Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T12:41:28.442Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Determination and Consciousness in Marx

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Charles W. Mills
Charles W. Mills*
Affiliation:
University of OklahomaNorman, OK73019, U.S.A.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

There has been a dramatic increase over the past decade in the volume of Anglo-American philosophical writing on Marxism, with the 1978 publication of G.A. Cohen’s trail-blazing Karl Marx’s Theory of History being a convenient landmark. What has come to be called ‘analytical Marxism’ is now well-established, and valuable clarificatory work has been done on such traditionally murky subjects as the theory of historical materialism, the nature of ideology, Marx’s views on ethics, the character of Marx’s epistemology, the ‘scientific’ status of Marxism, and the problematic interface between Marxism and normative liberal political theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , September 1989 , pp. 421 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This paper has gone through various incarnations, but it began its life as part of my doctoral dissertation, ‘The Concept of Ideology in the Thought of Marx and Engels,’ University of Toronto 1985. I would like to acknowledge the comments and criticisms of Danny Goldstick and Frank Cunningham, from which I have greatly benefitted.

References

1 Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1978)Google Scholar

2 The literature has become too vast for a listing of works to be anything but a representative sampling. For an overview of the theory of historical materialism, see, for example: Cohen; McMurtry, John The Structure of Marx’s World-View (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1978)Google Scholar; Rader, Melvin Marx’s Interpretation of History (New York: Oxford University Press 1979)Google Scholar; Wood, Allen Karl Marx (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1981)Google Scholar; Miller, Richard W. Analyzing Marx: Morality, Power and History (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1984)Google Scholar; Elster, Jon Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985)Google Scholar. Ideology is discussed to varying extents in Cohen, McMurtry, Wood and Elster; see also McCarney, Joe The Real World of Ideology (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press 1980)Google Scholar. Wood and Miller offer different perspectives on Marx’s ethical views (if any), and valuable discussions are also collected in Cohen, Marshall Nagel, Thomas and Scanlon, Thomas eds., Marx, Justice, and History (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Nielsen, Kai and Patten, Steven C. eds., Marx and Morality (Guelph, ON: Canadian Association for Publishing in Philosophy 1981)Google Scholar. The question of whether Marx’s epistemology was realist or idealist is tackled by Wood, and also (at book length) by Ruben, David-Hillel Marxism and Materialism: A Study in Marxist Theory of Knowledge, 2nd ed. (1977; rpt. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press 1979)Google Scholar. Little’s, Daniel The Scientific Marx (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1986)Google Scholar examines the scientific pretensions of Marxism, and there are also interesting discussions in Cohen and Miller. Debates between Marxism and mainstream political theory on the issues of justice, equality, freedom and democracy can be found in the works on ethics already cited, and also in Nielsen, Kai Equality and Liberty: A Defense of Radical Egalitarianism (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld 1985)Google Scholar; Paul, Ellen Frankel Miller, Fred D. Jr. Paul, Jeffrey and Ahrens, John eds., Marxism and Liberalism (New York: Basil Blackwell 1986)Google Scholar; and Cunningham, Frank Democratic Theory and Socialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987)Google Scholar. Finally, all these topics, and others besides, are covered in several valuable anthologies: Mepham, John and Ruben’s, David-Hillel four-volume Issues in Marxist Philosophy (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press 1979-81)Google Scholar; Ball, Terence and Farr, James eds., After Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1984)Google Scholar; and Roemer, John ed., Analytical Marxism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986)Google Scholar. For an overview of some of the latest debates, see the survey articles by Scott Arnold, N. ‘Recent Work on Marx: A Critical Survey,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 24 (1987) 277–93Google Scholar, and Buchanan, Allen E. ‘Marx, Morality and History: An Assessment of Recent Analytical Work on Marx,’ Ethics 98 (1987) 104–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 In the general discussions of historical materialism as a theory, McMurtry and Elster do spend some time on this issue.

4 See Miller, chapters three and four, on the presuppositions of pluralist conceptions of political power, and Nielsen, chapter ten, on sociological points against Nozick, for examples of this kind of critique.

5 For a discussion, and a bibliography of some of the debate, see Knaster, Stephen M. ‘How the Self-Defeating Argument Against Determinism Defeats Itself,’ Dialogue 25 (1986) 239–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 The Marxist Conception of Ideology: A Critical Essay (New York: Cambridge University Press 1977), 19–21Google Scholar

7 The Illusion of the Epoch: Marxism-Leninism as a Philosophical Creed (London: Cohen and West 1955), 132Google Scholar

8 Class, Structure and Knowledge: Problems in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York and London: New York University Press 1980), 11–12Google Scholar

9 ‘Marx and Working-Class Consciousness,’ History of Political Thought 1 (1980) 507Google Scholar

10 ‘Ideology and the Problem of False Consciousness,’ Political Studies 20 (1972) 435Google Scholar

11 At this point, crucially, the critic might contend that Marx’s (apparently) pejorative conception of all ‘ideology,’ most notably in The German Ideology, logically precludes such a non-distorting view of socio-economic causation. However, I argue elsewhere that the univocal pejorative interpretation of ‘ideology’ in Marx—another well-established tradition—is also a mistake: for the evidence, see my survey paper, ‘“Ideology” in Marx and Engels,’ The Philosophical Forum 16 (1985) 327-46, and my follow-up revision (co-authored with D. Goldstick), ‘A New Old Meaning of “Ideology,”‘ forthcoming in Dialogue. Thus I am sympathetic to Joe McCarney’s ‘epistemologically neutral’ conception of ‘ideology’ (see McCarney, chapter three), though my own strategy for explaining apparently contrary passages in Marx and Engels is a different one.

12 Little, 27. See also David-Hillel Ruben, ‘Marxism and Dialectics,’ in Mepham and Ruben, vol. 1, 69-71.

13 Little, 24-9

14 Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick Collected Works, vol. 5 (New York: International Publishers 1976), 59Google Scholar

15 Lenin, V.I. Collected Works, vol. 5 (Moscow: Progress Publishers 1961), 386Google Scholar

16 See: Gramsci, Antonio Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Hoare, Quintin and Smith, Geoffrey Nowell (New York: International Publishers 1971)Google Scholar; Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor W. Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. Cumming, John (1944; rpt. New York: Seabury Press 1972)Google Scholar; Althusser, Louis ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,’ in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Brewster, Ben (New York and London: Monthly Review Press 1971) 127–86.Google Scholar

17 For some statements of the view from the left, see, for example: Miliband, Ralph The State in Capitalist Society (New York: Basic Books 1969)Google Scholar; Edwards, Richard C. Reich, Michael and Weisskopf, Thomas E. eds., The Capitalist System: A Radical Analysis of American Society, 2nd ed. (1972; rpt. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1978)Google Scholar; Parenti, Michael Democracy for the Few, 5th ed. (1974; rpt. New York: St. Martin’s Press 1988)Google Scholar; Richard Miller, ch. 3 and 4.

18 See: Herman, Edward S. The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda (Boston: South End Press 1982)Google Scholar; Smith, Wayne S. ‘Lies About Nicaragua,’ Foreign Policy 67 (1987) 87–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chomsky, Noam The Culture of Terrorism (Boston: South End Press 1988)Google Scholar; Lewis, Gordon K. Grenada: The Jewel Despoiled (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press 1987)Google Scholar; Herman, Edward S. and Brodhead, Frank The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection (New York: Sheridan Square Press 1986)Google Scholar; Evans, Grant The Yellow Rainmakers: Are Chemical Weapons Being Used in Southeast Asia? (London: Verso 1983)Google Scholar; Robinson, Julian Guillemin, Jeanne and Meselson, Matthew ‘Yellow Rain: The Story Collapses,’ Foreign Policy 68 (1987) 100–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parenti, Michael Inventing Reality: The Politics of the News Media (New York: St. Martin’s Press 1986)Google Scholar.

19 See: Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York: Basic Books 1976)Google Scholar; Apple, Michael Ideology and Curriculum (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Education and Power (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1982)Google Scholar; Parenti, Democracy; Parenti, Reality; Herman, Edward S. and Chomsky, Noam Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon 1988)Google Scholar.

20 See Herman, Real Terror Network, and also Chomsky, Noam Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace (Boston: South End Press 1985)Google Scholar.

21 See: Caute, David The Great Fear (New York: Simon and Schuster 1978)Google Scholar; Schrecker, Ellen W. No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (New York: Oxford University Press 1986)Google Scholar; Churchill, Ward and Wall, James Vander Agents of Repression (Boston: South End Press 1988)Google Scholar.

22 See Elster.

23 Ideology and Utopia, trans. Wirth, Louis and Shils, Edward (Bonn, 1929; rpt. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World 1968), 62Google Scholar

24 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (1962; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1970), ch. 10Google Scholar

25 See: Wood, chapter twelve; Ruben, Materialism; Cunningham, Frank and Goldstick, Dan ‘Marxism and Epistemological Relativism,’ Social Praxis 6 (1979) 237–53.Google Scholar

26 Keat, Russell and Urry’s, John Social Theory as Science, 2nd ed. (1975; rpt. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1982)Google Scholar develops this theme at length.

27 Capital, vol. 3 (New York: International Publishers 1967), 817Google Scholar

28 Capital, vol. 1 (New York: International Publishers 1967), 81, n. 1Google Scholar

29 Mepham, John ‘The Theory of Ideology in Capital,’ in Mepham, and Ruben, vol. 3, 148Google Scholar

30 Cohen, appendix I; Little, ch. 4

31 Ruben, Materialism, 113. See also Kathryn Russell’s critique of Mepham in Mepham and Ruben, vol. 3, 185-96.

32 Trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Vintage Books 1973), 164-5

33 Capital, vol. 1, 540, 176

34 For a discussion, see Cohen, G.A. ‘The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (1983) 3–33Google Scholar and Levine, Andrew Arguing for Socialism (1984; rpt. London and New York: Verso 1988), ch. 1.Google Scholar

35 Capital, vol. 1, 71-83; Cohen offers an account in History, ch. 4 and 5.

36 Capital, vol. 1, 737. For an attempt at a diagrammatic treatment of this ideological phenomenon, see my ‘Marxism and Naturalistic Mystification,’ Science and Society 49 (1985) 472-83.

37 The Mismeasure of Man (New York and London: W.W. Norton 1981), 20

38 See Marx’s Afterword to the second German edition of vol. 1 of Capital, where the historic shift away from ‘scientific bourgeois economy’ is described.

39 Capital, vol. 3, 168

40 Capital, vol. 1, 10

41 Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick Collected Works, vol. 11 (New York: International Publishers 1979), 128Google Scholar

42 Marx and Engels, Works, vol. 11, 187

43 See Marx’s Dec. 28, 1846, letter to Annenkov, P.V. in Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick Collected Works, vol. 38 (New York: International Publishers 1982), 105Google Scholar, and also Marx and Engels, Works, vol. 11, 130-1.

44 See, for example, Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick Collected Works, vol. 6 (New York: International Publishers 1976), 490–6.Google Scholar

45 Brook, Eve and Finn, Dan ‘Working Class Images of Society and Community Studies,’ in Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, ed., On Ideology (1977; rpt. London: Hutchinson 1978), 126Google Scholar. For Gramsci’s original use, see Gramsci, 333.

46 Hill, Stephen The Dockers: Class and Tradition in London (London: Heinemann 1976), 141Google Scholar

47 ‘The Social Cohesion of Liberal Democracy,’ American Sociological Review 35 (1970) 423–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Giddens, Anthony and Held, David eds., Classes, Power, and Conflict (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1982), 373–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Mann (in Giddens and Held), 388; 378-82

49 More recent discussions, and extensive bibliographies, can be found in Cheal, David J. ‘Hegemony, Ideology and Contradictory Consciousness,’ The Sociological Quarterly 20 (1979) 109–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Marshall, Gordon ‘Some Remarks on the Study of Working-Class Consciousness,’ Politics and Society 12 (1983) 263–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 In this spirit, James Noble has argued that one of the important ‘adequacy conditions’ Marxian functionalist explanations must meet to avoid being mere pseudo-explanations is some plausible auxiliary genetic theory of ‘how it comes about that the item that fulfills the need is there in the first place’ (see James Noble, ‘Marxian Functionalism,’ in Ball and Farr, 114).

51 For example, the ‘strong programme’ of the Edinburgh school; see Barnes, Barry Interests and the Growth of Knowledge (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1977)Google Scholar and Bloor, David Knowledge and Social Imagery (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1976).Google Scholar

52 See, for eample, Ziyad Husami’s critique of Robert Tucker and Allen Wood’s ‘anti-moralist’ (the phrase is Kai Nielsen’s) interpretations of Marx’s views on justice, in which Husami emphasizes that Marx’s ‘sociology of morals’ involves ‘two levels of determination’ (‘Marx on Distributive Justice,’ in Cohen, Nagel and Scanlon, 47).

53 For discussions of Gramsci’s views on this issue, see, for example, Femia, Joseph ‘Hegemony and Consciousness in the Thought of Antonio Gramsci,’ Political Studies 23 (1975) 29–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Karabel, Jerome ‘Revolutionary Contradictions: Antonio Gramsci and the Problem of Intellectuals,’ Politics and Society 6 (1976) 123–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar