dom ination of bourgeois ideology around the notion of thesubjectconscious of i t sev, a reality terribly problematic for a possible or impossiblehuman science, but nevertheless a reality terribly necessary to the structure of classsociety. In the category of the self-con scious subject, bourgeois ideologyrepresentsto individuals what theymust be in order for them to accept their ow n su bm ission tobourgeois ideolog y; it represen ts them a s endow ed with theunity and consciousness

(which is this unity itsel0 that they must have in order tounzfy their differentpractices and actions under the unityof the dominant ideology.

have intentionally insisted on the categoryof the inseparable unity of anyconsciousness. It is not by chance that the entire bourgeois philosophical traditionpresents consciousness as the very faculty of unification, the faculty of synthesis,

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Murx und Freud 25

whether in the framework of the empiricism of a Locke or a Hume, or in theframework of the transcendental philosophy that found its expression in Kant afterlying dorm ant in his precursors. T o say that consciousness is asynthesis means thatit is the realization in the subject of the unity of the diversity of its sense data (fromperception to knowledge), the unity of its moral acts, the unity of its religiousaspirations, the unity of its political practices. Consciousness thus appears as thefunction, delegated to the individual by human nature, of the unificationof hispractices whether they are cognitive, moral, or political. Let us translate thisabstract language: consciousness is necessary for the individual who is endowedwith it to realize within himself the unity required by bourgeois ideology,SO thatevery subject will conform to its own ideological and political requirement, that ofunity, in brief, so that the conjlictual violetice of the class struggle will be lived byits agents a s a superior and spiritual fo rm of u nity. emphasize this unity,otherwise known as the identity of consciousness, and the function of unity becauseit was this unity that Marxs critique called most forcefully into question when Marxdismantled the illusory unity of bourgeois ideology and the fantasy of unity thatitproduced in consciousness as the effecti t needed in ord er to function. emphasizethis unity bec ause, through an en coun ter fraught with meaning , it is thaton whichthe Freudian critique of consciousness is concentrated.

In fact, if we understand Marx, there is nothing mysterious about this sensitivepoint in the classical philosophical tradition and in thetheoretical formations ofbourgeois ideology, like psychology, sociology, and political economy, or in thepractical formations such as morality or religion that Freud attacked. It is enough tounderstand that the different subje cts-co nscio us-o f areunifiers of the socialidentity of one individual insofar as they are unified asso many exan les of anideology of man, a being naturally endowed with consciousness to grasp theprofound unity of this ideology and its theoretical and practical formations. Weneed only understand this profound unity to grasp the reasons behind the depth ofthe resistance to Freud. For in discovering the unconscious, a reality whoseexiste nce he did not forsee (a fact that confirm s his political innocence which itselfconcealed a great ideological sensitivity), Freud did not touch justany sensitivepoint in the existing philosophical, moral, and psychological ideology; the ideasthat he upset were not there by chance, one fact of the development of humanknowledge or illusion; thus, he did not touch merely a sensitive but secondary,localized point. Without knowing it at first (but he found out very quickly), he hadtouched the most theoretically sensitive point in the entire system of bourgeoisideology. The paradox is that Freud, apart from some schematic and questionableefforts Totem arid Taboo, Civilization and its Discontents, etc. never reallyattempted to grasp and think as a whole this bourgeois ideology that he had struck inits most sensitive point. Let us go even further: he was not in any condition to dothis for to do so he would have to hav e been M arx. But he was not Marx: he had anentirely different ob ject. It was enough that he revealed to a stupefied world that thisother object existed for the consequences to make themselves felt and to provoke the

p

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26 Althusser

unleashing of an uninterrupted series of attacks against him by all those who for onereason or another, but all united by the conviction of the dominant ideblogy, soughtto silence him. The words of Freud as he drew nearto the United States are wellknown: The y dont realize that we are bringing them the pla gue. T hey remindusof Marx speaking of Capital as a weapon aimed at the headof the bourgeoisie.These are the wordsof men who not only know what they are fighting but w ho alsoknow that they bring to the world s cien ces that canonly exist in and throughstruggle since the adversary cannot tolerate their existence: conflictual scienceswithout any possibility of compromise.

W e must not remain at the levelof these generalities,no matter how co rrect theyare, for this simple reason: Freuds object is not Mau rs object. There is in fact inFreud som ething completely sin gular that renders a comp arison at once meaninglessand important.

Freuds object is not M arxs object. M arx attempted to define a social form ation,recognizing the determining role of the class struggle within i t , on the basis ofwhich he built his entire theory of the relation between the forces of production andrelations of production as well as his theory of the superstructure (law and state,ideologies). The prior theoretical condition that governs this theoryin whichrelations of production, between classes. etc.) are determinant. a theory thatpresupposes the idea of a causality through relations andnot by elements. is therejection of the theoretical presuppositionof classical Political Economy or idealisttheories of history, the knowledgeof the individuals who are the subjects (ongoingand final causes) of any economic or historical process. For this reason Marx wascareful to specify at a number of points in Capital that individuals must beconsidered as supports Triiger) of functions, these functions being themselvesdetermined and fixed by therelntions of the (ec on om ic, political, and ideological)class struggle that move the whole social structure even whenit is merely repro-duced. In the introduction to the Contribution to the Critique qf Pol i t icd Economy,Marx say s it is necessary to begin not with the concrete but with the abstract. Thistheory of the primacy of relations over elements termes) ,the theory of individuals(capitalist o r proleta rian) as sup portsof functions verifies the thesisof the Introduc-tion. Marx never lost sightof concrete individuals but held that they were concreteinsofar as they were the sy nthesisof many determinations.Capitol remains todayone of the most important studiesof these multiple determ inations and it neverproposes a means of reconstituting concrete individuals through a synthesis ofmultiple determ inations, con sidering them only provisionally, as supports in orderto discover the laws of the capitalist society in which concrete individuals exist,live, and struggle. In any case, there is enough in Capital as well as in Marxshistorical texts for us to know that M arx could not go beyond a theoryof socialindividuality or the historical formsof individuality. There is nothing in Marx thatanticipates Freuds discovery: there is nothing in Marx that could provide thefoundations of a theory of the psychic.

But in his unfortunate attempts at generalization, Freud never ceased torepeutunder questionable conditions what he had discoveredelsewhere. For what he had

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Murx and Freud 27

discovered had no bearing on society or social relations butonly on the veryparticular phenomena that affeitedindividuals. Although it can be maintained thatthere is a transindividual element in the unconscious,it is in the individual alonethat the effects of the u ncons cious are manifested andit is on the individual that thecure operates, even if it requires the presence of another individual (the analyst)totransform the existing unconscious effects. This difference is sufficientto distin-guish Freud from Marx.

It remains that what Freud discovered occurs in the individual. And it is here thatwe encounter an unexpected form of conflictuality and withi t , a new differencebetween Freud and Marx, and at the same time a principle that entersin part intothe effect of subjection exercised by ideologyon subjects. It seems that the mas-sive refusal of psy cho ana lysis by the philosophers (o r the revisionto which theysubmit it fo r hav ing destro yed thei r pretensions), including M arxist materialistswho too often take refuge in an ontological conceptionof the Leninist thesisof consciousness-reflection, by doctors, psychologists, and othersis not onlythe result of a mass ideological antagonism, although at the levelof the massesthis antagonism is inevitable. It seems that we must add another specific de-termination to this antagonism to explain its allure: the fact thatit is sup-ported by a characte ristic of the unconscious object itself. Th is supplementaryelement pertains to the nature of the unconscious, which isrepression. If i tis thus, it is not too much to say that individuals do not resist the idea of theun-conscious for exclusively ideological reasons but also becausethey themselveshave an unconscious that automatically represses, in the formof a repetition com-pulsion Wiederholungszwang) ,he idea of the existenc e of the uncon scious. Everyindividual thus spontaneously develops a defensive reflexin the &ice of theunconscious, a reflex that is part of hisown unconscious, a repression of thepossibility of the unconscious that coincides with the unconscious itself. Everyindividual? This is not absolutely certain: it has not been established that the de-fenses are always so active, experience showingon the contrary that there existsubjects in whom this resistance is sufficiently overcome (as a result of the dis-position of their internal conflicts)to permit them to recognize the reality of theunconscious without this recognition provoking radical defensive or avoidancereactions.

Th is road, like others, leads usinto Freud s discove ry. W hat did Freud discover?am not to be expected to provide a general accountof Freudian theory but only

some remarks that will situate it theoretically.It would be wrong to believe that Freud proposed the ideaof a psychology

without consciou sness,in the man ner of the behaviorists whose efforts he ridiculed.On the contrary, he accorded the fundamental factof conscio usnes s its place inthe psychic apparatus; he attributed to it a special system (perception-consc iousnes s) at the limitsof the external world and a privileged role in the cure.Further, he affirmed that the unconscious is only possible in a conscious being.When it cam e to the ideological primacyof consc iousne ss, Freud was ruthless: W emu st learn to ree ourselv es from the importance attributed to the sym ptomof being

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28 Althusser

conscious Why? Because consciousness is incapable by itself of furnishing adistinction between systems.

Freud in effect did not simply discover the existence of the unconscious; herejected the notion of the psychic as a structured un ig centered on consciousness:instead he conceived it as an apparatus composed of different systems irreduc-ible to a single principle. In the first topic spatial figuration), the apparatus includesthe unconscious, the preconscious, and the conscious with the additional instance ofa censor that represses representations of drives in the unconscious unacceptableto the preconscious and the conscious. In the second topic, this apparatus includesthe id, the ego, and the superego, repression being carried out by a part of the egoand the superego.

This apparatus is not a centered unity but a complex of instances constituted bythe play of unconscious repression. The splitting of the subject, the decentering ofthe psychic apparatus in relation to consciousness and to the ego. is accompanied bya revolutionary theory of the ego; the ego, no longer considered the seat ofconsciousness, becomes itself to a great extent unconscious. It is for this reason thatconsciousness is blind to the difference between systems for it is only one systemamong others, the ensemble of which is governed by the confictual dynamic ofrepression.

At this point, if from a distance, we cannot help but think of the revolutionintroduced by Marx when he renounced the ideological bourgeois myth that thoughtthe nature of society as a unified and centered whole and began to think any socialformation as a system of instances without a center. Freud, who did not knowMarx, thought his object which had nothing in common with that of Marx) in thespatial figure of a topic we are reminded of the 1859 Preface to the Contribution)and a topic without u center. the diverse instances of which have no other unity thanthe unity o their conflictu l functioning in what Freud called the psychic appara-tus, a term apparatus) that cannot but make us th ink, if discretely, of Marx.

mention these theoretical affinities between Marx and Freud to show at what

point the overturning of the traditional forms of thought and the introduction ofrevolutionary forms of thought topic, apparatus, conflictual instances without anycenter, possessing only the u n ig of their conflictual func tionin g, the necessaryillusion of the identity of the ego, etc.) can either signal the presence of adisconcerting object or run up against the ideology that prohibits it and the repres-sion that i t awakens. From this we can attempt negatively to define the Freudianunconscious.

The Freudian unconscious is psychic., a fact that prohibits any identification of itwith the nonpsychic, as every mechanistic materialist current would have thetendency to do, or to an effect derived from the nonpsychic. The Freudian uncon-scious is thus neither a material reality the body, the brain, the biological orpsychobiological) nor a social reality the social relations defined by Marx asdetermining individuals independently of their consciousness), different fromconsciousness and thus even from the psychic, but producing or determining

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Marx and Freud 2 9

consciousness without its knowingi t . It is not that Freud ever denied the existenceof a relation between, on one hand, the unconscious and, on the other, thebiological and the social. ll psychic life is supported by the biological by meansof the drives Trieben)that Freud conc eived as rep resentativ e, sent by the somaticinto the psychic. Through the conceptof representarion Freud registered hisobjective recognition of the biological anchorage of the drive (which is alwaysfinally sexual) while at the same time liberating the driveof unconscious desirefrom any essential determination by the biological; the driv e is a concept that m arksthe limit betwe en the so matic and the psychic. And this conce pt that is at the limit isat the same time the concept of this limit, that is, of the difference between thesom atic and the psychic. It isnot that Freud ever denied the existence of a relationbetween the system of the instances of the ego and objective or social reality, tracesof which may be foundnot only in the reality principle. but alsoin the perception-consciousness system and in the superego. Butin his insistence on speaking of theexternal surface of the psychic a pparatu s, Freud is once again thinking alimit: bybasing this apparatus on the external, social world, he designates adifferenceinternal to reality that is thus recognized and identified.

There is no doubt that for Freud the phenomena produced by the psychicapparatus, and above all the effectsof the unconscious, donot constitute the truereality but rather a reality sui generis. Must unconscious desires be granted areality? It is difficult to say . When one is faced with unconscious desires un-derstood in their ultimate truth, one is forced to say thatpsychic reality is aparticular fo r m of existence that is not to be confused with material reality(Freud1900, 620) . O r again: the experienc eof objective material reality carries no weightfor unconscious processes; the reality of thought is equivalentto the reality of theexternal world, desire is equivalent to action. We must never convertthe value ofreality into repressed psychic formations . One must always pay with thecurrency of the country that one is exploring (ibid).

If it designates this reality sui generis, uniquein its kind, the Freudian uncon-scious obviously has nothing in com mo n with the unconsciousof the philosophicaltradition: Platonic forgetting, the Leibnizian indiscernable, andeven the dos ofHegelian self-consciousness. For in these cases the unconscious is alwaysanaccident or a modality of consciousness-the con scio usnessof the true recoveredthrough a forgetting of the body, but subsistin gin itself in this forgottenness (Plato);the infinitesimal of a consciousnesstoo small to be perceived (Leibniz); orconsciousness in itself in the in-itself, the for-itselfof self-consciousness, beforebeing discovered in the new for-itselfof self-consciousness (Hegel)-for thetruthof its unconscious forms grasps the unconscious as misrecognized mkconnue)consciousness. Th e destiny of philosophy is to lift this misu nderstan ding,so thatthe truth may be unveiled. To take things in this symptomatically oblique andlimited way, it may be said that for Freud,consciousness is never the truth o itsunconscious orms,because the relationship of conscious ness to unconscious form sis not a relation of property (its forms), which can be put another way: conscious-

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3 Althusser

ness is not the subject of the unconscious, a thesis that can be verified in the curewhere it is not a questio n of consc iousne ss reappropriating itself, or ils truth in theform of its unconscious, but rather of contributingto a recasting of the apparatusd i sp o s i t f )of fantasies in an unconscious submitted to the work Durcharbeit) of

analysis.And I would like to end by insistingon one final point. The Freudian uncon-

scious is not the nonconscious (psychic) structure that psychology would re-constitute out of typical individual behaviors as their so-called unconsciouspreproduction. We have seen in France an interpretation of this nature fromMerleau-Ponty who read Freud in the lightof Husserls philosophy of theconcre te transcen dental. M erleau-P onty tended to think this structure of beh avioras an antepredicative a priori, determ ining the meaning and formof behaviors in theinteriority of their thetic consciousness. On the basis of this synthesis or ante-predicative structure, he sought a means of rejoining the Freudian unconscious.Theories of the same type can be developed without explicit recourse to Husserl,passing through behaviorism or, in the more subtle manner of Pierre Janet, evenbased ori the foundation of the materialist genesis of the stereotypesof thestructure of behavior.

believe that from the Freudian view two criticisms can be directed at thisattempt. The first is that this theory of the unconscious as structuremontage) ofbehaviors does not question what we have seen to be at the heart of psychologicalideology: the notion of the unity of the subject considered as the subject ofitsbehavior and its actions (from which we can draw the conclusion that consciousn essis not necessary to the principle of unity). The secondis that this attempt does notchange terrain in relation to that of psychology: it simplyexpands the structureofbehavior whether conscious or not by meansof a form of reality that it calls theunco nscious . It matters little whether this expan sion is transcendental or emp irical(and g enetic) for it resemb les the nonconsciousof which we ha ve spok en rather thanthe Freudian unconscious. We must not be mistaken about the unconscious. s

Freud said: One must pay with the currency of the country that one is exploringand no other. D

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louis allthuser - on marx and freud

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