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Reading Althusser through Mao

admin@kasamaproject.org / March 22, 2015


By DOUG ENAA GREENE
To my friend and comrade, Julia, who is not only the smartest anarchist I know, but who also
made me take Althusser seriously.
In his 1973 Essays in Self-Criticism, French Communist philosopher Louis Althusser penned the
following words:
If we look back over our whole history of the last forty years or more, it seems to me that,
in reckoning up the account (which is not an easy thing to do), the only historically existing
(left) critique of the fundamentals of the Stalinian deviation to be found and which,
moreover, is contemporary with this very deviation, and thus for the most part precedes the
Twentieth Congress is a concrete critique, one which exists in the facts, in the struggle, in
the line, in the practices, their principles and their forms, of the Chinese Revolution.1
What Althusser says here is something that is all too often dismissed by both his admirers and
detractors, that the Chinese Revolution especially the Cultural Revolution provided a living
and breathing correction and overcoming of the limitations of inherited Soviet-style
Marxism (including that practiced by the French Communist Party). Even to many of Althussers
admirers, his flirtation with Maoism is often seen as something bizarre. In fact, Maoism is
widely viewed by large segments of the Western left as just a variant of Stalinism which makes
it fundamentally flawed for revolutionary practice. And the supposed Stalinism of Maoism
therefore provides one of the fundamental flaws of Althussers theoretical effort to reconstitute
Marxist Theory. However, the premise defended here is that Althusser was correct that Maoism
represented a revitalization of the Marxist revolutionary project that he fruitfully utilized to
develop his own ideas. The limit of Althussers project was not his engagement with Maoism,
but that he wasnt to able see that commitment all the way through and remained bound within
the confines of the (non-revolutionary) French Communist Party.
The Chinese Revolution and Maoism2
The distinctive theory and practice of Mao developed following the bloody suppression of the
Revolution in the urban centers in 1927. Following this defeat, Mao Zedong and the surviving
Communist cadre retreated into the countryside where revolutionary warfare among the
peasantry was organized. Mao, breaking with previous communist orthodoxy on how a
revolution was to be in China, and by 1934 achieving independent leadership from Comintern,
developed a new political and military approach for the Chinese Revolution. For the next two
decades, Maos army was able to go from being a ragtag force of poor and hunted outlaws to
leading a mass movement of tens of millions that led the worlds second great socialist
revolution to power in 1949. Following the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China,

Mao and the Chinese Communist leadership initially followed the example of the Soviet Union
in building socialism. However, Mao became increasingly uneasy at the bureaucratic,
conservative and authoritarian tendencies in the Communist Party, divorce between the party and
the masses and the growth of inequality in China which he feared could lead to a restoration of
capitalism. The Chinese road to communism found itself at odds with that of the Soviet Union,
leading to a split in the early 1960s. In 1966, the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution, initiated
by Mao and his supporters saw millions of workers, students and peasants rise up against
capitalist roaders within the CCP.
So what were some of Maos key theoretical innovations to a revitalization of Marxism and
communism in contrast to Soviet dogmatism that Althusser would later draw on? We shall touch
on three here: dialectics, investigation and its relation to political practice, criticism of
Stalin/USSR, continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Following this, we
will then look at how Althusser developed these ideas in his own efforts to renew Marxism.

Mao leading the Chinese Revolution

a. On Practice and On Contradiction


Maos major contributions to Marxist theory can be found in his two philosophical works written
in the mid-1930s, On Practice and On Contradiction. In the former, Mao is concerned with how
do we apply Marxism to achieve knowledge? Mao states that in order to change the world, we
need to understand the world through the knowledge of a thing by being in contact with it. For
example:
If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in
revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience. But one cannot have
direct experience of everything; as a matter of fact, most of our knowledge comes from
indirect experience, for example, all knowledge from past times and foreign lands.3
So what are the levels of knowledge that Mao identifies? The first level of knowledge is
phenomenal. At a phenomenal level of practice, you see the separate aspects and existential
relations of things. For example, say you go to a factory and see the people who work there. All

you see at this level is merely the external relations of things. This is just a perceptual stage of
cognition where you gain knowledge through sense perceptions and impressions. At best the
knowledge gained here gives you a rough sketch of a phenomenon.
From the first level, there is the second level of knowledge. Mao identifies this level as that of
rational knowledge. This is where you go deeper, past the external to the internal. You use the
perceptual knowledge gained from the first level to arrive at a comprehension of the internal
relations of things. Once you see how things operate, you can understand their laws of motion
and how one thing relates to another. Through understanding the internal relations of something
(the position of classes and their struggle, the development of the economy and ideology, etc.),
you see things in their totality (or the whole picture).
For instance, a Marxist doesnt just look at the surface relations of capitalism (exchange in the
market place), but the internal relations (i.e. class struggle, the labor process and the
development of capital, etc.). During this whole process, it is important to remember that a
Marxist is looking at things from the standpoint of the working class and seeking to change the
world.
For Mao, rational knowledge is dependent on perceptual knowledge. Rational knowledge allows
one to deepen knowledge and investigate. Yet Mao says that the movement of knowledge doesnt
end at the second level. It isnt enough to investigate something, but to use that theory to guide
action.
But Marxism emphasizes the importance of theory precisely and only because it can guide
action. If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it
into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance. Knowledge begins with
practice, and theoretical knowledge is acquired through practice and must then return to
practice. The active function of knowledge manifests itself not only in the active leap from
perceptual to rational knowledge, butand this is more importantit must manifest itself in
the leap from rational knowledge to revolutionary practice.4
Mao says that if a correct theory isnt tied to practice, then it is lifeless. It isnt enough to just
debate the laws of capital, but you need to overturn them. Theory needs to be placed in the
service of changing the world in the midst of the class struggle.
There are questions that should be asked about applying a theory to practice. Does a theory
achieve its objectives? (i.e. is a strike at a particular factory the appropriate course? The only
way to know is to test the theory) If the theory works, then certain ideas, plans and programs that
correspond to that theory should be applied. (i.e. the methods used to win a strike could be
applied elsewhere) Yet this doesnt mean that the methods used to win a particular strike can be
applied everywhere and at all times.
According to Mao, knowledge gained from theory can seldom be realized without alteration.
Perhaps at a follow up strike, the union leadership is hostile and other forces would have to be
used. Or the factory owners are using thugs to impose order and the workers may have to take
offensive action. This change in applying theory results because our knowledge is limited. A

theory may not correspond with reality (in part or wholly). If a theory doesnt correspond to
reality, then it is incorrect. In that case, there would need to be more investigation and testing
(through the methodological levels Mao outlines above). This would mean more experimentation
and testing before results can be achieved. In other words, achieving knowledge is not something
achieved once and for all, but is a continuous process.
Central to Maos thinking is that Marxists need to be involved in the process of revolution in
order to change the world. He attacks those so-called revolutionaries who issue orders from the
sidelines without considering circumstances, the totality of a situation, or the contradictions.
Those who do so are using one-sided and subjective methods and are bound to fail in changing
the world.
Mao sums up his method as follows:
Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge. This form repeats itself in
endless cycles, and with each cycle the content of practice and knowledge rises to a higher
level. Such is the whole of the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge, and such is the
dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing.5
As we can see, applying Maos dialectical method is not something that can be done statically. In
On Contradiction, Mao says that we need to recognize that The law of contradiction in
things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics.6
Some of the areas that Mao deals with in regards to contradiction are the following which would
find their way into Althussers work: that in particular social situations, there is a principal and a
non-principal contradiction and the interaction of the base and the superstructure.
For in applying Marxist theory to our investigation, we need to recognize that
Changes in society are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in
society, that is, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of
production, the contradiction between classes and the contradiction between the old and
the new; it is the development of these contradictions that pushes society forward and gives
the impetus for the supersession of the old society by the new.7
This is in line with basic Marxist theory, however Mao goes on and states that while
contradiction is universal in society and nature (without it nothing can exist), each form of
motion contains within itself its own particular contradiction.8 And this means in the
concrete, we have to identify a particular contradiction.
And in each situation, Mao says there are many contradictions in the process of
development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction
whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of
the other contradictions.9 For instance, the principal contradiction in capitalism is that
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Yet in even in this situation, there is also nonprincipal contradictions such as between the feudal class versus the bourgeoisie along with many
others. Depending on the circumstances though, a different particular contradiction can be the

principal one to tackle. And this means that the other contradictions Mao says presents a very
complicated picture of reality. Yet Mao emphasized that at every stage in the development of
a process, there is only one principal contradiction which plays the leading role
Therefore, in studying any complex process in which there are two or more contradictions,
we must devote every effort to funding its principal contradiction. Once this principal
contradiction is grasped, all problems can be readily solved.10 And of course, solving the
principal contradiction is done through social practice.
Yet this is not all according to Mao, for in every situation while we need to focus on the principal
contradiction, the development of contradictions is uneven and always in motion. And as
Marxists, Mao says we must always be conscious of this because
the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction transform themselves into
each other and the nature of the thing changes accordingly. In a given process or at a given
stage in the development of a contradiction, A is the principal aspect and B is the nonprincipal aspect; at another stage or in another process the roles are reverseda change
determined by the extent of the increase or decrease in the force of each aspect in its
struggle against the other in the course of the development of a thing.11
For example, in the case of China in the 1930s was semi-feudal and capitalist with society
dominated by comprador capitalists of Kuomintang, along with landlords throughout the
countryside. This represented a double burden of oppression on the workers and peasants of
China. However, the whole of China was also threatened by invasion and conquest from Imperial
Japan. In analyzing this situation, Mao and the CCP believed that the principle contradiction
facing China was the struggle for national liberation from Japan, the other contradictions being
secondary.
As we have said, one must not treat all the contradictions in a process as being equal but must
distinguish between the principal and the secondary contradictions, and pay special attention to
grasping the principal one. But, in any given contradiction, whether principal or secondary,
should the two contradictory aspects be treated as equal? Again, no. In any contradiction the
development of the contradictory aspects is uneven. Sometimes they seem to be in equilibrium,
which is however only temporary and relative, while unevenness is basic. Of the two
contradictory aspects, one must be principal and the other secondary. The principal aspect is the
one playing the leading role in the contradiction. The nature of a thing is determined mainly by
the principal aspect of a contradiction, the aspect which has gained the dominant position.
Thus depending on the circumstances, a different particular contradiction can be the principal
one to tackle. This allows Mao to break with dogmatic forms of Marxist thinking that state the
principal contradiction In society is always that between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and
that the base always determines the superstructure
for instance, in the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of
production, the productive forces are the principal aspect; in the contradiction between
theory and practice, practice is the principal aspect; in the contradiction between the
economic base and the superstructure, the economic base is the principal aspect; and there

is no change in their respective positions. This is the mechanical materialist conception, not
the dialectical materialist conception. True, the productive forces, practice and the
economic base generally play the principal and decisive role; whoever denies this is not a
materialist. But it must also be admitted that in certain conditions, such aspects as the
relations of production, theory and the superstructure in turn manifest themselves in the
principal and decisive role. When it is impossible for the productive forces to develop
without a change in the relations of production, then the change in the relations of
production plays the principal and decisive role.12
Mao asserts that sometimes politics needs to placed in command with correct ideas, there is a
place for the subjective factor. And he insists that Once the correct ideas characteristic of the
advanced class are grasped by the masses, these ideas turn into a material force which
changes society and changes the world. In their social practice, men engage in various
kinds of struggle and gain rich experience, both from their successes and from their
failures.13
Mao believes that if one is to avoid mechanical materialism, which looks at just how the base
interacts with the superstructure, then we alsoand indeed mustrecognize the reaction of
mental on material things, of social consciousness on social being and of the superstructure
on the economic base.14

Mao addressing soldiers of the Peoples liberation Army.

B. Mass Line
Having looked at Maos philosophical ideas, how do they translate into political practice for the
Communist Party? It is here that he develops one of the distinctive practices for revolutionary
organization the mass line. The mass line was the method of practice that communists
implemented to involve the people in politics. According to Mao, There are two methods

which we Communists must employ in whatever work we do. One is to combine the general
with the particular; the other is to combine the leadership with the masses.15
So what does this mean? For Mao, this means that communists need to study thoroughly and
gain experience in the process (while doing organizing, you might want to keep abreast of
political economy). Revolutionaries should be learning theory and history of a general situation,
while learning the strong and weak points of a particular situation (what does the labor struggle
of a whole country mean at a single factory?). All of this study, which is in fact the general way
communists gain knowledge, is done with a view to changing a particular situation.
In regards to combining leadership with the masses, Mao discusses the methodology as follows:
In all the practical work of our Party, all correct leadership is necessarily from the
masses, to the masses. This means: take the ideas of the masses (scattered and
unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and
systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the
masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action, and
test the correctness of these ideas in such action. Then once again concentrate ideas from
the masses and once again go to the masses so that the ideas are persevered in and carried
through. And so on, over and over again in an endless spiral, with the ideas becoming more
correct, more vital and richer each time. Such is the Marxist theory of knowledge.16
Activists go among the people, they investigate the conditions which they find there (what are
working conditions in the urban ghettos? How is the state acting?). They take the scattered and
often unsystematic ideas of the masses (someone speaks of police brutality, another of unsafe
working conditions, racist discrimination). Remember, these ideas are may not be all that
coherent (some people in the ghetto may protest their conditions, either individually or
collectively, yet accept the basic framework of the system). Revolutionaries need to take these
ideas and via study, turn them into concentrated and systemic ideas (relating a particular
condition to large historical forces). From this, revolutionaries then go back to the masses and
propagate these ideas until the masses accept them as their own, thus translating theory into
action. This is not a one time deal, but the process of from the masses to the masses is done
again and again (this process is similar to the theory of knowledge found in On Practice). All the
while, the revolutionaries link the particular struggle to raising consciousness and fighting for
communism.
Mao saw the mass line as not only the core of communist work, but a way to unite the advanced,
win over the intermediate and isolate the backward. The advanced are those who are struggling
and active in a particular situation. They are also open to communist ideas (if they havent
accepted them already). The intermediate are those who are wavering to the struggle, but can be
won over. The backward are those who are either hostile or indifferent to the struggle.
What revolutionaries need to do is to link up with the advanced detachments of the masses. This
is a key point that Mao stressed. If revolutionaries want to be effective, they have to be active
with the masses, not standing on the sidelines. At the same time, revolutionaries need to raise the

consciousness of the intermediate while seeking to win over or isolate the backward. Through
this process, a revolutionary group is formed in the process of mass struggle.
The philosophical method of Mao: looking at the development of contradictions in the
development of complex social structures, the dynamic interaction of base and superstructure,
the role of practice and investigation by communists, and the mass line were all a sharp break
with prevailing forms of Soviet philosophical and political orthodoxy. And as we shall see later
on, they greatly influenced the political ideas of Louis Althusser.

Soldiers of the Peoples Liberation Army.

c. Peoples War
All this being said, how did Mao apply his ideas to a study of the particular contradictions of the
Chinese social formation? Mao did this by developing the theory of the New Democratic
Revolution. The New Democratic Revolution sought to accomplish the basic tasks of the
bourgeois democratic revolution (land reform, independence, nationalization, economic
development). In orthodox Marxist theory, promoted by the Comintern, this task was supposed to
fall to the national bourgeois. Yet as Mao constantly emphasized, this was a class which was
wrought with contradiction. On the one hand it was was oppressed by foreign capital like the rest
of the nation. The national bourgeois was tied to landlords and rural property relations (which
were often of a feudal nature). In order for a democratic revolution to succeed, those property
relations would have to be challenged. Furthermore the national bourgeois was also an adversary
of the proletariat. If the proletariat was playing an active role in the revolution, would the
national bourgeois not turn its face toward the counterrevolution? Certainly that was a possibility
in the eyes of Mao, the national bourgeois was a vacillating class. It only had the potential
depending on concrete circumstances to act in a revolutionary way.
Mao believed that the national bourgeois could still be a potential ally of the proletariat (which
was interested in overthrowing foreign capital) and the peasantry (who desired land reform) and
the petty-bourgeois. Mao argued for an alliance with those forces that had an interest in the
democratic revolution. Yet in this alliance, the proletariat party was to have leadership and
independence. Considering that when the Chinese Communists were in alliance with the

Nationalist Party in 20s, they had surrendered both leadership and independence, being
slaughtered in the process, Maos ideas make sense. Mao believed that this four class alliance
would establish a common (or peoples) dictatorship upon liberation.
Mao believed, that at the heart of the New Democratic Revolution was the transformation of a
semi-colonial and feudal society not under the leadership of the bourgeoisie, but by the
proletariat. And even though Mao recognized that the New Democratic Revolution suppressed
the comprador bourgeoisie (tied with imperialism), and even though the NDR retained private
capitalist enterprise, this was to create the prerequisites for socialism (indeed the NDR was
largely completed in China by 1956 when many capitalists were simply bought out). And unlike
many in the Communist Party who saw the NDR as a protracted phase, Mao looked at
overcoming.
And if the New Democratic Revolution in China was supposed to be accomplished under the
leadership of the proletariat, how did that manifest itself in practice? This was done through the
development of base areas in China which were an alternative form of popular power, the
development of a broad hegemonic alliance of oppressed classes, and a different mode of warfare
from the enemy.
While Mao believed that the development of base areas and a Red army was specific to China
and tied to the weakness of the state apparatus, splits in the ruling class, prolonged wars, the
development of a national and democratic revolutionary movement, and a revolutionary crisis
along with a strong Red Army and Communist Party organization.17 While Red Political Power
was able to exist in these conditions in China, the ruling class and its state still possessed
formidable power and an army of considerable power. The Red Army by contrast during this
period was quite small and could not directly challenge the armies of the Chinese state in a
frontal war of movement (nor would they do so until the final phase of the revolutionary war
during the late 1940s).
While Mao never disavowed the final goal of the revolutionary offensive, he understood that the
nature of the war (against both Chiang Kai-Shek and later the Japanese) the Communists faced
was protracted and that they needed to plan for the long haul. As Mao argued, the first phase of
the war was that of the strategic defensive, when our strategic situation and policy when the
enemy is on the offensive and we are on the defensive; by strategic offensive we mean our
strategic situation and policy when the enemy is on the defensive and we are on the offensive.18
This meant recognizing the numerical and military superiority of the enemy and fighting
accordingly.
Part of the way, Mao envisioned fighting the enemy was by adopting a strategy of pit one
against ten and our tactics are pit ten against one this is one of our fundamental
principles for gaining mastery over the enemy.19 This meant fighting with small-scale
guerrilla attacks, surprising the enemy, luring them to unfavorable ground and ambushing them,
assaulting their rear, and the guerrillas needed to strike the enemy with overwhelming numbers.
The strategy here is to force the enemy to spread themselves out, harassing him all along the line,
where he is weakest and then to annihilate him one by one. 20

While Mao took his adversaries seriously in a tactical sense, he despised them all strategically.
As Mao explained
We have developed a concept over a long period for the struggle against the enemy, namely,
strategically we should despise all our enemies, but tactically we should take them all
seriously. In other words, with regard to the whole we must despise the enemy, but with
regard to each specific problem we must take him seriously.21
For Mao recognized that whether his enemy was Chiang Kai-Shek, the Japanese Empire, or US
Imperialism these forces possessed no popular support, its policies were opposed by the people
and they all oppressed and exploited the masses and the way they waged warfare reflected that.
Mao and the Communists by contrast fought differently. Although Mao never neglected military
matters in terms of war, he believed that the political came first. And the first priority of the Red
Army was not to defend territory (he was quite willing to retreat if needed) or stage an offensive,
but political mobilization raising the consciousness of the people and involving them directly
in the war.
This was reflected in the class character of Maos peoples army which was not a traditional
army, but a peoples army that is disciplined, politically conscious, and serves the people. A
peoples army links the military struggle against the enemy to the process of carrying out
revolution and land reform, establishing new forms of popular power, struggling against
oppression, applying the mass line, and building a new culture in base areas. The base areas
would serve as a pole of attraction for support among the people while undermining the old
regime. As Mao said of the Long March, it is the first of its kind in the annals of history, that
it is a manifesto, a propaganda force, a seeding-machine.22 The victory was to be primarily
political, creating a pole of attraction for the masses. Indeed, the experience of the base area of
Yenan was just this type of pole of attraction where the Maoist forces were away from the state
and army, able to establish their own liberated zone, build up their forces, link up with the people
and prepare themselves to rule.23

Stalin and Mao.

d. Mao on Stalin
Following the triumph of the Chinese Revolution, as we have discussed, Mao grew increasingly
concerned at the road other members of the CCP were following. The slavish adoption of Soviet
methods in building socialism in China. He saw commandism, bureaucracy, and a reliance on
technology as opposed to the masses. We will shortly look at how Maos criticism Soviet-style
socialism developed as a left-wing alternative to Stalinism in both theory and practice to
reinvigorate socialism and revolution. Maos left-wing critique was at odds with Nikita
Khrushchevs Secret Speech of 1956 denouncing Stalin, that he believed was a right-wing cover
for downplaying class struggle and revolution in order to accommodate western imperialism and
leading to the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.
Maos major criticisms of Stalin can be found most prominently in two major works, On the
Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People and Critique of Soviet Economics. The
first was delivered as a speech to the CCP in 1957 as part of a rectification campaign and partly
as Maos response to Khrushchevs speech. The speech was described by the Trotsky-influenced
author, Isaac Deutscher as by far the most radical repudiation of Stalinism that has come
out of any communist country so far.24
In the speech, Mao elaborated on his earlier writings dealing with contradiction by noting that
contradictions continue under socialism. But there are actually two sets of contradictions, those
among the people and those between the people and the enemy, both of which needed to be
handled differently.
The contradictions between ourselves and the enemy are antagonistic contradictions.
Within the ranks of the people, the contradictions among the working people are nonantagonistic, while those between the exploited and the exploiting classes have a nonantagonistic as well as an antagonistic aspect.25
This implied a repudiation of Soviet practice which handled contradictions among the people as
like contradictions between the people and the enemy. Furthermore, Mao believed that the class
struggle continued under socialism, as opposed to mechanical communists who believed that
with the seizure of power that the basic class struggle had ended. Yet Mao emphasized that the
class struggle would take different forms under socialism.
The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the class struggle between the
various political forces, and the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the
ideological field will still be protracted and tortuous and at times even very sharp. The proletariat
seeks to transform the world according to its own world outlook, and so does the bourgeoisie. In
this respect, the question of which will win out, socialism or capitalism, is not really settled yet.26
And the way Stalin and the Soviets handled contradictions among the people was also a
reflection of the weaknesses of their revolutionary practice. As the Chinese CP would later say in

their polemics with the USSR, while upholding the positive accomplished under Stalin, they also
stressed that
Stalin departed from dialectical materialism and fell into metaphysics and subjectivism on
certain questions and consequently he was sometimes divorced from reality and from the
masses. In struggles inside as well as outside the Party, on certain occasions and on certain
questions he confused two types of contradictions which are different in nature,
contradictions between ourselves and the enemy and contradictions among the people, and
also confused the different methods needed in handling them. In the work led by Stalin of
suppressing the counter-revolution, many counter-revolutionaries deserving punishment
were duly punished, but at the same time there were innocent people who were wrongly
convicted; and in 1937 and 1938 there occurred the error of enlarging the scope of the
suppression of counter-revolutionaries. In the matter of Party and government
organization, he did not fully apply proletarian democratic centralism and, to some extent,
violated it. In handling relations with fraternal Parties and countries, he made some
mistakes. He also gave some bad counsel in the international communist movement. These
mistakes caused some losses to the Soviet Union and the international communist
movement.27
What Maos A Critique of Soviet Economics (which also criticized Stalins Economic Problems
of Socialism in the USSR) was part of Maos forging a new socialist path in China in light of the
mounting break with the USSR and following the Great Leap Forward and all the problems
associated therein. Revolutionary fervor in the Communist Party was being replaced by the
creeping winds of conservatism. Those conservatives in the Party seemed to be eager to copy the
Soviet model with its commandism and bureaucracy. To Mao, those methods smacked of
capitalism, not socialism.
While Maos work looked at how the USSR had engaged in primitive socialist accumulation, or
how the nation built up its industry and collectivized agriculture. To Mao, although Soviet
achievements in these fields were undeniable, they were largely conducted at the level of
economics and neglected politics, ideology and culture or the superstructure.
This textbook addresses itself only to material preconditions and seldom engages the
question of the superstructure, i.e., the class nature of the state, philosophy, and science. In
economics the main object of study is the production relations. All the same, political
economy and the materialist historical outlook are close cousins. It is difficult to deal
clearly with problems of the economic base and the production relations if the question of
the superstructure is neglected.28
And Mao also believed that the Soviets denied the role of contradiction in socialism, stating: In
the era of socialism, contradictions remain the motive force of social development.29 This
was something that the Soviets did not recognize. There were bourgeois survivals in the
superstructure (commandism, bureaucracy, etc.) that conflicted with new emerging proletariat
political, cultural and ideological ideas. It was not enough to just develop the economy, but the
masses had to be involved. To Mao and any self-respecting communist, the masses wanted

revolution and communism. Therefore, if they were properly led, they would combat the
bourgeois survivals and institute new proletariat modes of politics, ideology and ideology.
This lack of recognition of the contradictions in socialism meant that the USSR had a one-sided
method of developing the economy through bureaucratic and commandist methods. These
methods were clear in how the Soviets treated the peasantry were certainly bourgeois holdovers.
Mao recognized that even in socialism that were would be a struggle between old and new ideas.
Yet the Soviets seemed to believe that as the standard of living improved through economic
development that old bourgeois ideas would simply die out. To Mao, this was not so. The
communist revolution wasnt just about changing the economy, but about forging new political,
ideological, and cultural values appropriate to communism. These new values would
spontaneously emerge with economic development like Athena from the head of Zeus. Nor could
these new values be commanded or forced upon the people. Rather, to Mao, these values could
only emerge through the participation of the masses themselves in the process.
For instance, the USSR collectivized the countryside at the expense of the peasantry. In fact, the
peasants were not the driving force of the collectivization movement, but were simply told that
they must be collectivized by the Soviet party. This was in contrast to the Chinese partys
dealings with the peasantry, which did quite the reverse. We put a mass line into effect,
roused the poor and lower-middle peasants to launch class struggle and seize all the land of
the landlord class and distribute the surplus land of rich peasants.30 By contrast, the
bureaucratic behavior of the Soviets in dealing with the peasantry caused them to pay a heavy
price.31
For Mao, it wasnt enough to simply change the relations of production in the countryside as the
USSR had done (although this was necessary). You needed to change the ideas of the masses,
which with new communist ideas would in turn increase productivity and build communism.
This was exactly what Mao sought to do in the Great Leap Forward.
During Stalins time, the masses were often distrusted and handed down their instructions by
party fiat.
The relationship between long- and short-term interests has not seen any spectacular
developments. They walk on one leg, we walk on two. They believe that technology decides
everything, that cadres decide everything, speaking only of expert, never of red, only
of the cadres, never of the masses. This is walking on one leg.32
The Soviet method of governing and building socialism from above not only encouraged a
technocratic and commandist road to socialism that neglected putting politics in command, but
this method meant that socialism in the USSR was distorted in favor of heavy industry to the
expense of agriculture and light industry.
Flowing naturally from the above is that the communist revolution is an all-around process,
affecting both the economic base and the superstructure. Central to the communist revolution
was that (communist and mass) politics be in command. The communist revolution had to
recognize that there were contradictions between base and superstructure, town and country,

worker and peasant, manual and mental labor, and leader and led during the whole transition
period.
Building communism means putting into practice the mass line, investigating and concentrating
the scattered ideas of the masses and communicating them back until the masses take up as their
own. In the process, the revolutionaries fuse with the masses and involve them in revolution.
Furthermore, in building communism, Mao believed in line with the Soviet experience that
developing heavy industry was essential. Yet he also believed that the Soviets put too much
emphasis on heavy industry, so that light industry and agriculture were neglected and the masses
suffered because of this. Mao urged that growth be more balanced with light industry and
agriculture not being neglected in favor of heavy industry. It was necessary to develop heavy
industry because it was in the long-range interests of the people, but also to combine their
immediate needs. Mao grasped this connection. This was in contrast to Soviet planning which
often didnt put the needs of the masses in the forefront and was lopsided.
Maos critique of Soviet methods of planning also extended to what he saw as their one-sided
reliance on material incentives. Material incentives to Mao were a bourgeois survival that did not
raise consciousness of the masses. For the Soviets, planning was about things, not people. For
Mao, planning (and communism) meant that there had to be conscious activity by both the party
and the masses.
What Mao would come to recognize as the 1960s wore on was that there were those in the
Chinese party (and in the Soviet), who rely upon bourgeois survivals and seek a return to
capitalism. Yet these ideas were not fully developed when Mao wrote the Critique, yet he was
developing in that direction. If it was necessary to involve the masses in the building of a
communist society and combating the old ideas of the bourgeois which could survive even in the
party, might that lead to a clash? In China, that led to more than a clash, but to the beginning of
the Cultural Revolution in 1966.

Poster from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

e. Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution


It is not possible to discuss the Cultural Revolution at length here, but a few words need to be
said. The Cultural Revolution was the culmination of the Maoist two-line struggle with capitalist
roaders within the CCP. And it brought together the many ideas Mao had developed over the
previous decades: contradiction, the interaction of base and superstructure, continuing revolution
under socialism, reliance on the masses, and his whole critique of the Soviet experience. The
Cultural Revolution was described in the Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese
Communist Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (or the 16 Points) to
guide the Cultural Revolution as follows:
Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, it is still trying to use the old ideas,
culture, customs and habits of the exploiting classes to corrupt the masses, capture their
minds and endeavour to stage a comeback. The proletariat must do the exact opposite: it
must meet head-on every challenge of the bourgeoisie in the ideological field and use the
new ideas, culture, customs and habits of the proletariat to change the mental outlook of
the whole of society. At present, our objective is to struggle against and overthrow those
persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road, to criticize and repudiate the
reactionary bourgeois academic authorities and the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all
other exploiting classes and to transform education, literature and art and all other parts of
the superstructure not in correspondence with the socialist economic base, so as to facilitate
the consolidation and development of the socialist system.33
In other words, the Cultural Revolution was part of an attack by the masses on the superstructure
to remove bourgeois forces within the party who threatened to restore capitalism in order to
continue along the revolutionary road.
And while it is common nowadays by many, including the far left to view the Cultural
Revolution as one of persecutions, abuses and economic stagnation, this was in fact a mass
upheaval. There were many innovative aspects to the Cultural Revolution with factories
reorganized, facilitating greater involvement by the masses and increases in production. The arts
were also transformed. Education at all levels was revamped to allow for greater mass
involvement. Ordinary people in the Cultural Revolution were encouraged to experiment, to act,
and to think.34
The effects of Maoism revitalization of communism and the Cultural Revolution were not
limited to China however. Following the 1963 breach with the USSR, the Chinese presented an
open challenge to Soviet Marxism and their allied Communist Parties. And this reached all the
way to France where engagement with Maoism encouraged Louis Althusser in his own efforts to
develop a revolutionary alternative from within the Soviet-aligned French Communist Party.
Louis Althusser

Communist Party of France.

a. The French Communist Party


In 1948, Louis Althusser, a former member of the right-wing Catholic Jeunesse tudiante
Chrtienne and philosophy student, joined the French Communist Party (PCF). The relationship
with Althusser and the PCF would be fraught with discord (both open and concealed) for the next
several decades. Although the PCF was the second largest communist party in Western Europe,
commanding a quarter of the electorate and the allegiance of the organized working class, it was
far from being a revolutionary organization. Although the PCF had lost thousands of militants
and played a leading role in the anti-Nazi resistance, it had not made any effort to seize power
upon the liberation, giving the party great prestige, but had followed the leadership of De Gaulle
in reestablishing the French bourgeois republic and surrendered its arms. Despite its militant
rhetoric and resort to extra-parliamentary tactics at times, the PCF had no intention of making
revolution. As Sartre said of the PCF:
When a so-called revolutionary party with five million armed members or followers
refuses to seize power, it can no longer claim to be revolutionary. By 1947, every
Frenchman knew that the CP had become a traditional party in a bourgeois state, reformist
perhaps, revolutionary certainly not.35
Yet for Althusser, Sartre, and so many other intellectuals, there was no opportunity for real
political engagement outside the PCF, unless one was willing to work in tiny left sects.
Althusser remained within the Communist Party as the anti-colonial revolts in Indochina and
especially in Algeria revealed the limits of its anti-imperialism. At the beginning of the Algerian
War, the Socialist Party under Guy Mollet sent conscripts to put down the FLN. Instead of
moving into opposition, the PCF would again support the government, and declared
Peace must be reestablished in Algeria. 36While it is true that the PCF did come around to
supporting Algerian independence, this support was tepid and half-hearted. The party

rejected the harmful attitudes of gauchiste [leftist] elements who had preached
insubordination, desertion, and rejection of the very fundamentals of the national
community and the national interest of the working class in peace. Their irresponsible
actions, the party argued in 1962 and in 1968, had only served to assist the policies and the
provocations of the Gaullist regime and the ultras.37
Instead of pursuing a militant antiwar strategy, the PCF was more interested in staying respectful,
something that the growing French New Left (including Trotskyists and Maoists) took issue
with.
The PCF was not willing to entertain oppositional ideas within its ranks either. The Party,
proclaiming its allegiance to the political ideas and foreign policy of the Soviet Union,
maintained a stranglehold on intellectual debate, enforcing a rigid dogma. For Althusser and
other party critics, it was only possible to conduct debate within the PCF in code or underground,
not in the open (since that risked expulsion). Althusser bore this all in silence. Yet following the
20th Congress of the CPSU where Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin and the cult of
personality, caused a major shake-up in the PCF. Initially, the leadership of the French Party
bulked at the new line, but eventually came around to accepting it (since the PCF leadership
hoped to build an alliance with the Socialist Party). The new Soviet line promoted a line of
peaceful coexistence between east and west, and the possibility of a peaceful transition to
socialism which was soon adapted by the French. According to Gregory Elliot, the
PCFs adjustment to the Khrushchevite line arose not simply from fidelity to the bastion of
world socialism, but because there was an underlying compatibility between the
imperatives of internationalism and domestic horizons. Regardless of its official doctrine,
the PCF had, in a sense, been pursuing an analogous line, in impeccably French colours,
ever since the Popular Front.38
Philosophically, the new line in the international Communist Movement was being promoted
using the language of humanism and a return to Hegel and the works of the Young Marx with
their emphasis on alienation. Humanism was being used by both the Soviets and the PCF to
pursue a right-wing revisionist and social democratic line. The promotion of Socialist
Humanism would be one of the battering rams that the pro-Soviet parties would use against
China following the split in the ICM.39 Yet the liberalization of the 20th Congress allowed open
debate after decades of sterile orthodoxy. As Althusser would later say
I would never have written anything were it not for the Twentieth Congress and
Khrushchevs critique of Stalinism and the subsequent liberalisation. But I would never
have written these books if I had not seen this affair as a bungled destalinisation, a rightwing destalinisation which instead of analyses offered us only incantations; which instead
of Marxist concepts had available only the poverty of bourgeois ideology. My target was
therefore clear: these humanist ravings, these feeble dissertations on liberty, labour or
alienation which were the effects of all this among French Party intellectuals. And my aim
was equally clear: to make a start on the first left-wing critique of Stalinism, a critique that
would make it possible to reflect not only on Khrushchev and Stalin but also on Prague and

Lin Piao: that would above all help put some substance back into the revolutionary project
here in the West.40
Althussers claim to have developed the first left-wing critique of Stalinism is frankly wrong
and shows an ignorance of other Marxists who had undertaken that project (such as Trotsky). Yet
Althusser was working with the intellectual tools that he had at his disposal within the Party and
the wider Communist Movement. Althussers effort to revitalize Marxism and (in philosophical
language) attack the PCF and USSR from the left found an echo in China. And in fact, as
Althussers criticism deepened, he developed an increasing affinity for Mao.

Althusser carrying a banner during a demonstration.

b. Theoretical Practice
Althusser hoped to put the PCF back on solid revolutionary foundations so that the Party could
fulfill its revolutionary mission. However, Althusser was not willing at one point to politically
break with the PCF or build an opposition caucus within it (many budding Maoists, inspired by
Althusser, did both). And this would ultimately constrain both his theoretical and political
practice. As Elliot says,
But the price to be paid for a party card and for theorys immunity was high: assent or
silence on political issues. On the other hand, if at a stroke, Althusser abolished the
problem of the union of theory and practice, it was in the name of future political practice.
The Marxist workers movement needed scientific theory in order to change the world.
Protected from the ravages of official pragmatism and opportunism, a detour via theory
at this time and in this place was no diversion from the struggle, but the long-term,
practically motivated continuation of politics by other means.41

Althussers engagement with the ideas of Mao in his effort to put Marxism back on scientific
foundations appears in his essays, Contradiction and Overdetermination and On the
Materialist Dialectic found in For Marx. And while Althusser builds on Lenins ideas to
elaborate the concepts of conjuncture and key links, he discusses at length (without mentioning
him by name) Maos essay On Contradiction. Althussers Contradiction and
Overdetermination rejects the Hegelian dialectic and says they have a structure different
from the structure they have for Hegel. It also means that these structural differences can
be demonstrated, described, determined and thought. And if this is possible, it is
therefore necessary, I would go so far as to say vital, for Marxism.42 And while Althusser
builds on Lenins ideas to elaborate the concepts of conjuncture and key links, he discusses at
length (without mentioning him by name) Maos essay On Contradiction.
Althusser follows Mao in stating that society is made of a number of contradictions, of which
one is primary and the others are secondary (and within the principal one, one aspect is primary
and the other is secondary):
Two are concepts of distinction: (1) the distinction between the principal
contradiction and the secondary contradictions, (2) the distinction between the principal
aspect and the secondary aspect of each contradiction. The third and last concept: (3)
the uneven development of contradiction. These concepts are presented to us as if thats
how it is. We are told that they are essential to the Marxist dialectic, since they are what is
specific about it. It is up to us to seek out the deeper theoretical reasons behind these
claims.43
This means that society possesses a complex unity with its manifold contradictions that develop
unevenly under different contradictions. However, Althusser develops the concept of
overdetermination (from Freudian psychoanalysis) which means the representation of the
dream-thoughts in images privileged by their condensation of a number of thoughts in a
single image.44 Althusser says that a contradiction is overdetermined is reflection of its
existence in a complex whole where other contradictions exist and unevenly develop together.
In an overdetermined contradiction, there is displacement and condensation [which]
explain by their dominance the phases (non-antagonistic, antagonistic and explosive) which
constitute the existence of the complex process, that is, of the development of things45
which ultimately means the various elements of a complex whole develop unevenly and that
different ones are dominant at a particular moment.
Althusser goes and claims, following Engels, that in a social formation that the economic is
determinant in the last instance. However, Althusser says that
From the first moment to the last, the lonely hour of the last instance never comes.
Althusser is not saying that economics dont play a determining role, rather he is stating
that the economic dialectic is never active in the pure state; in History, these instances, the
superstructures, etc. are never seen to step respectfully aside when their work is done or,
when the Time comes, as his pure phenomena, to scatter before His Majesty the Economy
as he strides along the royal road of the Dialectic.46

In other words, the economic is never active by itself, but is active through other contradictions
because the other contradictions of a complex whole are never able to step aside. Althusser
would later develop this idea in order to critique other Marxists (such as Stalin and the PCF) for
believing in historical and economic determinism based on the development of productive forces
or economism while ignoring the relatively autonomous role of the superstructure and other
contradictions in social and historical change, which prevented them from developing
appropriate revolutionary strategies. And as we shall see, Althusser would also use these ideas as
part of a developing critique of Soviet socialism.
And Althusser was at pains to state that
It is to claim that the complex whole has the unity of a structure articulated in
dominance. In the last resort this specific structure is the basis for the relations of
domination between contradictions and between their aspects that Mao described as
essential. This principle must be grasped and intransigently defended if Marxism is not to
slip back into the confusions from which it had delivered us, that is, into a type of thought
for which only one model of unity exists: the unity of a substance, of an essence or of an act;
into the twin confusions of mechanistic materialism and the idealism of consciousness.47
This open (and not-so-open) advocacy of Mao not only helped to sharpen the tools for the
Maoists within the PCF, but it also brought Althusser into conflict with the party. In 1963,
Althussers two essays resulted him being brought to trial by the Party. Although Althusser
managed to defend his use of Maos ideas by claiming that the CCP was misusing them, he
wound up conceding and defending the PCFs line.48 This highlighted a pattern which would be
repeatedly followed by Althusser: he was brought to heel by the Party for being too independent,
but never enough to leave its orbit in contrast to the Maoists inspired by him. And ultimately, it
would reveal the fatal defect of his whole project.
Althussers elaborations in Contradiction and Over-determination and On the Materialist
Dialectic had the potential to lead to a revitalization of Marxist theory and practice beyond
anything claimed by the PCF. However, his idea of theoretical practice which dialectical
materialism was the theory of was bound to hamper his practical efforts. Althusser, following
Marx, viewed society as dissected into four moments: political, economic, ideological and social
(each of which was relatively autonomous). Each of these practices had a general method of
practice:
By practice in general I shall mean any process of transformation of a determinate given
raw material into a determinate product, a transformation effected by a determinate
human labour, using a determinate means (of production). In any practice thus conceived,
the determinant moment (or element) is neither the raw material nor the product, but the
practice in the narrow sense: the moment of the labour of transformation itself, which sets
to work, in a specific structure, men, means and a technical method of utilizing the
means.49
Theoretical practice was a form of production divided into three generalities. Generalities I are
abstract concepts that are related to one another and the raw material of science; Generalities II

are a theory of science (i.e. Marxism) which are used on the raw material at hand; Generalities
III is the end result, or the knowledge produced.50 However, Althusser made Marxist philosophy
the guarantor of Marxist science, something that was quite dogmatic. Yet as Gregory Elliot says,
Althusser sought to have it both ways:
In order to justify his proposal for a sui generis Marxist philosophy, Althusser invoked
historical precedent, maintaining that philosophical revolutions were attendant upon
induced by scientific revolutions. Thus, just as Greek mathematics had given rise to
Platonic, and Galilean physics to Cartesian, philosophy, so historical had induced
dialectical materialism. Its advent post festum conformed to the pattern set by its
predecessors. Involved in all of them was the reprise of a basic scientific discovery in
philosophical reflection and the production by philosophy of a new form of rationality.
Marxist philosophy was, however, primus inter pares. The novelty of dialectical
materialism was that with its arrival philosophy had passed from the condition of an
ideology [to] a scientific discipline one capable of rendering a scientific account of its
object: the history of the production of knowledge. By virtue of his double theoretical
revolution, Marx occupied an exceptional position . . . in the history of human
knowledge. As a scientific philosophy, dialectical materialism could function as a guide
not only for the science of history, imperiled as it was by garaudysme and so on, but, if
needs be, for all the other sciences natural and social alike as well.51
More than that, Althussers schema of the generalities for theoretical practice could, if taken to
their extreme, lead to a divorce of theory and practice. Yet that wasnt Althussers intention
though, what he was doing was defending the thesis of the relative autonomy of theory and
thus the right of Marxist theory not to be treated as a slave to tactical political decisions,
but to be allowed to develop, in alliance with political and other practices, without
betraying its own needs.52 In other words, Althusser was pushing for the relative autonomy of
theory in order for it development outside of the constraints of the PCFs tactical maneuvers. As
Elliot describes, The Marxist workers movement needed scientific theory in order to
change the world. Protected from the ravages of official pragmatism and opportunism, a
detour via theory at this time and in this place was no diversion from the struggle, but
the long-term, practically motivated continuation of politics by other means.53 It was a
moment that never came for Althusser.

Breaking with ossified theory and practice.

c. Althusser on the Cultural Revolution


Despite the bind Althusser created for himself, he remained caught between the PCF apparatus
and the Maoist opposition which came to a head in 1966. In that year, a number of Maoists were
expelled from the PCF many of them Althussers students, and in December they formed Union
des jeunesses communistes marxistes-lninistes (UJCML). Two months later, they formed the
Union des communistes francais marxistes-leninistes (UCF-ML), one of the first Maoist
organizations in France.54 At the time of the split, the Cultural Revolution had begun in China
and the UJCML had an article published on it in their journal. The article, although anonymously
authored, was actually written by Althusser.
And it was here that Althussers ideas on overdetermination, contradiction, and critique of
economism found themselves reflected in Maoism. Althusser hailed the Cultural Revolution as
not, first of all, an argument: it is first and foremost an historical fact. It is not one fact
among others. It is an unprecedented fact.55 The fact proven by the Cultural Revolution, in
line with claim that the different levels of society develop unevenly that
Marx, Engels and Lenin always proclaimed it was absolutely necessary to give the socialist
infrastructure, established by a political revolution, a correspondingthat is, socialist
ideological superstructure. For this to occur, an ideological revolution is necessary, a
revolution in the ideology of the masses.56
While socialist revolution took the means of production and established a base of nationalized
industry, this did not mean that a socialist superstructure would naturally follow. To believe this
was to fall into economism. Rather, the Cultural Revolution showed:
In socialist countries, after the more or less complete socialist transformation of the
property of the means of production, there is still this question that remains: what road is

to be taken? Is it necessary to go all the way to the end of the socialist revolution and
gradually pass over into communism? Or, to the contrary, stop halfway and go backwards
toward capitalism? This question is being posed to us in a particular acute manner. 57
Socialism was not a forward march, rather its development in conditions of capitalist
encirclement and the development of internal contradictions opened up two roads: one that
continued towards communism and another back to capitalism. Along with the economic and
political revolutions which have established socialism, The C.C.P. declares that in order to
reinforce and develop socialism in China, in order to assure its future and protect it in a
lasting way from every risk of regression, it must add a third revolution to the prior
political and economic revolutions: a mass ideological revolution.58 The Cultural
Revolutions
ultimate aim is to transform the ideology of the masses, to replace the feudal, bourgeois and
petit-bourgeois ideology that still permeates the masses of Chinese society with a new
ideology of the masses, proletarian and socialist and in this way to give the socialist
economic infrastructure and political superstructure a corresponding ideological
superstructure.59
In other words, by overthrowing those in the Party taking the capitalist road, the masses would
transform the superstructure which in turn could influence the base and continue on the road to
communism.
The reason for the primacy of ideology in Chinas GPCR was that it was not to attack just a few
bad eggs in the party or wayward intellectuals, but to transform the ideology of the masses
through struggle: Now, such a transformation of the ideology of the masses can only be the
work of the masses themselves, acting in and through organizations that are mass
organizations.60 The important role of ideology in the Cultural Revolution essay, is something
that Althusser would emphasize again with more theoretical rigor, with the Ideological State
Apparatuses in his On the Reproduction of Capitalism. And echoes of that position can be seen in
this earlier essay.
When Althusser notes that during the GPCR that it is young people, particularly students, who
are the vanguard, he notes the importance of education in reproducing the dominant ideology:
On the one hand, in fact, the teaching system in place for the education of the youth (we
should not forget that school deeply marks men, even during periods of historical
mutation), was in China a bastion of bourgeois and petit-bourgeois ideology. On the other
hand, the youth, which has not experienced revolutionary struggles and wars, constitutes,
in a socialist country, a very delicate matter, a place where the future is in large part played
out. The youth is not revolutionary solely by the fact of being born in a socialist country,
nor from growing up hearing stories of the exploits of its elders. If, despite all the energies
of its age, it finds itself, due to political failings, abandoned to an ideological disarray or
void, it is then given over to spontaneous ideological forms that ceaselessly fill in this
void: bourgeois and petit-bourgeois ideologies, whether inherited from its own national
past, or imported from without. These forms find their natural points of support in the

positivism, empiricism and apolitical technicism of scholars and other specialists. In


return, if a socialist country assigns its youth a great revolutionary task and if it educates
them for this action, not only will the youth contribute, in the C.R., to the transformation of
the existing ideology, it will educate itself and transform its own ideology. It is on the youth
that ideology, of whatever sort, has the most impact.61 This attack on bourgeois survivals
of the superstructure thus opens the road to greater revolutionization of the dominant
ideology and a way to continue the forward motion of the revolution. It is in the ideological
class struggle that the fate (progress or regression) of a socialist country is played out.62
Althusser also upholds the Chinese concept of regression back to capitalism because Marxism
is not an evolutionary or economistic philosophy. However, evolutionary forms of Marxism can
not recognize this, because they dont understand that the historical dialectic allows for lags
[dcalages], distortions, regressions without repetition, leaps, etc.63 Althusser also attacks
evolutionary Marxists who deny the role of the primacy of ideology and for their limited
definition of class. Althussers elaboration of social class is worth quoting at length:
A social class is not defined, in fact, solely by the positions of its members in the relations
of production and therefore by the relations of production: it is also defined, at the same
time, by their position in political and ideological relations, which remain class relations
long after the socialist transformation of the relations of production. There is no doubt that
the economic (the relations of production) defines a social class in the last instance, but
class struggle constitutes a system and is at work at different levels (economic, political,
ideological); the transformation of one level does not make the forms of class struggle at the
other levels disappear. In this way, class struggle can continue quite virulently at the
political level, and above all the ideological level, long after the more or less complete
suppression of the economic bases of the property-owning classes in a socialist country. It
is, then, essentially in relation to the forms of political and especially ideological class
struggle that social classes are defined: depending on the side they take in political and
ideological struggles.64
In fact, Althussers attackeconomistic forms of socialism in his Cultural Revolution essay
forms the basis of his criticism of Stalin and the Stalinian deviation. While Althusser, like
Maoists generally upheld Stalins contributions in building socialism in one country,
industrializing the USSR, and defeating the Nazis, and transmitting Marxism-Leninism to
millions of communists (albeit in a dogmatic form).65 And yet Althusser also claimed that Stalin
or the Stalinian deviation was a form of economism that had afflicted the Communist
movement since the 1930s and was the posthumous revenge of the Second International : as
a revival of its main tendency.66

Stalin.

d. The Stalinian Deviation


For Stalin and the USSR, from 1930-32 at least, was characterized by the consistent politics of
the primacy of the productive forces over the relations of production. 67 And this effected the
whole of Soviet politics that developed during this period planning, relation to the peasantry,
the role of the party, promotion of breakneck industrialization. Now while Althusser believed this
was perhaps necessary (and unavoidable) due to the capitalist encirclement of the USSR, it did
have horrifying consequences such as the purges of the 1930s.68 And on the theoretical level, the
Stalinian deviation encouraged economic evolutionism in pedagogical texts such as Dialectical
Materialism and Historical Materialism, the conjuring away of the historical role of Trotsky
and others in the Bolshevik Revolution (Short History of the CPSU [B]); the thesis of the
sharpening of the class struggle under socialism; the formula: everything depends on the
cadres, etc. Among ourselves: the thesis of bourgeois science/proletarian science, the
thesis of absolute pauperization, etc.69
So far from promoting a return to the politics of Stalin, Althusser believed that a Marxist critique
of it was necessary, in both theory and practice. And Althusser argued that the Secret Speech of
Nikita Khrushchev was not actually a left-wing critique of Stalin, but a rightist one since it
attributed all of Stalins errors to the cult of personality and did not uncover the deeper issues
which caused the deviation:
Now this pseudo-concept, the circumstances of whose solemn and dramatic
pronouncement are well known, did indeed expose certain practices: abuses, errors,
and in certain cases crimes. But it explained nothing of their conditions, of their causes,
in short of their internal determination, and therefore of their forms. Yet since it claimed to

explain what in fact it did not explain, this pseudo-concept could only mislead those whom
it was supposed to instruct. Must we be even more explicit? To reduce the grave events of
thirty years of Soviet and Communist history to this pseudo-explanation by the cult was
not and could not have been a simple mistake, an oversight of an intellectual hostile to the
practice of divine worship: it was, as we all know, a political act of responsible leaders, a
certain one-sided way of putting forward the problems, not of what is vulgarly called
Stalinism, but of what must, I think, be called (unless one objects to thinking about it) by
the name of a concept: provisionally, the Stalinian deviation.70
What was necessary in contrast was to look at the contradictions of socialism that had produced
it. Whereas the Secret Speech just looked at the defects of the legal apparatus, he neglected to
look at the role of the Ideological State Apparatuses (more below), the Repressive State
Apparatuses, and the existing relations of production, class struggle, etc. In other words, only
external and surface phenomena were analyzed, not the deeper internal causes which are
necessary for a Marxist critique of Stalin.71
However, since the Secret Speech did not do that, it was a right-wing critique of Stalin and had
inevitable ideological effects encouraging humanism, bourgeois forms of thought in the USSR,
Eastern Europe and Communist Parties. According to Althusser, Communists were
following the Social-Democrats and even religious thinkers (who used to have an almost
guaranteed monopoly in these things) in the practice of exploiting the works of Marxs
youth in order to draw out of them an ideology of Man, Liberty, Alienation, Transcendence,
etc. without asking whether the system of these notions was idealist or materialist,
whether this ideology was petty-bourgeois or proletarian.72
This was a step backward for Marxists and Communists around the world.
Rather, what was needed was a left-wing critique of Stalin, USSR and the practice of the
Communist Parties. This was something that the Chinese Revolution, and especially the Cultural
Revolution, did in practice (and what Althusser was doing in theory). Althusser summed up the
Chinese as offering a
silent critique, which speaks through its actions, the result of the political and ideological
struggles of the Revolution, from the Long March to the Cultural Revolution and its
results. A critique from afar. A critique from behind the scenes. To be looked at more
closely, to be interpreted. A contradictory critique, moreover if only because of the
disproportion between acts and texts. Whatever you like: but a critique from which one can
learn, which can help us to test our hypotheses, that is, help us to see our own history more
clearly. But here too, of course, we have to speak in terms of a tendency and of specific
forms without letting the forms mask the tendency and its contradictions.73
So what made the Chinese Revolution (and by extension his own theory) the first left-wing
critique of Stalin according to Althusser? Whereas Althusser rejected Trotskyist criticisms of
Stalinism as explaining nothing,74 the Cultural Revolution, by contrast, had provided in both

theory and practice, a repudiation of the economism, primacy of productive forces, humanism,
evolutionism and rightism that characterized Soviet Marxism.
Thus, it was through the Cultural Revolution that Althusser saw many elements of his critique of
Soviet and PCF Marxism realized: the over-determined nature of contradictions in society (in
this case socialism), an attack on evolutionary or economist Marxists, its anti-teleological nature
(that the victory of communism was not guaranteed via the development of the productive
forces), and its bold new forms of revolutionary practice in the mass organizations, and the
central role of ideology.

Louis Althusser

e. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses


We have made a brief mention of Althussers discussion of the importance of ideology during the
GPCR, however, let us return to how he saw ideology operating under capitalism. Althussers
idea of the ISAs were written about most clearly in 1969 in response to the French student strikes
of the previous year. There he discusses modes of production with their four theses: 1. The
dominance of one mode of production in society, 2. the unity between the relations and forces of
production, 3. In order for the productive forces to be able to reproduced, this needs to be done
within the relations of production, 4. That the economic base is determinant in the last instance.75
However, in line with his earlier work, Althusser emphasized that a mode of production was
made up complex and interacting practices existing in unity. Althusser also highlights the
importance of this understanding not only for capitalism, but for socialist revolution:
The mode of production of a class society is quite the opposite of a mere technical
process of production. At the same time as it is the locus of production, it is the locus of
class exploitation and of class struggle as well. It is in the productive process of the mode of
production itself that the knot of class relations and the class struggle bound up with
exploitation is tied. This class struggle pits the proletarian class struggle against the
capitalist class struggle It is easy to understand the capitalists interest in depicting the
process of production as the opposite of what it is: as a purely technical rather than an
exploitative process It is also easy to understand that the destiny of every class struggle,
the victorious revolutionary class struggle included, ultimately depends on an accurate

conception of the relations of production. To build socialism, it will be necessary to


establish new relations of production that abolish concretely, the exploitative effects of the
previous relations of production, together with their class effects. The construction of
socialism can therefore not be settled with purely legal formulas: ownership of the means of
production plus better technical organization of the labour process.76
Althusser is concerned in this work with how capitalism is reproduced. Of paramount importance
to the reproduction of capitalism is the role of ideology which Althusser believes are not
mistaken ideas, but exist in definite material practices: Ideology does not exist in the world of
ideas conceived as a spiritual world. Ideology exists in institutions and the practices
specific to them. We are even tempted to say, more precisely: ideology exists in apparatuses
and the practices specific to them.77 Ideology exists through the Ideological State
Apparatuses, which although private churches, schools, families, etc they reinforce the rule of
the bourgeoisie through ideology. And it is through the ISAs that capitalist society is reproduced,
not in the factory: Now, however, we are entering a domain in which observing what goes
on in the enterprise is, if not totally blind, then very nearly so, and for good reason: the
reproduction of labor power takes place essentially outside the enterprise. 78 And according
to Althusser, following the GPCR and May 1968, the one Ideological State Apparatus
certainly has the dominant role, although hardly anyone lends an ear to its music: it is so
silent! This is the School.79 Ideology in this conception becomes a lived practice producing
people as subjects who obey the law, do their civic duty, shaping our beliefs in line with the
social institutions we are born and we live within.
Contrary to some critics, Althusser does not believe that the role of the ISAs denies human
agency. Rather, the ISAs are necessary not only because the rule of the bourgeois can not be
secured only by force, but due to the constant of class struggle. Just as the class struggle
never ceases, so the dominant classs combat to unify existing ideological elements and
forms never ceases. This amounts to saying the dominant ideology can never completely
resolve its own contradictions, which are a reflection of the class struggle although its
function is to resolve them.80
Just as there is conflict in the workplace, Althusser argues that there is also struggle within
ideology, which is contested by class struggle. And that imposes specific demands on the
communist movement in dealing with the bourgeois and their ideology.
The working classs great strategic demand for autonomy reflects this condition. Subjected
to the domination of the bourgeois state and the effect of intimidation and self-evidence of
the dominant ideology, the working class can win its autonomy only on condition that it
free itself from the dominant ideology, that it demarcate itself from it, in order to endow
itself with forms of organization and action that realize its own ideology, proletarian
ideology. Characteristic of this break, this radical distance taken, is the fact that it can be
achieved only by a protracted struggle which must take the forms of bourgeois domination
into account and combat the bourgeoisie within its own forms of domination, but without
ever being taken in by the game represented by these forms, which are not simple, neutral
forms, but apparatuses that realize the existence of the dominant ideology.81

What Althusser said of the danger of being taken in by dominant ideology could easily be
applied to the Communist Party and their role during the May 1968 strikes. It is beyond the
scope of this essay to give a detailed account of the event. However, in May-June, France was hit
with a massive general strike of more than ten million students and workers. The strike,
represented (potentially) a revolutionary challenge to capitalism in France. However, the PCF
did not champion the strike or make preparations for revolution, despite their own professed
program, rather they did everything withing their power to keep the movement within bourgeois
forms of legality and economic struggle for better wages. Ultimately, the capitalist order in
France stabilized and the moment passed.
Yet there was a parting of ways between Althusser and the Maoists. While Althusser was
hospitalized during the May Strike, and did not directly participate, he did later write and justify
the PCFs stand drawing the ire of his former students and the Maoist movement.82 Althusser
could not bring himself to break with the Party. And he remained within its non-revolutionary
orbit as the PCF ultimately embraced Eurocommunism, formally abandoned any pretense of
socialist revolution and sunk into the electoral margins. The Maoists in France, whether in the
UJC, gauche proletarienne (GP), Vive la revolution! (VLR) would break out on their own path
seeking to keep the fires of May alive.83 Yet they would do so without Althusser.
Despite Althussers aspirations, his project of developing a revolutionary praxis for the PCF was
doomed because that party was on a rightward trajectory and had no intention of ever leading a
revolution, as its actions in May 1968 made abundantly clear. The only chance Althusser had for
developing a revolutionary praxis as outside of the Communist Party, as his Maoist-oriented
students learned, but he never did.
Conclusion
The Chinese Revolution, GPCR, and Maoism, far from being another species of Stalinism,
were in fact a challenge to the inherited forms of Soviet Marxism. Maoism, in its innovative
philosophy, development of the mass line, its road to revolution and for recognizing the
contradictions which continue to exist under socialism provided a left-wing critique in both
theory and practice of the USSR and their allied Communist Parties. Louis Althusser saw in the
Chinese revolution kindred spirits to his own effort to reinvigorate Marxism and chart a new
revolutionary road for the French Communist Party. What ultimately spelled the doom of
Althussers project was that he didnt take this commitment far enough and remained within the
confines of the PCF and was unable to develop a revolutionary practice.
Notes
1 Louis Althusser, Essays in Self-Criticism (New Left Books: London, 1976), 92.
2 Parts of this section include rewritten portions of my own essays on Mao, notably: Mao
Zedongs On Practice, Enaadoug. https://enaadoug.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/mao-zedung
%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Con-practice%E2%80%9D/ ; Leon Trotsky and Mao Zedong on
Revolution: New Democracy and Permanent Revolution, Enaadoug.
https://enaadoug.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/leon-trotsky-and-mao-zedung-on-revolution-new-

democracy-and-permanent-revolution/ ; Theory of the Offensive, Kasama Project.


http://www.kasamaproject.org/threads/entry/theory-of-the-offensive ; Enaa review: Maos
Critique of Soviet Economics, Kasama Project. http://kasamaproject.org/politicaleconomy/3299-31enaa-review-mao-039-s-critique-of-soviet-economics
3 On Practice, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (henceforth SWM) I.300.
4 Ibid. 304.
5 Ibid. 308.
6 On Contradiction, MSW I. 311.
7 Ibid. 314.
8 Ibid. 320.
9 Ibid. 331.
10 Ibid. 332.
11 Ibid. 333.
12 Ibid. 335-6.
13 Where Do Correct Ideas Come From? Marxist Internet Archive.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_01.htm
14 On Contradiction, MSW I. 336.
15 Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership, MSW III. 117.
16 Ibid. 119.
17 See Why is that Red Political Power Exist in China? SWM 1.65-6.
18 Problems of Strategy in Guerrilla War, SWM 2.103.
19 Strategy in Chinas Revolutionary War, SWM 1. 237.
20 Mao elaborated the Communist guerrilla tactics as follows:
With our tactics, the masses can be aroused for struggle on an ever-broadening scale, and no
enemy, however powerful, can cope with us. Ours are guerrilla tactics. They consist mainly of
the following points:
Divide our forces to arouse the masses, concentrate our forces to deal with the enemy.

The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the
enemy retreats, we pursue.
To extend stable base areas,10 employ the policy of advancing in waves; when pursued by a
powerful enemy, employ the policy of circling around.
Arouse the largest numbers of the masses in the shortest possible time and by the best possible
methods.
These tactics are just like casting a net; at any moment we should be able to cast it or draw it in.
We cast it wide to win over the masses and draw it in to deal with the enemy. Such are the tactics
we have used for the past three years.
See A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire, SWM 1.24.
21 All Reactionaries are Paper Tigers, SWM 5.517.
22 On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism, SWM 1.160.
23 See in particular: Mark Selden, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971) and The Formation of Maos Economic Strategy, 1927-1949 in John
G. Gurley, Chinas Economy and Maoist Strategy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976), 2093.
24 Isaac Deutscher, Russia, China, and the West: A Contemporary Chronicle, 19531966
(London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 104.
25 On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, MSW 5.385.
26 Ibid. 409.
27 On The Question Of Stalin: Second Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee
of the CPSU, Marxists Internet Archive.
https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/polemic/qstalin.htm
28 Mao Zedong, A Critique of Soviet Economics (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977), 51.
29 Ibid. 61.
30 Ibid. 93.
31 Ibid. 121.
32 Ibid. 135.
33 Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Marxists Internet Archive.
https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1966/PR1966-33g.htm

34 See for starters: Dongping Han, The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a
Chinese Village (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008); Charles Bettelheim, Cultural
Revolution and Industrial Organization in China: Changes in Management and the Division of
Labor (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974); William Hinton, Turning Point in China: An
Essay on the Cultural Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972); E. L. Wheelwright
and Bruce MacFarlane, The Chinese Road to Socialism: Economics of the Cultural Revolution
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970); Maria Antonietta Macciocchi, Daily Life in
Revolutionary China (New York: Monthly Review Press: 1972).
35 Quoted in John Gerassi, The Comintern, the Fronts and the CPUSA in Michael Brown and
others, ed., New Studies in the Politics and Culture of US Communism (New York: Monthly
Review Press, ), 84.
36 Alistar Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New York: New York Review of
Books, 2006), 137.
37 Irwin M. Wall, The French Communists and the Algerian War, Journal of Contemporary
History 12 (Jul. 1977): 539.
38 Gregory Elliott, Althusser: The Detour of Theory (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006), 10-11.
39 The Chinese would later criticize Soviet humanism as follows:
It substitutes humanism for the Marxist-Leninist theory of class struggle and substitutes the
bourgeois slogan of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity for the ideals of communism. It is a revisionist
programme for the preservation and restoration of capitalism.
The Origin and Development of the Differences Between the Leadership of the CPSU and
Ourselves: Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU,
Marx2Mao.org. http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/OD63.html
40 Quoted in Elliott 2006, 1.
41 Ibid. 52.
42 Louis Althusser, For Marx (New York: Penguin Press, 1969), 93-4.
43 Althusser 1969, 194.
44 Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar, Reading Capital (London: New Left Books, 1970), 311.
45 Althusser 1969, 217.
46 Ibid. 113.
47 Ibid. 202.

48 See Elliott 2006, 19-20 and 169.


49 Althusser 1969, 173-4.
50 See ibid. 183-6.
51 Elliott 2006, 73-74.
52 Althusser 1976, 169.
53 See Elliott 2006, 52. Althusser himself later retracted the whole notion of theoretical practice
as a form of theoreticism. See ibid. 178.
54 For more on the Maoists see Elliott 2006, 174 and especially Richard Wolin, The Wind from
the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution and the Legacy of the 1960s (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2010).
55 Althusser in 1966: Cultural Revolution, Party, State and Conjuncture, Kasama Project.
http://kasamaproject.org/theory/2141-73althusser-in-1966-cultural-revolution-party-state-andconjuncture
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid.
65 Althusser 1976, 91.
66 Ibid. 90.
67 Louis Althusser, On the Reproduction of Capitalism (New York: Verso Books, 2014), 215.

68 In the late 1970s, Althusser signed an appeal for the rehabilitation of murdered Bolshevik
Nikolai Bukharin, see Richard Day, ed., N. I. Bukharin: Selected Writings on the State and the
Transition to Socialism (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1982), xxi.
69 Althusser 1976, 79.
70 Ibid. 80-1.
71 Ibid. 81.
72 Ibid. 83.
73 Ibid. 92-3.
74 Ibid. 81. According to a comrade of Althusser, the Maoist influenced economist Charles
Bettelheim, what limited Trotskyist theories of socialist transition, such as those developed by
Ernest Mandel was that they did not hesitate What Mandel actually tries to do is to deduce,
from the most abstract categories relating to socialist society, the more concrete economic
categories that characterise this society, or the transitional societies, together with the practical
laws that govern the working of these societies. By so doing, he fails to follow the road that leads
from the most general abstractions to the concrete in thought. In order to traverse this road one
needs to go outside the simple relationships of formal logic (deduction and reduction), and use
the methods of dialectical synthesis. It is in fact impossible to re-create the concrete by merely
adding abstractions together. It has to be reproduced by means of dialectics, which is, indeed, the
way in which one gains access to reality. And in order to reach reality in this way, one has to
proceed by mediation, by reconstituting in concepts the organic totality of a socio-economic
formation, something that can only be done by taking account of all the factors that make up this
totality, including, of course, the factors of practice, beginning with economic practice itself : and
this is true, also, when one is trying to construct the theory of socialist economyto operate with
the most meagre of concepts, the only ones that could be worked out before there had been any
social practice in the building of socialism. At the same time, he rejects as impure, and
unworthy of being accorded any theoretical value, the concepts which it has been possible to
work out since then, as a result of social practice in the building of socialism. As often happens,
the positivist approach, that is, the mechanical contrasting of a dead reality with an equally
dead abstraction, becomes transformed into a kind of idealism which renounces all approach to
reality through practice. See Charles Bettelheim, The Transition to Socialist Economy
(Hassocks: Harvester Press Ltd., 1975), 150-1.
75 Althusser 2014, 19-21.
76 Ibid. 45.
77 Ibid. 156.
78 Ibid. 49.

79 Ibid. 251.
80 Ibid. 220.
81 Ibid. 230.
82 See Elliott 2006, 214-223.
83 See Wolin 2010 for the activity of the French Maoists.
March 22, 2015 in THEORY. Tags: China, France, Maoism

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