Rethinking Marxism

A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society

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On Overdetermination and Althusser: Our

Response to Silverman and Park
Stephen Resnick & Richard Wolff
To cite this article: Stephen Resnick & Richard Wolff (2013) On Overdetermination and
Althusser: Our Response to Silverman and Park, Rethinking Marxism, 25:3, 341-349, DOI:
10.1080/08935696.2013.798969
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Published online: 25 Jun 2013.

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Rethinking Marxism, 2013

Vol. 25, No. 3, 341 349, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2013.798969

On Overdetermination and Althusser:

Our Response to Silverman and Park

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Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff

We respond to critical comment directed at our understanding of overdetermination
and our argument that Althusser fell into economic determinism despite also
offering a way out of it. Our first response reviews what the concept of overdetermination is and what it implies. On that basis, we argue that the first critics
claim of prediction is logically impossible. Our second response explains why we
still think that a tension arises in Althussers work between formulating a notion of
overdetermination that in effect rules out any form of causal determination in the
last instance and yet affirming economic determination in the last instance. On that
basis, we criticize and reject the second critics claim that Althusser escaped this
tension between offered nondeterminist and determinist positions.
Key Words: Overdetermination, Louis Althusser, Prediction, Existing-in-Change,
Determinisms

We are not surprised that Knowledge and Class has raised the questions and criticisms
found in these two articles. They are pertinent to studies of the meaning of the
concept of overdetermination, Althussers development of it, and its reformulation in
our book. Silverman raises substantive questions about how we understood and more
generally how one should understand the concept of overdetermination. Similarly,
Park questions how we understand Althussers particular contribution of overdetermination. In this response we take up their important questions and criticisms.
To begin with Mark Silvermans article, we agree with him that the notion of
overdetermination has to do with how one understands entities to exist. In our view,
they exist only as sites of combined effects emanating from other similarly
constituted processes. These constituting and constituted processes are different in
kind (in our work we have used the taxonomy of different economic, political,
cultural, and natural processes) because, for each of them, their causally combined
effects are different. In other words, any one process is not the mere reflection of
(caused by) others effects but rather is the unique site of all other processes
combined effects.
Since any process exists only as a result of the others combined impact, it exists*
is constituted*in contradiction. When we offer this explanation in class lectures, we
2013 Association for Economic and Social Analysis

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like to say that any process is pushed and pulled in different (contradictory)
directions by these constituting and diverse effects. That existing-in-contradiction
means that existing-in-motion (the result of the contradictory pushes and pulls) is the
nature of being. The phrase any existing being refers to/includes, for example, any
existing social or natural process, a word or equation in a discourse, the discourse
itself, a human agent, a corporate entity, or a society as the combination of
constituting processes. In an early article focused on a Marxian notion of transition
from feudalism to capitalism (Resnick and Wolff 1979), we argued that a feudal
society does not exist and then undergo change or radical alteration by, on the one
hand, the impact of long distance trade, as per Sweezys (1976, 33 56) determinist
explanation for feudalisms dissolution, or by, on the other hand, relations and forces
of production, as per Dobbs (1976, 57 67) equally determinist counterexplanation.
Rather, a feudal society exists in transition, always becoming that which it is not, for
that becoming is its nature. Because of this point, and to answer one of Silvermans
questions, we years ago deliberately chose the word process rather than entity
or thing when referring to aspects of society in order to convey this overdeterminist conception of being as existence in motion.
To elaborate: because every process is at one and the same time constituted
(passive) and constituting (active), no process has any existence or meaning without
the others. Each exists only in its particular relationship to others. In that relationship, processes codetermine one another; their mutual codetermination is merely
another way of discussing the logic of overdetermination. It follows that all
ontological and epistemological claims as to some independently existing process
or subset of processes are rejected. No process or subset of processes can be
conceived as merely cause or effect without thereby violating the premise of
overdetermination. Processes cannot occur alone, for in that case, they would be
empty of content, meaningless, or simply nonexistent.
From our reading of Silvermans article, we all agree on the above apropos
questions concerning how to assess the validity of knowledge. From an overdeterminist perspective, neither experience nor thought can occur alone. Because
they constitute one another, neither one nor the other can be asserted to be a ground,
foundation, or standard to validate any knowledge claim. That is why we, like
Silverman, reject all traditional epistemological claims that would privilege a subset
of processes*for the empiricists, experience; for the rationalists, thinking*by
assuming they existed independently of all other processes. That assumed independence is no minor matter, for without it, neither empiricism nor rationalism nor
combinations of them can serve as a foundation (standard) of knowledge. So far we
seem to have agreement.
Here is where we disagree: for us, overdetermination logically rules out any
concept of prediction. We also claim that the logical impossibility of prediction*
once one assumes overdetermination*is a condition of existence of practiced
prediction (making sense of being). Let us explain this seeming contradiction, for it
goes to the heart of Silvermans argument and criticism levied against us.
That being exists in contradiction*pushed here and there*is equivalent to
arguing that its motion is indeterminate. That is what we mean and always meant by a

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process pushed in different directions by its contradictory nature. Sometimes we try

to capture this indeterminacy by using the descriptive word mess. Again, let us
take a moment to explain.
Visually, think of any one of our four kinds of processes to be depicted, say, on a
whiteboard in a classroom. For example, how are we to show to students the nature
of an overdetermined class process? We begin by drawing directed lines from other,
nonclass processes (for the moment assumed to exist as dots on the white board
only to convey this lesson) to an empty but common space on the whiteboard. Lines
emanating from each of these other, nonclass processes denote the distinct and
different effects of each of them, the different determinations each entails. The
ends of each of these drawn lines converge to the common space on the
whiteboard*a site initially empty*that becomes increasingly dense, defined or
concretized, as we add each of its constituting determinations*namely, ever more
causal lines ending at that designated space. A key point to keep in mind as we draw
these lines is that the class process in question doesnt exist prior to those drawn
lines (effects of nonclass processes) but rather only as a result of them. It has
proved too easy (and perhaps tempting?) to forget that the class process is
constituted as the effect of all the nonclass processes in its environment. This
conception of how the class process is understood parallels the mathematical
understanding of a line on a graph as a dense set of an infinite number of distinct
(nonclass) points.
The same infinity of effects that constitutes the class process likewise yields its
movement or activity, its existence in change. In turn, the movements and change of
the class process alter its effects upon and thus its participation in shaping all the
other processes that coexist with the class process. That is what overdetermination
and codetermination mean. Pictorially, as we draw these many and diverse mutually
interacting effects, the diagram on the board very soon approaches a mess: it soon
becomes evident to the eye that all one can observe is a massive jumble of
interacting lines (effects) in which it becomes impossible to decipher visually where
any process ever begins, ends, or, in fact, what it is.
Students often laugh, perhaps nervously, at the result, for there is something in a
constructed picture of lifes gross disorder and indeterminacy that appeals to them,
at least at some level. Perhaps we react similarly to a Picasso or Kandinsky painting:
the pictured disorder is both amusing and unnerving. In any case, this mess is what we
think the notion of overdetermination conveys about what being is.
The content of the above paragraph is why we must disagree with Silverman on
the issue of prediction. To our way of thinking, it becomes logically impossible to
isolate, much less identify, any process or subset of processes that forms what he
calls sufficiently stated initial conditions (Silverman 2013). If all we ever have is
a swirl of interacting and mutually constituting effects, then a mess is a mess.
Those supposed initial conditions are themselves constituted by effects emanating from all the other conditions, and the latter are infinite in nature and ever
changing. In other words, any so-called condition only exists by virtue of what it is
not: namely, effects emanating from the other conditions. Unless one were
endowed with a godlike ability to do so, how does one go about identifying and

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isolating a subset of these, if there is an infinity of them and if each and all exist in
change as a result of their mutual codetermination? The image we used above is
that of a hodgepodge of intersecting lines without being able to discern where one
leaves off and another begins; identification of any one or more conditions becomes
impossible. One cannot identify what are initial conditions and what are not,
irrespective of how carefully one might proceed or what additional information is
supplied.
In introducing a notion of prediction, we think Silverman also has reintroduced
the old problem of determination in the last instance*not in epistemology but
rather in ontology. Ironically, he affirms indeterminism when it comes to knowledge
claims but determinism when it comes to societal claims. Let us add here that we
well understand that one of these positions need not necessarily entail the other.
One can argue for a form of determinism or essentialism in theory but not of theory.
And the converse is surely possible. In fact, if we were to claim otherwise*that
determinism in one must necessarily imply determinism in the other, we too would
fall into the trap of a determinism in which one position can be deduced from the
other.
Bearing this qualifier in mind, lets explore Silvermans determinist problem, but
in a way that we see it arising from our different perspective. To isolate a set of
claimed sufficient conditions as the basis of prediction is equivalent to somehow
knowing, for some predicted event to occur, which of the infinite and interacting
conditions are more and which are less important; which are necessary and which
are contingent; which are antecedent and which are not. Our response holds that the
use of those notions violates the premise of overdetermination. Those notions
transform the overdetermined mess (how we have conceptualized life) into an
ordered life in which an observer can, carefully of course, order processes and
conditions such that some come before others so as to predict events on their basis.
Coming before means that those specified conditions have a prior existence, which
is the precise assumption that is ruled out by the notion of overdetermination
we offer. For us, nothing exists prior to the existence of others; processes and their
determinations only exist in relation to others. Hence, the terms necessary,
sufficiently stated, and initial have no meaning in this notion of overdetermination. We think this way pertains not only to Silvermans criticisms but,
as we shall see, also to Parks.
To isolate a subset of processes or conditions out of the swirl of interacting and
constituting effects so as to endow that subset with the status of sufficient
conditions is an act that falls into the very determinism that overdetermination
rejects. There are no sufficient conditions, for all conditions actively constitute
and are passively constituted. The determining power or importance of each only
exists as a result of these constituting effects arising from the others. On the latter,
we very much agree with Silvermans nicely put phrasing: the determining properties of the variable are a function of the relationship (316). How is one to choose or
even identify a subset as necessary or sufficient, as more or less important, if all have
this codetermining power? They all are necessary, and that assumed all is precisely
why we as humans cant predict. That is, we can predict if and only if we argue
(implicitly if not explicitly) against overdetermination by making some effects

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emanating from some processes/conditions more important than (or enabling them to
come first and before) others. When we engage in that act of ordering, we have
Silvermans posed sufficiently stated initial conditions. However, the very ordering
of processes already presumes independence among them. That independence, as we
argued in Knowledge and Class (1987) and elsewhere over the years (see, for
example, Resnick and Wolff 2006) and have repeated here, is precisely what
overdetermination rejects.
We do agree with Silverman that, faced with the overdetermined mess that is life,
one reaction by some humans has been to make sense of that mess, to theorize it and
its complex impact on them in many different, inventive ways. They theorize in their
prose, equations, art, music, poetry, screams, giggles and laughter, wink of an eye,
and so forth. In these diverse acts of theorizing, they bring order to the mess. Yet it
nonetheless still remains a mess in our view. Ordering it is what knowledge of it
means. That ordering is the power and excitement of and stimulus provided by
theorizing.
Consider, for example, theorizing the so-called economy. Economists pick what
are merely a few (always still overdetermined) processes as the way to begin to
understand the mess that the economy is. Indeed, they have no choice but to
pick, if they are to communicate their sense or understanding of the economy out
there to themselves and to others. Hence, in contrast to Silvermans claim, this is
not so much ability but rather a need we have to formulate hypotheses . . . for
predicting events (Silverman 2013, 312) so as to communicate whatever it is that
strikes us.
There are always particular economic or other processes that economists pick as
their discursive tools (initial concepts used to formulate hypotheses). Those concepts
comprise what we called their entry point (of theorizing) in Knowledge and Class.
Once chosen, an entry point arrests overdetermination because it privileges some
processes/conditions over others, thereby allowing observers to conquer*to make a
particular sense of*what nonetheless remains the assumed mess. In other words, an
entry point is a discursive ordering of processes: out of the infinity of codetermining
processes, some are asserted to be (Silvermans) initial conditions. That is the power
of but also the risk posed by an entry point. Once chosen, one can use it to predict the
behavior of other aspects of society. That prediction is really a story*a thoughtconcrete*we tell about the nature of being. However, that power is also an illusion,
for the mess that is being has not disappeared because we as humans invoke/invent
an ordering of it in our thinking (produced story).
To think otherwise runs the risk of forgetting the difference between theorizing and
the object of theorizing. The importance of recognizing that difference struck
Nietzsche forcefully:
One should not wrongly reify cause and effect, as the natural scientists
do (and whoever, like them, now naturalizes in his thinking), according to
the mechanical doltishness in which the cause presses and pushes until it
effects its end; one should use cause and effect only as pure
concepts, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of
designation and communication*not for explanation. In the in itself

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there is nothing of causal connections, of necessity . . . there is no rule

of law. It is we alone who have devised cause, sequence. (Nietzsche 1968,
219)1
For Nietzsche as for us, prediction is but another form of what humans do in the
logic of our theorizing: we choose one or a few processes of some importance to us as
our entry point. That importance and the resulting choice are themselves overdetermined. But the moment we engage in that choice, we endow the chosen
process(es) with the status of (our) thesis on which basis we can then predict some
discursive outcome with some certainty. That is, we predict that B will have a
likelihood of occurring once we specify A as initial condition. We alone, as Nietzsche
claims, devise this sequencing (and probabilistic assumption). In this sense and from
an overdeterminist perspective, prediction is an integral part of what we do when we
theorize, irrespective of whether our object is said to exist in the past, present, or
future.
The theoretical act of prediction has everything to do with the nature of our
thinking about being and nothing to do with the nature of being itself. Of course,
similar to any of our thoughts, prediction too will impact being in contradictory ways.
Let us now turn to Parks critique of our formulation of Althussers argument. Much
of our response to Silverman applies here as well, particularly the inability to order
processes once the concept of overdetermination is assumed. In fact, Park writes an
especially revealing sentence that not only conveys what he thinks about the nature
of being but also enables us sharply to underscore his difference from our view. In a
word, without the structure in dominance or the determination in the last instance,
the totality would be completely chaotic, in which case it would be no totality from
the outset*whether Hegelian or Marxist*since totality is an organic system (Park
2013, 332). We thoroughly agree with the first part of this sentence: (for us) being,
society, or whatever may be the referred-to totality is completely chaotic. That is
what we mean by mess in our response to Silverman. We think the concept of
overdetermination rejects the possibility of order, certainty, and control in both the
epistemological and ontological realms.
In the case of Parks different, but nonetheless methodologically similar claim to
that of Silverman, last instance determinism by the economic requires knowers to be
able to order an infinity of processes (or practices) such that some are more
1. We agree with Silverman that reference to and use of Nietzsche is useful in arguing for
overdetermination. That we did not do so in Knowledge and Class had more to do with our
central purpose there: namely, to argue against determinisms and for overdetermination within
the Marxian tradition. We were more concerned with analyzing the writings of Lenin, Luka
cs,
Gramsci, Althusser, and so forth than non-Marxian writers. Richard Rorty did receive prominence
because we read his 1979 book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature after writing our first
article, in 1982, rejecting economic determinism (see Resnick and Wolff 2006). We then were
struck and encouraged by the parallel search for antiessentialism both within and without the
Marxian tradition. While Rorty focused only on the latter, we saw a similar struggle within
Marxism, and that was what we tried to argue later in our 1987 book. David Ruccio and Jack
Amariglio (2003) do give the writings of Nietzsche a prominent place in their brilliantly insightful
analysis of modern economic reasoning.

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important, weighty, or determining than others are. In turn, that ordering presumes
independence among (at least some) processes, and that is what overdetermination
denies. We read this rejection of independence among processes as the link to Hegels
Logic: each and every process only exists (is constituted) by its connection to the
other processes. Without that connection, a process has no impact, for it is empty. In
this sense, overdetermination is a fully relational concept of causation. To have the
economic serving as the ultimate arbitrator of contradictions is the same move as
asserting that one aspect of the totality*namely, what Park refers to as economic
practice*is immune from codetermination: the economic determines (in the last
instance) but is itself not determined (in that last instance).
In its rejection of ordering, the concept of overdetermination becomes difficult for
all of us to affirm and internalize. For Park, the phrases determination in the last
instance and structure in dominance, and for Silverman, the term prediction
all operate, despite their differences, as common anchors (Parks word) to rescue
us from the danger of chaos. Neither writer can take that last step of letting go of
determinism. We likewise fault Althusser for hesitating at that last step, even though
he affirms, deploys, and extends the concept of overdetermination that he
appropriated from Freuds initial and Luka
css subsequent usages.
In this regard, we recall a wonderful passage in Deweys (1980, 114) Quest for
Certainty where he critically examines Newtons motive (and implicitly the motive of
many other theorists): There was needed some guarantee that Nature would not go
to pieces and be displaced or revert to chaos. How could the unity of anything be
secure unless there was something persistent and unchangeable behind all change?
Without such fixed indissoluble unities, no final certainty was possible. Everything
was put in peril of dissolution. We think that the guarantee in nature that Dewey
criticized is precisely what Park offers with determination in the last instance and
structure in dominance. Park seeks to escape from what he too sees as chaos.
Parks well-researched article does not persuade us that Althusser escaped the
tension in his work between, on the one hand, affirming an economic determinist
anchor and the certainty that follows from its use and, on the other hand, rejecting
that same anchor and certainty. Ironically, Parks quotations suggest that there may
have been more to the determinist Althusser than we argued in our book. But then we
recalled our previous struggles with Althusser: the tension between the two
contending positions is what we meant and still mean by essentialist and nonessentialist moments present in his discourse.
This tension has absolutely nothing to do with Parks claim that Althusser was too
serious and consistent a scholar to not escape the contradiction we posed (Park
2013, 340). Rather, it arises from what a discourse is: like everything else, it too exists
in contradiction, pushed here and there by the infinity of its overdeterminants. We
assume that Althusser, like most authors, is serious*whatever that might mean*and
aims to be logically consistent. However, in applying the notion of overdetermination to the process of writing, the claim of achieving logical consistency is impossible
to sustain. Every text contains problems, inconsistencies, and unworked-out
hypotheses as a result of its overdetermined production. Writing occurs across
time. Newly introduced concepts conflict with and upset old ones. Only some of the
many tensions and inconsistencies ever get recognized and worked on by the

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author(s), while most remain to be worked on, possibly, at another time. Even then,
no author (or anyone else) could ever figure out the myriad interconnections among
all the ideas comprising a text. The very process of any authors figuring out will
yield still new interconnections and inconsistencies to be analyzed.
It is impossible for any author to control all of this. Indeed, the problems of
Althussers work on overdetermination present the conditions of existence for others,
like us and Park, who only recognize, pick up, and work on some of the many tensions.
In this regard, we might add that the texts of Marx provide ample evidence of
problems and inconsistencies that have helped to fuel 150 years of research, including
that of Althussers work on how to understand society from a Marxian perspective.
One last word: we are struck by Silvermans and Parks common need to reintroduce
some degree of stability*and the control it implies*to an otherwise radically
unstable (chaotic) world. It seems to us that every time some author poses being in
terms of what we have called a mess (and we think many have, both within and
without the Marxian tradition), it deeply worries and upsets others. Why is that?
What we have learned from reactions to our work over the years is that one set of
critics associates a set of negativities as necessarily following from our use of
overdetermination. These include nihilism, in which no meaning or purpose attaches
to life; radical relativism, in which statements are merely different from one
another; everythingism, in which no one can say anything definite about something
without saying something about everything, which is an impossible task; and so on.
The worry about chaos thus runs deep. Sometimes authors who invoke a concept of
overdetermination then quickly negate it by reintroducing determinism, whether
consciously or not. We think Park and Silverman are in good company with Althusser
when they fall into that determinist trap. Ironically, in the case of Althusser, he tried
mightily to rescue Marxism from those theoretical and political disasters across the
twentieth century that he believed had been fostered in part by its economic
determinism. Yet he invoked the same determinism when affirming the economically
structured totality of societal contradictions.
The strategy we offered to confront this Marxian dilemma in Knowledge and Class
has been repeated many times since. Marxists should choose an economic concept of
class as their entry point without making that entry point a determining essence,
either in the first or last instance, in their conceptualization/theorization of social
being. Our focus on not making class the determining essence of Marxist social theory
follows from our affirming a notion and logic of overdetermination along with class as
entry point. That causal logic allows us to argue that class as entry point (thesis) only
takes on meaning, concreteness, and determination in connection to that which it is
not (antithesis): namely, all the nonclass processes constituting society. This kind of
reasoning (representing our debt to Hegels Logic) might help Park hold on to
economics (class as entry point) without making it a determining cause (class both
causes and is caused). This formulation also might help Silvermans quest for
prediction without the need to invoke an order existing in what is out there.
Class and overdetermination represent the Marxian discursive tools enabling us to
make what we called above a practiced prediction, namely to tell a particular kind of
story about society without making class (or any other process) more (or less) important
or determinant. Yet we do and must tell a story*a so-called thought-concrete*if we

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are to communicate. As such, we must focus necessarily on only a subset of the infinity
of interacting processes. That intervention or practiced prediction, necessary as it is
if we hope to effect society in a particular way, also necessarily conflicts with the idea
of society as a mess. We think the latter difference between theorizing and its object is
precisely what Nietzsche had in mind.

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