Marx
and the Sacred
James Luchte
Contents
Introduction: Marx and the Sacred
Chapter 1: Into the Breach – the Meaning of Marx
Chapter 2: Marx’s Criticism of Religion
Chapter 3: From Religion to the Sacred
Chapter 4: Sacred Rebellion and Marx
Chapter 5: Marx and Twentieth Century Radical Theology
Chapter 6: Marx, Heidegger and “eigenlichkeit”
Chapter 7: A Violent Sacred? – Marx and Bataille
Chapter 8: A Retrieval of the Sacred in Marx
Conclusion: The Sacred After Marx
Introduction: Marx and the Sacred
Religious suffering is at one and the same time
the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion
is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the
soul of soulless conditions.[i]
Religion is the general theory of that world, its encyclopaedic
compendium, its logic in a popular form, its spiritualistic point d’honneur,
its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, its universal source
of consolation and justification. It is
the fantastic realization of the human essence because the human essence has no
true reality. The struggle against
religion is therefore indirectly a fight against the world of which religion is
the spiritual aroma.[ii]
Perhaps the most formidable obstacle in the task of retrieving a sense of the sacred in Marx consists in his repeated, and often polemical, statements against religion. Indeed, such an obstacle may in the end be one of our own making, as we are trapped within the labyrinth of our own historical understanding.[iii] Yet, assuming, for the moment, that religion and the sacred are the same phenomena, if we take his pronouncement that religion is the opium of the people in isolation, we may be lead to believe that Marx felt that at best religion - and thus the "sacred" - is a narcotic, which while it may be utilized to alleviate pain, remains an illusory amelioration for a situation of despair. Religion as an opiate not only implies sedation from the pain of a life of exploitation, but also suggests a systematic and strategic attempt to deaden or absorb any critical impulse to liberation. In this sense, Marx’s characterization of religion as an opiate is a forerunner to many of the most radical criticisms of religion in Twentieth Century theology and philosophy – Gutierrez, Miranda, Bultmann, Heidegger and Bataille. Each of these thinkers, in his own way, articulated a sense of the sacred in the wake of Marx and his deconstruction of religion as an ideology.
The kinship which is shared by each of these thinkers is a
disdain for mere religion in favour of the “sacred”.[iv]
Religion simultaneously constructs a “picture” (Bild)
for contemplation (Anschauung) and an
organization that cultivates our captivity to that “picture”. The sacred, on the contrary, indicates
obligation and commitment, and an engaged, affirmative eruption of liberation
amidst finite existence. Religion
constructs its eternal church as an everlasting perpetuation of the “picture”,
of an idol, while the sacred exults in this moment of lived existence,[v]
in the haeccitas of Duns Scotus. If religion is a “rational” and ‘systematic’
orchestration of feeling and phenomena, the sacred is an attempt to seek access
to a phenomenon beyond the array of objectification towards traces of the numen.
Indeed, for Otto, one need merely begin amidst this singular event.
In light of this preliminary
distinction between religion and the sacred, it will be the task of Marx and the Sacred to excavate and disclose
in the writings and historical activism of Marx an affirmative sense of the
sacred which is alterior to his inherently negative conception of
religion. Amid Marx’s empathy with the
"sigh of the oppressed creature", we can glimpse a sense of the
sacred dissociated from a religious leviathan that merely serves
to perpetuate suffering - a sacred that exists as a radical commitment to
liberation. In this way, I will contend
that Marx’s criticism of religion as an ideology of oppression and sedation in
no way forecloses on a possible relationship with Twentieth Century attempts to
articulate a sense of the sacred. There
emerges in these latter attempts the possibility of an openness which
lays out a space for a personal encounter with a sense of a sacred not mediated
by ideology.
In this way, that which will be
disclosed as the “unity” and coherence in these encounters of Marx with
different strands of Twentieth century theology and philosophy is the inner
kernel of “obligation” and “commitment”, of affirmation, against nihilism and
oppression - this "inner kernel" is an openness to the Sacred. That which is sought is an indication in
Marx’s writings and advocacy of a personal expression and articulation of the
Sacred which transcends both scientific prognostication and political advocacy. What we seek is the deeper ground of the
Sacred in Marx.
Otto suggests in the first part of
his seminal work The Idea of the Holy[vi]
that there is a non-rational, non-moralistic, and obscure feeling, a
fascination and dread, in the wake of the numinous,
the Mysterium Tremendum,
the Augustus, which intimates to the
mortal self a radically overwhelming and power of the holy, of the Sacred. Such an apprehension stands outside of the
rationalist, moralistic program of mere
religion as ideology, of the merely
Apollonian. It is that which stimulates, arouses the mortal being to affirm the
sacred – in the well of feeling, amidst this Dionysian eruption of the
event. Such an incitement enacts and
intimates a sense of the sacred amid the world – expressed in poetry, the work
of art, and praxiς. It is a call to a radical phenomenology of the sacred – not of rationalist
morality or dogma – of mere religion
- but of a sacred affirmation, one which is situated, for Marx, amidst the
historical topos of Capital.
Ideology is a picture which,
problematically, indicates the truth of the world. A picture is untimely – de-temporalized - and thus, the notions, pictures of the
“natural” – of species, population, nation, race, and humanity are merely
idealizations (and erasures) of the concrete situations of lived existence…
this place of strife, conflict and love.
An “ideal unity” and ultimate meaning, picture, of “life” is an ideology
which operates as an erasure of a temporality of liberation amid this fractured existence of an alleged “humanity” – another ideology.
For Marx, there exists a temporal and existential dialectic of action amidst a
discordant and coercive matrix of terrestrial power. This dialectic indicates the actuality of
freedom, of a free existence. Yet,
Marx’s commitment to such an emerging actuality of freedom comes into conflict
with religion as a disciplinary matrix of the individual soul. However, if we can agree that mere religion plays a negative or
sedative role in the thought of Marx, this does not preclude the possibility of
an existential or ethical openness to an affirmation of the sacred. Indeed, as I will seek to show, the very
criticism of religion by Marx is, in the context of his writings and actions,
indicates an affirmation of the sacred. That which is essential is an openness
which, following Otto, Bonhoeffer, Eliade, Altizer and others,
enacts a personal commitment which transcends, overwhelms, the self –
existentially prior to the posited ‘stems’ of “theory” and “practice” – this
moment of an ecstatic ‘event’ beyond, but as, existence.[vii]
The texts that bring me directly to
the sacred in Marx are his early poetry (and the traces of his poiηsiς
which emerge throughout his life and later works). I will attempt to enact a retrieval of the sacred in
his early poetry and writings which explicitly affirm a personal, existential
obligation and commitment to revolution.
We can find a beginning of his lifelong commitment in his
early poetic writings - before philosophy.
I refuse to simply dismiss these
works as merely immature eruptions of "enthusiasm" (that would be to
rubber-stamp the notion of linear temporal development of a thinker – into
periods - which I think is suspect).
Marx may have supplemented his early writing of poetry with the concrete
texts of the epigramist
and social theorist, but the traces
of the poetic opening which signal his affirmation, his obligation, intersect
his entire so-called mature work, from the literary and rhetorically dramatic
works such as The Communist Manifesto,
the Eighteenth Brumaire,
The Holy Family to the traces of his
early poetic awareness in his many key references to Shakespeare in Capital and his earlier Contribution and Grundrisse. His opening, and
beginning, in poiηsiς
stands in contrast, but is ultimately complementary to, his notion of praxiς . His poetry marks the breach in the usual depiction of
his work as merely scientific, or as, Miranda[viii]
writes, “Western”. Marx’s poetry guides
and envelops his “scientific” prose. As
Heraclitus writes, “An unapparent connexion is stronger than an apparent one.”[ix] Marx’s “analysis” is not that of a distinterested observer, abiding safe on the island of
knowledge. He writes amidst the act, in
the trajectory of obligation, commitment and praxiς. His
writings, in this way, could be described as a poetry of existence.[x]
In this light, I am trying to
excavate the sacred impulse expressed in Marx’s poetry, which continues to
underscore and find expression in his works and life. Indeed, beyond the texts and the allusion to
the [un]said, there is the unmistakable affirmation in the life of Marx -
especially in his political advocacy and in his difficult fatherhood. I do not believe we should see Marx as a mere political reductionist,
junky – or as a one-dimensional man[xi]
- he may have been an "atheist"[xii]
with regards the Judeo-Christian or Islamic traditions, but that does not mean
he must stand outside the sacred.[xiii]
In the following, I will begin with
the question of the meaning of Marx in the controversy surrounding the
“continuity” or “discontinuity” of the works of Marx. In Into the Breach: the Meaning of Marx,
I will examine the theory of the “epistemological break” of Althusser and set
forth a criticism which calls for a complete openness to the various works of
Marx. I will next lay out an
interpretation of the extant statements made by Marx concerning religion as
such in Marx's Criticism of Religion,
providing a critique of ideology as Weltanschauung
(World-view, contemplation) which seeks to forbid a strategy of interpretation
which is oriented to praxiς. I will follow this with the development of a
distinction between religion and the Sacred in From Religion to the Sacred.
I will contrast the terrestrial requirements of religious production and
reproduction with the dysteleological (Otto and Urpeth) affirmation of the Sacred in the moment. In light of this distinction and its
relationship to Marx’s criticism of religion, I will next consider the
relationship of revolutionary thought to the Sacred in Sacred Rebellion and Marx. I
will consider the role of the sacred in the works of Gustavo Gutierrez and Jose
Miranda in light of their commitment to liberation of the poor. In the wake of their explicit affirmation of
Marx’s criticism of capitalist exploitation, I will question the purist
interpretation of Marx’s critique of ideology in light of an explicit capacity
for resistance in a radicalised – Miranda would say “true” - Christianity. I will next turn to a consideration of the
relationship of Marx to 20th Century Theology in Marx and Twentieth Century Radical Theology. Rudolph Bultmann will serve as the exemplar
of this historical movement in theology.
I will be examining the affinities and differences between Bultmann’s
project of de-mythologization and Marx’s criticism of
ideology in light of the notions of ‘obligation’ and ‘commitment’. In a specification of the sense of Marx’s
commitment, I will next consider the Heidegger’s radical criticism of Marx as a
mere “man of action”. Marx, Heidegger and ‘eigentlichkeit’
will raise the question the sense of the sacred (or lack thereof) with respect
to the existential decision of commitment and action. I will disagree with Heidegger’s contention
that Marx failed to articulate a pre-theoretical understanding of existence and
world. I will contend that Heidegger’s
portrayal of Marx as a mere “man of
action” fails to appreciate the depth of Marx’s personal obligation and
commitment to a radical historical transformation of the world. It is Marx’s poetry which allows us a
plausible dismissal of Heidegger. Amid
the horizon of the same question, I will explore the intercourse betwixt Marx
and the post-structuralist thinker, writer, and
activist Georges Bataille in A Violent Sacred: Marx and Bataille. I
will explore the various pathways for such a commitment, the most significant
of which is Marx’s advocacy of violent (“on the outside, trying to get inside”)
revolution as perhaps the most explicit indication of a sacred affirmation in
Marx – but in a negative, actively nihilist, sense.
Without downplaying the necessity
of Marx’s commitment to a revolutionary social transformation of the world, I
will explore the possibility of an affirmative
sense of the sacred in Marx, beyond the sacrificial logic of mere political and social violence. The event
of dialectical praxiς, of
revolution, as an intimacy of thought and action, forecloses on a merely voluntarist (or,
on the contrary, “scientific”) interpretation of Marx. Seeking a more thoughtful and poetic Marx, I
will begin to delve into the inner kernel of his thought in A Retrieval of the Sacred in Marx, a
hermeneutical examination of his early poetry in which he allows himself to
express an explicit affirmation of the Sacred.
I will investigate the poems Transformation,
Creation and Awakening. This
consideration of Marx’s early poems will also provide the avenue for
re-thinking the meaning of his later works.
In this sense, we can, in the
spirit of Reiner Schürmann[xiv]
read Marx backward in a desire to come to grips with the root of his
affirmation. Yet, differing from the
reading the works of Heidegger, we must read Marx forwards, and then
backwards, in a circle, as it were, so as to attempt to cast into relief not only
Marx's own consistent existential and social eqos,
but also his affirmation of revolution
as an event amidst this finite moment.
Chapter 1:
Into the Breach – the Meaning of “Marx”
Before we can begin to grapple with our question of the
“relation” of Marx and the sacred, we must undertake a more preliminary
investigation of the meaning of Marx. This philological problem
that stands in our face is the question of the various – and often mutually
exclusive - interpretations of the very topoς of Marx. On its face, such diversity of interpretation
should indeed be encouraged. Yet, in
many instances, interpretation has been over-determined by “political”
exigency. Like a contortionist, Marx has
been forced into one posture after another in order to justify a specific
political program. Of course, this is no
surprise as Marx himself was a highly political and politicised thinker. However, as “politics” concerns not necessarily
truth, but mere power and strategy, we will be careful not to allow
“Marx” to be manufactured as just another ideology. There must be an attempt to remain faithful
to the texts and life of Marx so as to disclose the meaning of his work beyond
the fleeting projections of political expediency.[xv] There is no “Marx” an sich, there for
our immediate reckoning – there is no “agreed framework”. Amidst a vast topography of interpretation,
we can apprehend many variants of the formal indicator “Marx”. Yet, it would seem possible to allow the
texts to speak for themselves – in the first instance, through a consideration
of all of Marx’s corpus as a whole.
Such contortions and renderings took place in Marx’s own
lifetime. One need only recall the
well-known anecdote of his dissension at a meeting of the Second International,
in which he declared, in response to a particular interpretation of his
political economic theories, that he was not a Marxist. The question of the meaning of Marx continued
in the theoretical controversies – especially those concerning Capital –
in the formation of the Third International between Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg,
Hilferding and others. A more recent
controversy concerns the status of his early writings, such as the Economic
and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844).
This controversy however is unique.[xvi]
Unlike the earlier theoretico-political disputations which concerned the
interpretation of available texts, such as the drafts of Capital, this
controversy is a contestation over the very texts which may be included
in the relevant opus of Marx. This
dispute is a struggle between two of the most dominant tendencies in Marx
interpretation since 1932. It concerns a
decision on the part of the interpreter upon the relevance of Marx’s earlier
works, many of which were unpublished.
It was not until this year that Marx’s early writings began to be
published, including the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, his
Dissertation on the differences between Epicurus and
Democritus, his critique of Hegel’s doctrine of the state, his poetry,
etc. All of these texts are forcefully
suppressed by Althusser. Yet, we ask -
why?
It may be significant that none of the earliest Communist
thinkers ever read these earlier texts – although it will be argued that no
book is a prerequisite for the event of revolutionary praxiς. Yet, it is certain that, with the publication
of these works, many party-affiliated “communist” intellectuals dismissed the
libertarian sentiments and philosophical concerns of these works as
pre-scientific and idealist. Indeed,
such an opinion held sway as later interpreters such as Althusser declared
Marx’s early writings irrelevant to that which should be deemed as his true
achievement – a science of history. For
Althusser, the early writings are too close in affiliation with Hegelian and
post-Hegelian idealism and thus do not achieve the level of science. For Althusser, and the many who follow this
view,[xvii]
Marx had undertaken an “epistemological break” in his displacement of
philosophy by scientific materialism. In
this way, Althusser represents the variant of “Marx” interpretation which
posits a discontinuity in his work – he is a “discontinuity theorist”. On the other side of this great divide are
those who have emphasized the significance of Marx’s early studies of
alienation and his libertarian vision of communist revolution. Such thinkers, such as Ollman,[xviii]
wish to envision Marx’s work as in continuity, as a network of internal
relations, in becoming, and as a result, have to a great extent re-cast the
interpretation of Marx’s later works in the light cast by the earlier
philosophical works. In this context,
such thinkers could be described as “continuity theorists”.
In the absence of any explicit repudiation by Marx of his
earlier work, it is the contention of this strand of Marx interpretation that
there is no need to censor or suppress the reading and interpretation of
these texts. In other words, there is no
need to accept the meaning of Marx which has been handed to us by
Althusser et. al.. Indeed, it will be
argued below that all of Marx’s later insights were originally developed in his
early works. Capital did not
simply fall from the sky, and this text exhibits traces of these early
works.
In the following, I will argue for the significance of Marx’s
earlier works. While there is never a
total continuity in any life, witnessed as a coherent field of discontinuous
events, I feel there is no essential incompatibility between the early and
later works. Yet, not only will I argue for
the necessity of investigating Marx’s early philosophical work, but I will also
argue that Marx’s poetry must be included in the “Canon”. Indeed, I will contend that Marx perhaps
undertook a break, but one differing in character from that proposed by Althusser. That which erupts in Marx is a poetic space
in which he began to explore the sense and contours of obligation and
commitment, of the sacred, a space, as with dasein in Heidegger or the
ethical in Levinas, where an alterior sensibility is disclosed which is not
articulated via the theoretical and practical ‘logics’ of rational
organization. There has been no
significant treatment of Marx’s poetry which is usually described, as with
Nietzsche and his poetic and musical works, as early enthusiasms – at the worst
embarrassing, at the best, irrelevant.
In the following, I will begin with an examination and criticism of
Althusser’s interpretation of the meaning of Marx and of his suppression of the
latter’s earlier works. On the basis of
this examination and criticism, I will articulate an argument for the inclusion
of the early works in the corpus of texts which will be the topos for an interpretation of
the meaning of Marx. I will contend
that this inclusivity is necessary in order to ask what have become forbidden
questions.
Althusser:
Marxism as a New Science
Althusser allows for no ambiguity in
the question of the meaning of Marx.
Indeed, he is very clear that it is not even a matter of
interpretation. The question of an interpretation of Marx is not even
raised. In fact, such a possibility is
suppressed. In his lecture, “Lenin and
Philosophy”, given to the French Society of Philosophy in February 1968,
Althusser sets forth a rhetorically “scientific” picture of Marx. This picture indicates a situation in which a
reduction is being offered as a new continent, a new episteme, as that which destroys
that which is there in the initiation of a discursive formation, a new
science. And for him, this is the only
picture which ultimately matters. He simply
states that Marx’s early works deserve no consideration – perhaps, in that they
are children of their times – they are “philosophical” in the worse sense of
the word – a “false path”.[xix] Philosophy becomes a mere rumination upon
itself and its own questions – divorced from historical considerations,
questions of its own implication in the materialist regime and dissemination of
capitalist power. Althusser states that
philosophy – even critical or post-critical – remains implicated in a regime of
indoctrination in an educational system which is part and parcel of the
ideological state apparatus. No matter
what, philosophy, as orchestrated in a system of education amid a class
society, serves to propagate capitalist ideology in those who are forced into
the indenture servitude of the student.
Philosophy, as it is, cannot escape its status as ideology, on
its own. It needs an intervention from
the outside - a theory of philosophy as a “false path”.
For Althusser, such an “outside” is
intimated and demonstrated in some works of Marx. He points to two traces in the works of the
Marx, the Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach and the statement in the German
Ideology that this latter work is written to “settle accounts with an
erstwhile philosophical consciousness”.
Althusser casts the Eleventh Thesis as a premonition of a breach
with philosophy in an attempt to articulate a new science of material
history. The German Ideology,
which was also unpublished, is also interpreted as a displacement of philosophy
via a materialist science of history. Of
all the early works, Althusser focuses only upon the Eleventh Thesis,
and he is only concerned with the first phrase, “The philosophers have only
interpreted the world”. Philosophy in
this way is only ideology – ‘interpretation’ is ideology. For Althusser, the “authentic” significance
of Marx is that he is concerned with a science of the world. This science is articulated not only in the German
Ideology but also in Capital and other political economic
works.
Despite his earlier criticism of philosophy as being a mere
indoctrination system, Althusser states that there is, in the current period,
no exit from the categories and labels which will serve to orient the meaning
of Marx with respect to the division of concepts into science, philosophy,
sociology, etc. In this way, Althusser
seems to accept the academic division of labour of capitalist indoctrination,
despite his resistance to this regime.
Indeed, he projects this division upon Marx in the distinction between
philosophy and science. Upon the basis
of this projection, Althusser suppresses the early philosophy work of Marx in
order to orchestrate a particular meaning for the later, so-called scientific
works. With the early works excised, the
later works can be pictured as pursuits of “objective knowledge”, of science,
intellectual praxiς - within the limits of reason alone. Indeed, it could be argued, against
Althusser, that in such a divorcement of context, these works could in the end
be interpreted according to whatever paradigm or ideological context that one
may choose.
That which is significant for
Althusser is the explication of the “operation” of philosophy, one which gives
off the reek of ideology. It is amidst
this realisation that philosophy is a regime of ideology that it becomes
possible to elaborate a theory and a description of philosophy as a “false
path”. With this realization, it becomes
possible not only to understand the implication of philosophy in a regime of
indoctrination but also to articulate the possibility of a theoretical
intervention which displaces the stratagems of ideology in favour of an
unveiled disclosure of concrete “reality”.
In this way, we can see Althusser’s address on Lenin as such an
intervention.
Althusser purports a scenario in
which Marx breaks from philosophy. His
evidence is, on one hand, the “philosophical emptiness” that is allegedly
exhibited in the wake of the “epistemological break” announced in The German
Ideology. Althusser seems to merely
accept the academic definitions or pictures of philosophy – not only as a
separate discipline, distinct from the others, but also as specific portrait of
philosophy as an ontological discourse akin to religion and ethics, each
conceived in an idealist sense. Althusser
declares that, even if we can accept his definition, Marx never again, after
the break, wrote philosophy, he was no longer engaged in “interpretation” but
emerged into the Real, the Science of Concrete Historical
What was announced
in the Theses on Feuerbach was, in the necessarily philosophical
language, of a declaration of rupture with all ‘interpretive’ philosophy,
something quite different from a new philosophy: a new science, the science of
history, whose first, still infinitely fragile foundations Marx was to lay in
The German Ideology.[xx]
Althusser
characterizes Marx’s “philosophical emptiness” as the proclamation of the
“radical suppression of all existing philosophy…”[xxi] The emptiness is the awakening of the
“fullness of a science.”[xxii] Althusser attributes to Marx a suppression of
philosophy as it is a “hallucination”, “mystification”, and a “dream” – as it,
in other words, abides some relation with the imagination, poetry, or art.[xxiii] Althusser asserts,
Philosophy, like
religion and ethics, is only ideology, it has no history, everything which
seems to happen in it really happens outside it, in the only real history, the
history of the natural life of men, known by the action which reveals it by
destroying the ideologies that veil it: foremost among these ideologies is
philosophy.[xxiv]
The
veil of philosophy must be torn asunder as it is merely a manufactured article
of a capitalist imagination. The new
science will suppress and destroy philosophy as an imaginative artefact (poiηsiς) in order to allow the
World of the Real – Science – to emerge as a new source for knowledge. The character of this new episteme, the new science (scientia) is a system of concepts, a nexus which
displaces a mere play among “ideological notions.”[xxv]
In order to cast his theory, his
interpretation of “Marx”, into relief, Althusser sets out a topographical
metaphor of the sciences as regional formations, as continents, of the World of
Science. The formation of each continent
occurs in an epistemological break. We
can imagine the breaking off of continents in the terrestrial drift of plate
tectonics. The break is destructive, but
also creative or formative of novelty, in this case, of a new “real” – science
– a new episteme. Among the continents
Althusser identifies are Mathematics (including its sub-grouping Logic),
Physics (including Chemistry and Biology), and perhaps, Althusser muses, a
continent that has been opened up by Freud.
Yet, Althusser is more certain about the new continent opened by Marx,
although, in the manner of a good scientist, he sets forth this theory as a
hypothesis, as a proposition, one that is to be put to the test. Althusser proposes,
Marx has opened up
to scientific knowledge a new third scientific continent, the continent of
History, by an epistemological break whose first still uncertain strokes are
inscribed in The German Ideology, after having been announced in the Theses
on Feuerbach.[xxvi]
Althusser
reassures us that he is only testing the possibility of this new
continent. We are to judge along with
him. Indeed, this break, this event, is
not, as he warns, instantaneous. Such an
event becomes apparent in the midst of a historical re-organization of concrete
existence, occurring in the wake of such a breach. Indeed, that which we consider to be an
instantaneous novelty could be the fruit or recurrence of an ancient
longing. Yet, even in its subtlety and
its requirement of patience, Althusser wishes to apply his theory of an
epistemological break to the question of the meaning of Marx. He states,
In fact, the
operation of these reorganizations, which affect essential concepts and their
theoretical components, can be observed empirically in the sequence of Marx’s
writings: in the Manifesto and The Poverty of Philosophy of 1847,
in the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy of 1859, in Wages,
Prices and Profits of 1865, in the first volume of Capital in 1867,
etc.[xxvii]
As
we have heard, the break is announced in the Theses on Feuerbach and
given a few preliminary strokes in The German Ideology. In an uncritical positivist vein, Althusser
states that the subsequent texts exhibit empirical evidence of a
re-organization in the wake of the breach.
Moreover, this is a scientific break, a declaration of
independence of Scientia from Sophia. The implications of this break are radical
and manifold. In the midst of this
event, philosophy must remain silent, it must be suppressed as it is. Working from a rather academic and political,
or, in other words, Platonic, definition of philosophy, Althusser states, in
reference to Lenin,
Lenin began his book
State and Revolution with this simple empirical comment: the State has
not always existed; the existence of the State is only observable in class
societies. In the same way, I shall say:
philosophy has not always existed; the existence of philosophy is only
observable in a world which contains what is called a science or a number of
sciences. A science in the strict sense:
a theoretical, i.e. ideal (idéelle) and
demonstrative discipline, not an aggregate of empirical results.[xxviii]
Althusser
draws a broad conclusion from this observation, indicated, we will recall, in
the context of a discussion of the emergence into the Light of a new episteme, a new science of
History. In order to clarify the
relation between philosophy and science in this context, Althusser invokes
Hegel’s myth of the Owl of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom who only flies at
dusk. Minerva/Athena born from the head
of Jupiter/Zeus evokes a philosophy of evening and Night. Yet, as Althusser is not open to the
influence of such a Night upon the contours of the new day, he focuses merely
upon that which he calls the dawn – science - that which could, in the end, if
he is mistaken, be the longest and darkest of nights. Althusser enters a mythological topoς, but retains the
posture of an ‘objective scientist’.
Philosophy is not yet, it is a possible recurrence under certain
specific conditions. He states,
Philosophy is this
always a long day behind the science which induces the birth of its first form
and the rebirth of its revolutions, a long day which may last years, decades, a
half-century or a century.[xxix]
Althusser
thus offers us, at a lag, the possibility of a new philosophy. The pre-scientific philosophy will be
suppressed either directly or indirectly in the wake of the scientific epoce. Indeed, any new
philosophy must be born from the scientific inducement of an epistemological
break. Succumbing, perhaps, to this warmed-over Hegelian myth, Althusser states
that a Marxist philosophy will arise only in the newly founded neighbourhood of
a Marxist science of History. In a very
poetic, though bastardised, vein, Althusser states,
The day is always
long, but as luck would have it, it is already far advanced, look: dusk will
soon fall. Marxist philosophy will take
wing.[xxx]
It
is in this way that Althusser bids farewell to philosophy as it has and does
exist – he welcomes an eclipse, a new dark age.
He embraces the philosophical primitivism of Lenin (and of Engels) as
this is interpreted as a sign of an emergence of a primitive consciousness of
the “concrete” from behind the veil of ideology. The day is long, it is not yet dusk. A new philosophy is to be reborn, recur, amid
complex re-organizations of philosophy in the wake of the “epistemological
break”. Perhaps, it smoulders as the
“unknown continent” of Freud, a student of Nietzsche. Yet, despite the rhetorical tentativeness of
his “proposition” of Marxist history as a new continent, Althusser reiterates
his disdain for Marx’s early writings in criticisms of Lukacs
and Gramsci.
Those who cannot wait out the “long day” proclaim a “philosophy of
praxis”, take their point of departure from “Marx”, in proximity to Hegel - not
in the Real of Science.
The topoς of Revolution: a Criticism of Althusser
The meaning of Marx for
Althusser consists in a theory of an “epistemological break” from the false
path, ideology, of philosophy, to the science of History. As stated, this is not a shift from one
philosophy to another, but of one episteme to another. In the wake of this break, all existing
philosophy becomes silent in the wake of a new dispensation of truth. Only after this dawn, after a long day, can
philosophy, at dusk, take flight. In the
context of this narrative, we must forget Marx’s pre-scientific, philosophical
works as these are creatures of a Night that had never known a dawn, have never
set foot upon the ground of a new science.
Althusser never explicitly mentions Marx’s poetry, but in light of his
dismissive reference to “God-builders” among some of the members of Mach’s
circle, it is not difficult to fathom his line on this issue.[xxxi]
It is clear that publication was not
a criterion for Althusser. He had the
benefit to live in the post-1932 generation in which all of Marx’s texts were
available. Yet, on the basis of his
theory of a “Marxist science”, he unflinchingly suppresses all of the texts
which pre-date the Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach. This is a strange decision, especially in
light of his reliance on Hegelian metaphors, but one that operated according to
a quite straight forward logic. From the
latter text, Althusser deduces that it is interpretation that is illusory, and
in The German Ideology, he points out that Marx wishes to “settle
accounts” with philosophy. From these
facts, Althusser alleges a radical break from “all existing philosophy”. His supporting evidence for this
interpretation is the “philosophical emptiness” which followed the announcement
of the break. Since philosophy is
criticised by Marx and since it is alleged that Marx no longer wrote
philosophy, an epistemological break is certain enough for Althusser that he
will effectively and overtly reject Marx’s earlier works. For him, the theory is proven.
An initial point of contention for Althusser’s picture of
Marx is this preliminary scenario in which Althusser defines his terms. Indeed, Althusser’s theory of an
“epistemological break”, as it is applied to “Marx”, remains parasitic upon the
academic division of labour in its definition, planning, orchestration, and
assessment of the boundaries of several disciplines. Foucault, a fallen student of Althusser, will
designate these disciplines as “truth regimes”.
While it may be argued that amidst such a system there is no exit from
its historical limits and horizons, in this case the division of labour, such a
perspective remains blind to other phenomena and possibilities. From an existential perspective, it could be
argued that Marx was not an academic, even though he received his doctorate in
philosophy with a dissertation on Democritus and Epicurus. As his thought is of the “outside”, it is not
clear whether we can understand Marx from the perspective of the academic
division of labour, of its “pictures” and formal specifications of philosophy
and science. It is certainly possible to
conceive of the so-called “scientific works” as explications of truth in a
deeply philosophical sense. Indeed, one
can point out enormous philosophical continuities between Capital for
instance and the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. One could also find a marked similarity
between the German Ideology and Marx’s early poems Transformation,
Creation and The Awakening.
Yet, it is upon this political-academic division that Althusser sets his
application of the theory of the epistemological break (although this is not
necessary, but a different sense of such a breach could alter the limits of
“canonical” texts). In a rather crude
way, Althusser lays out his theory of a “philosophical emptiness” on the basis
of these academic demarcations. In his
indication of the signs of a re-organization in philosophy, he lists the works
on political economy which followed The German Ideology and the Theses
on Feuerbach. Althusser seems to
naively accept the disciplinary division between philosophy and political
economy and of history without question.
Since Marx is centered on political economics, he is not focussed upon
philosophy. And thus, he has broken with
philosophy… Althusser cannot let himself
conceive of Capital as a philosophical work, as a pathway of
articulation which discloses of logoς of truth.
Even if we, just for an instant,
submit to this logic of identity and discipline to which Althusser seems to
have already acquiesced, we may question the “identity” projected upon Marx’s
texts (and the blind violence to the eqoς and poihsiς of Marx’s life).
Indeed, it would seem that Althusser reifies the academic division of
labour into a historical necessity and forgets the bios of the street. Within the same parameters of evidence, of
the Eleventh Thesis and The German Ideology, and the later string
of works on political economy, we could give a radically different
interpretation than that proposed by Althusser.
In the first instance, as already suggested, these works are
explications of the conditions and limits of truth in a philosophical sense. Indeed, Marx shares with Althusser a
criticism of idealist philosophies in all of the texts which precede The
German Ideology. Yet, his so-called
scientific works are not only seeking truth, but are orchestrated conceptually
according to familiar philosophical patterns.
For instance, the analysis of money in the Contribution to a Critique
of Political Economy is hardly the articulation of a simple empirical
fact. It is a highly orchestrated and
post-Hegelian analysis of the dialectical conditions for the emergence of the
social relationship of money. The significance
of Marx’s transformative appropriation of Hegelian dialectics with respect to
his portrayal of the myriad social relationships amid the capitalist era, a
philosophical strategy that is shared by the Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts, Introduction to a Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State
and the Contribution, and indeed, Capital, is Marx’s concern to
intimate the existential situation of concrete estrangement in the capitalist
era.
Moreover, as Marx is not merely a “scientist” or an “epistemologist”,
but a revolutionary and a finite human being, his emphasis upon the
estrangement of human existence also abides an indication of pathways, of praxiς, which may
transform this temporal situation.
Perhaps, if we were working from that reductionistic agenda as
Althusser, we could consent to the picture of Marx as a “scientist.” Yet, this would be blind to not only a much
broader and richer expression of the desire for truth that is philosophy, but
also the deep philosophical and ‘categorial’ background
to any alleged scientific “fact”.
Moreover, as I will argue below, it is not even a question of whether or
not Marx wrote philosophy, but that he wrote at all, and in many voices
throughout his life. This pluri-vocity[xxxii]
exhibits a continuity and maturation of insights that emerged quite early, as
we will see. Perhaps we could assent to
Althusser’s epistemological break, but understood as an existential breach, we
would wish to resituate the “event” not merely in the early philosophy, but in
Marx’s poetry, an expression which indicates the emergence of a profound
questioning which took placed amid his first readings of Hegel and
Schelling. Without such considerations,
Althusser’s picture of Marx is, to invoke Rosa Luxemburg, quite “bloodless”.
Indeed, Althusser himself descends
from the pedestal of positive science to that of metaphor, of poeisis, on three significant
occasions. His first excursion into
poetry is his attribution of “philosophical emptiness” to Marx in the wake of
the birth of the new science of History.
This formulation has an existentialist ring in its statement that Marx
is nothing that is philosophical, he is empty of philosophy. Yet, as we will see in Althusser’s other uses
of metaphor, his attempts ultimately fail as he seems to be unable to see the
internal relations of the metaphor amid the nexus of concrete existence and
thus the possibility of differing and myriad interpretations of a
metaphor. For instance, perhaps Marx’s
“emptiness” could imply that “Marx” is in need of philosophy or of a
existential “interpretation” which explicates the philosophical continuity in
the later works, or, to throw out another metaphor, that he is an empty vessel
longing for a philosophy. While Althusser
may chose the latter version, it is clear that not only are there many possible
readings of this situation, but also that, as I have indicated, there is a
manifest kinship between Marx’s “early” and “later” works.
Althusser’s second significant
metaphor, that of epistemic continents, is applied to Marx to show that there
is an epistemological break between the early and later works – indeed, it is
this theory which sets up this distinction in its agenda of constituting a
“science” of History. I have conceded
that the meaning of Marx could be, in a significant way, associated with a
breach, but not one which could be described in terms of the academic and
political nomenclature of the day.
Marx’s radical criticism, his breach, I will argue, begins in his poetry
and unfolds throughout the trajectory of his works, as a literary praxis. It should be said that Althusser’s topography
points to a topos of expression that is the finite existence of “Marx”. A sensitivity to phenomena and existence may allow
us to take a step back into the deeper ground of Marx’s breach from the
labyrinth of ideological indoctrination and of his creative transformation of
the intimate kinship of truth and praxiς - an ‘outside’ which seeps in,
as in the Masque of the Red Death of Poe. Perhaps, Althusser would
simply dismiss such considerations as a descent into psychology, biography,
anthropology – or, god forbid, the “existentialisms” of Heidegger and
Sartre. Such notions still persist in
the Night before the dawn.
Indeed, such a relationship between
Night and the dawn is prominent in Althusser’s use of Hegel’s myth to the Owl
of Minerva. As we have seen, Althusser
places his emphasis upon the dawn as the “epistemological break” which founds a
new continent, a new science. It is only
after the dawn, after a long day, that dusk will descend upon the world. At such a time, [Marxist] philosophy will
take wing. However, such a hyper-linear
formulation forces philosophy into the role of the vulture which ‘sucks blood
from dead corpse’. Indeed, despite
Althusser’s appeals to the “natural man”, he fails to apprehend the cyclical
implications of his metaphor of dawn, dusk, Night and twilight. Indeed, he projects his linear
“Enlightenment” agenda upon a phenomena which displays itself as akin to a
circle, a recurrence of the same. In
this way, if considered in a circular fashion, it is the Night and the twilight
before the dawn which give birth to this Twilight and Light. Perhaps the dawn is only one moment in a
circle, in which each possessed ultimate significance. It is clear that Althusser’s metaphors bring
with them more questions than answers.
In fact, it is quite simple to subvert his meaning into a differing
interpretation.
Yet, that which is most perplexing
about Althusser’s address on Lenin is the Janus-faced character of his
discourse. On the one hand, he specifies
a reduced terrain of textual relevance in his constitution of the meaning of
“Marx”. On the other, he slips into
metaphors which serve in the end to subvert his initial proposition.[xxxiii] For instance, how can Althusser reject Marx’s
early works due to their “Hegelianism”, and simultaneously justify his
significant reliance on the Hegelian schema of the Owl of Minerva? In light of his own use of metaphor and
poetry, how can Althusser reject Marx’s poetry as the spark of the breach which
announces a different meaning of Marx?
Indeed, a powerful meaning of the Myth of the Owl of Minerva is the deep
gestation of the thought, of lightening from the dark cloud, the birth of
Athena from the head of Zeus, or Apollo from Dionysus. One can neither destroy the kinship of these
powers of existence, nor assert a priority betwixt them. In this way, the poetry and early
philosophical writings of Marx, even on Althusser’s terms, would be the
gestation, the topoς of formulation for the insight of Marx, and are thus
worthy of better treatment than suppression, rejection, and libel. It is this topos which opens a ‘place’ for
an authentic revolutionary praxiς.
As “evidence” for this alternative
interpretation, one which emphasizes the “continuity” amidst the works of Marx,
we can highlight that which is missed in a merely scientific – or
epistemological - interpretation of “Marx”.
As suggested, the kinship between the early and later works, indeed, the
flow amidst differing topographies of expression, from poetry, to philosophy,
political pamphlets and programs plays itself out an a still unfinished legacy
of political economic, philosophical, sociological, and ideological analysis
and deconstruction. “Marx” therefore is
a topoς
of indication and expression, the truth of which would be destroyed if there
was an imposition of a monologicity of meaning, an interpretation, which
in the end forbids all subsequent interpretation. Philosophy as the desire for truth is not
enough for Althusser. He must possess
her, his new episteme. Althusser’s
presumption of concrete historical truth, free of interpretation, is similar to
Hegel’s Absolute Idea. The latter
described his Logic as the “thoughts of god before creation.” It is also significant that Marx placed a
copy of this book upon his desk as he wrote Capital. He also had a physiology textbook on his
desk. These “simple empirical facts”
show the ambiguity which is introduced if we seek to deconstruct the rigid
portrayals of the meaning of a work.
Indeed, it may be suggested that with his consent to the symbolic
division of labour of the academic ideological apparatus, Althusser’s
interpretation of “Marx” as a new science is a commodification
of Marx and is perhaps one of the vanguard of capitalist ideologies. That to which Althusser is blind is the sense
of estrangement and alienation that exists amidst capitalist hegemony. As he does not see the surreal up-side-down world
of the capitalist eqos and bioς, but consents to it
in his adoption of the Hegelian schema, Althusser’s theory becomes a “case
study” of alienation. Not only does it
drift into seemingly non-scientific regions such as metaphor and poetry, but it
also blindly acquiesces to the stratagems of otherwise condemned
philosophers. Yet, amidst the detours
into pictures, a linear reason is preserved as it runs roughshod over the
cyclical or lateral metaphorical topographies.
Althusser suppresses that which does not fit into his schema. However, as we have seen even his break is
problematic as continuities are readily in evidence throughout the works of
Marx. It is in this way that we can ask
questions, such as the sacred, that have been forbidden by the architectonic
rhetoric of Althusser, questions which involve the internal relations between
each and all of the texts – and of life, etc….
Chapter 2:
Marx’s Criticism of Religion
Marx sets forth his first philosophical criticism of religion in
his appropriation of the Feuerbachian humanist criticism and inversion of not
only Hegel, but also of Christianity.
Returning to the poetry of Theognis, such a
sensuous inversion of religion forces us to become, as Bataille has written, disintoxicated[xxxiv]
- no longer to stand upon our heads – but, to see religion as that which it is,
as an abstraction of “real man” into “ideal man”. Such an idealization constitutes alienation
in the loss of agency vis-à-vis this all-too-human artifice which occurs, for
Feuerbach, in the forgetfulness of the concrete origin of the work of art – in
human sensuousness. For Feuerbach, it was simply enough to realise such a loss
and alienation to regain the essence of humanity once and for all – for Marx,
Feuerbach remains an idealist, a contemplative.
The simplicity and genius of
Feuerbach's insight, that God is the ideal representation of the aspiration of the human species, was not
enough for Marx. While he would not
ultimately deny the possibility of flights of desire, of thought and being on
the “outside”, as in a moment of revolutionary aporia, Marx also demanded a
materialist deconstruction of the real
interests of religion, in word, thought and deed. Mere insight, mere thought, could never undo
this material substratum, that configuration of terrestrial power, which
originally sets the hegemonic parameters, horizons for thought – which deny
this eqos of existence. There must be, as the root of any theoretical
activity, on the contrary, a radical dialectical
transfiguration of the real conditions of existence for there to be a
transmutation and alternative disclosure in the ideal reflection or thought of
being.
Marx contends that a criticism of
religion is the pre-requisite for any concrete analysis of the actual social
relationships of human existence.[xxxv] Indeed, a criticism of religion is not merely
an exercise of thought. It requires
resistance to and refusal of its rituals of outward effect. It requires existential praxis.
Religion - as distinct from the sacred - becomes ideology, as it is, for
Marx, an alienated product of an alienated existence. As an alienated activity, amidst a matrix of
systematic alienation, its own self-interpretation is divorced from any
immediate awareness of the conditions of its emergence and maintenance – one
that, with Nietzsche and Bataille, hides its own dark roots. It therefore cannot be anything but a mask
that shrouds the concrete truth of human existence. In this chapter, I will set forth Marx's
criticisms of religion as mere ideology.
While I will argue below that Marx's criticism of religion is already
expressed in his poetry, his initial philosophical
criticism of religion is greatly influenced by Feuerbach, and the humanist
criticism of absolutist idealism. Marx’s
step beyond, towards a materialist criticism of religion, is a
specification and concretization of the insight of Feuerbach. Yet, despite the significant traces of
Feuerbach in the later Marx, as in the notion of fetishism of commodities articulated
in Capital, Marx’s deconstruction of
religion abides the implicit possibility of a retrieval of a non-alienated
sense of the sacred as a concrete human activity and reflexivity via praxiς. While Marx departs from Feuerbach, it is
crucial to the following inquiry that there be a deep continuity in the
writings of Marx. It is this continuity
which must put to rest a greatly misunderstood “epistemological break”. I will
attempt to disclose the contours of this continuity and argue that it is only
from this perspective that we can glimpse, most clearly, the distinction in
Marx between religion and the sacred.
Let us begin with one of Marx’s
most direct statements on mere religion,
Religion is the general theory of that world, its encyclopaedic compendium,
its logic in a popular form, its spiritualistic point d’honneur, its
enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, its universal source of
consolation and justification. It is the
fantastic realization of the human essence because the human essence has no
true reality. The struggle against
religion is therefore indirectly a fight against the world of which religion is
the spiritual aroma.[xxxvi]
As long as "analysis" is
embedded in the grand narratives of idealistic religious instruction, however,
there exists no avenue to explore the intimate trajectories of the way or
manner of temporal irruption of the sacred.
In mere thought, we cannot smell the spiritual aroma of the religious
cult. In this way, religion, as a
concrete indication of existence, is a symptom of an actuality in which
humanity is alienated from its own self-understanding. A desire for a truth of the sacred must
overcome mere thought and the practical, utilitarian stratagems of religion. As I will argue below, such a situation of
alienation indicates a severance of humanity from an authentic sense of the
sacred. Religion as ideology prevents an
awakening to an intimate and authentic sense of the sacred, just as is the case
with those other ideological forms such as mere politics, art and
philosophy. Indeed, if it is possible,
as Marx suggests in the Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts, to achieve via a revolution a non-alienated
sense of social being and social praxiς,
it would seem possible to be able to achieve a non-alienated sense of the
sacred. This would be to indicate a
sense of the sacred which is not merely a phantasmogorical product of mere
thought and ideology, but an authentic singular and social praxis which is liberated from the snares
of a condition of alienation.
Beginning with the Feuerbachian inversion and transformation of the Hegelian dialectic, Marx insists in the Theses on Feuerbach, the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, and in the Introduction to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, that the authentic interests of a "universal humanism" remained enshrouded within an a-historical regime of consciousness in the matrix of religious ideology. In this interpretation, the traditional grand referent "God" and the theological infrastructure articulated on the basis of such a conjecture persists as a lost work of art[xxxvii] - ultimately of human origin, but forgotten in its genealogy. Marx writes that religion is the “self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet found himself or has already lost himself again.”