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Critical Theory, Historical Materialism, and the Ostensible End of Marxism: The Poverty of Theory Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2009

Bryan D. Palmer
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This essay notes the extent to which poststructuralism/postmodernism have generally espoused hostility to historical materialism, surveys some representative examples of historical writing that have gravitated toward the new critical theory in opposition to Marxism, and closes with a discussion of the ironic evolution of a poststructurally inclined, anti-Marxist historiography. Counter to the prevailing ideological consensus that Marxism has been brought to its interpretive knees by a series of analytic challenges and the political collapse of the world's ostensibly “socialist” states, this essay argues that historical materialism has lost neither its power to interpret the past nor its relevance to the contemporary intellectual terrain.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , August 1993 , pp. 133 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1993

References

1 Thompson, E. P., The Poverty of Theory & Other Essays (London: Merlin, 1978)Google Scholar; Marx, Karl, The Poverty of Philosophy; Answer to the “Philosophy of Poverty” by M. Proudhon (Moscow: Foreign Languages, n.d., original 1847)Google Scholar.

2 Associated with the much-publicized 1989 pronouncement of Francis Fukuyama that “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such”, this position has gained much credence. For a journalistic statement see Richard Bernstein, “Judging 'Post-History', the End to All Theories”, New York Times, 27 August 1989. Responses from the Marxist left include the essays in Miliband, Ralph, Pantich, Leo, and Saville, John, ed., The Retreat of the Intellectuals: Socialist Register 1990 (London: Merlin 1990)Google Scholar.

3 Note, for instance, the argument in Wood, Ellen Meiksins, The Retreat from Class: A New “True” Socialism (London: Verso, 1986)Google Scholar.

4 ,Engels, Frederick, “Introduction to Dialectics of Nature”, in Marx and Engels, Selected Works (Moscow: Progress, 1968), p. 353Google Scholar.

5 Again, this has historical parallels. Sec E. P. Thompson, “Outside the Whale”, in The Poverty of Theory, pp. 1–34; Thompson, “Disenchantment or Default? A Lay Sermon”, in Brien, Conor Cruise O' and Vancch, W. D., ed., Power and Consciousness (New York University Press, 1969), pp. 149–181. Note as wellGoogle Scholar, Gcras, Norman, Discourses of Extremity: Radical Ethics & Post-Marxist Extravagances (London: Verso, 1990), p. 62Google Scholar.

6 Fredric Jameson notes “One's occasional feeling that, for poststructuralism, all enemies arc on the left, and that the principal target always turns out to be this or that form of historical thinking …” , Jameson, Postmodernism: or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1991), p. 217Google Scholar.

7 See Eagleton, Terry, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, 1991)Google Scholar.

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9 For an overly brief statement sec the entry on “ideology” in Bottomore, Tom, ed., A Dictionary of Marxist Thought (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 219–223Google Scholar.

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11 See, among other writings, Davis, Mike, Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the US Working Class (London: Verso, 1986)Google Scholar.

12 Jameson, Fredric, Postmodernism: or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989)Google Scholar. For comment on these texts see Palmer, Bryan D., “The Condition of Postmodernity and the Poststructuralist Challenge to Political and Historical Meaning”, forthcoming, The Maryland Historian (1993)Google Scholar.

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15 I have attempted to offer a brief overview of some of the salient intellectual developments in Descent into Discourse: The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), pp. 3–47.

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17 See, for instance, Lacan, Jacques, Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis, translated by Wilden, Anthony (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), esp. pp.7–8, 27, 32Google Scholar.

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19 Geras, “Althusscr's Marxism”, pp. 266, 268.

20 Note, especially, the important article, Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”, in , Derrida, Writing and Difference (University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 279–280, 291–292Google Scholar.

21 Callinicos, Alex, Making History: Agency, Structure and Change in Social Theory (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 3Google Scholar.

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23 Wood, Ellen Meiksins, The Pristine Culture of Capitalism: An Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States (London: Verso, 1991), p. 93Google Scholar.

24 Among many exemplary texts that could be cited see Dews, Peter, Logics of Disintegration: Post-structuralist Tliought and the Claims of Critical Tlicory (London: Verso, 1987)Google Scholar; Norman Gcras, Discourses of Extremity, Soper, Kate, Troubled Pleasures: Writings on Politics, Gender and Hedonism (London: Verso, 1990)Google Scholar.

25 As one example see Bryan D. Palmer, Descent into Discourse pp. 48–86.

26 See, for instance, Clarke, John, Criteher, Chas, and Johnson, Richard et al. , ed., Working-Class Culture: Studies in History and Theory (London: Hutchinson, 1979)Google Scholar; Johnson, Richard et al. , ed., Making Histories: Studies in History-writing and Politics (London: Hutchinson, 1982)Google Scholar.

27 For a brief introduction to the English Marxists see Kaye, Harvey J., Vie British Marxist Historians: An Introductory Analysis (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984)Google Scholar; and for specific comment on American Marxist historiography, Anderson, Perry, In the Tracks of Historical Materialism (University of Chicago Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

28 See Jones, Gareth Stedman, Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832–1982 (Cambridge University Press, 1983), esp. pp. 1–24, 90–178Google Scholar.

29 The literature on Stedman Jones's essay, much of it cast in materialist opposition, is now considerable. Sec, for instance, Palmer, Descent into Discourse, pp. 128–133; Wood, Retreat from Class, pp. 102–115; Foster, John, “The Declassing of Language”, New Left Review, 150 (03–04 1985), pp. 29–46Google Scholar; Pickering, Paul A., “Class without Words: Symbolic Communication in the Chartist Movement“, Past & Present, 112 (08 1986), pp. 144–162CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scott, Joan, “On Language, Gender, and Working-Class History”, International Labor and Working Class History, 31 (Spring 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the responses to Scott by Palmer, Stanscll, and Rabinbach, pp. 1–36; Thompson, Dorothy, “The Languages of Class”, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Social History, 52 (No. 1, 1987), pp. 54–57Google Scholar; Kirk, Neville, “In Defence of Class: A Critique of Recent Revisionist Writing on the Nineteenth-Century Working Class”, International Review of Social History, 32 (1987), pp. 2–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gray, Robert, “The Deconstructing of the English Working Class”, Social History, 11 (10 1986), pp. 363–373CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Epstein, James, “Rethinking the Categories of Working Class History”, LabourlLe Travail, 18 (Fall 1986), pp. 195–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Epstein, , “Understanding the Cap of Liberty: Symbolic Practice and Social Conflict in Early Nineteenth-Century England”, Past & Present, 122 (02 1989), pp. 75–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rogers, Nicholas, “Chartism and Class Struggle”, LabourlLe Travail, 19 (Spring 1987), pp. 143–152CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clark, Christopher, “Politics, Language and Class”, Radical History Review, 34 (1986), pp. 78–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 On aestheticism and “Western Marxism” see the discussions in Anderson, Perry, Considerations on Western Marxism (London: New Left Books, 1976)Google Scholar; Megill, Allan, Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

31 See Garcth Stedman Jones, “History: The Poverty of Empiricism”, in Blackburn, Robin, ed., Ideology in Social Science: Readings in Critical Social Theory (New York: Vintage, 1973), pp. 96–115Google Scholar; “The Marxism of the Early Lukacs”, in New Left Review, ed., Western Marxism: A Critical Reader (London: Verso, 1978), pp. 11–60; Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society (Oxford University Press, 1971).

32 Stedman Jones, Languages of Class, esp.pp 13, 20–21,24.

33 Ibid., p. 178.

34 Stedman Jones, “Why is the Labour Party in a Mess?” in Languages of Class, p. 256.

35 Garcth Stedman Jones, “The Crisis of Communism”, in Hall, Stuart and Jacques, Martin, ed., New Times: The Changing Face of Politics in the 1990s (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1989), pp.230–236Google Scholar.

36 Joyce, Patrick, Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1840–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1991), esp. pp. 97, 113, 254CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Joyce, Visions of the People, pp. 3,133. It is not that deference and the ideology of labour capital harmony need be denied by historians, only that they need be situated, contcxtualizcd, and explored, rather than reified. This was more successfully scrutinized in Joyce's earlier work, although there is no mistaking the connection between that text and his current concerns. See Joyce, Patrick, Work, Society, & Politics: The Culture of the Factory in Later Victorian Britain (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

38 Joyce, Visions of the People, pp. 110,246. The laudatory assessment of Reddy, William M., Money & Liberty in Modern Europe: A Critique of Historical Understanding (Cambridge University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is countcrposcd to the discussion in Palmer, Descent into Discourse, pp. 134–144.

39 Joyce, Visions of the People, pp. 1, 3, 5, 11–12.

40 Ibid., p. 342.

41 See, for instance, Jones, Gareth Stedman, “‘The Cockney’ and the Nation: 1780–1988”, in Feldman, David and Jones, Gareth Stedman, ed., Metropolis London: Histories and Representations (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 272–324Google Scholar. In the case of Canada I would situate Ian McKay similarly. Note, for an early statement hostile to “culturalism” and paying homage to the wisdom of Jones, Stedman, , McKay, “Historians, Anthropology, and the Concept of Culture”, Labour/Le Travail, 8/9 (Spring 1981–1982), pp. 185–241Google Scholar, a piece that ends with the statement: “We close the logical and political circles only by a return to the concrete: to the determinate abstractions of Capital and to a logical political practice.” In that essay McKay proclaimed confidently that ”‘Culture’ … merely designates a central but empty place where the theories of historical materialism should be” (p. 228). Ten years later no such language appears in his publications, which include a reader on post-Confederation Canada that complements another text's political narrative “by focussing on the social and on the cultural”, ordering readings in these areas around the concepts of liberalism, hegemony, and gender. He concludes that volume with the powerfully assertive injunction: “To explore ourselves through probing the construction of our modernity is the daunting and fascinating challenge of Canadian history.” McKay is thus seldom at a loss for words to tell us what to do. Beyond this continuity in the form of his presentations, however, He significant shifts. For if McKay has not abandoned class and rejected historical materialism, there is no denying the extent to which his analytic framework has changed; there is a world of political difference separating the logic of Capital and that of “our” modernity, an experience of seemingly overriding importance. A recent review addressing the national question concludes: “The redefinition of 'Canada’ surely means that the marxist version of ‘Canadian working class history’ is being overtaken by events … Canadian historians … face a … severe, agonizing and troubling task in facing a future which appears likely to be post-modern, and, it appears, quite possible, post-Canadian as well.” There may be many reasons to revise our historical interpretation of class experience, but it is surely questionable to undertake that revision solely on the basis of a contemporary postmodernity, the interpretation of which remains an open rather than a closed question, and the outcome of which is necessarily uncertain. Yet, like Stedman Jones, who I have argued reinterprets Chartism in light of his own reading of the failures of the Labour Party during Thatcherism, McKay's historical relativism, conditioned by the supposed break-up of Canada, drifts dangerously in the direction of presentism. In his introduction to the reader in post-Confederation Canadian history which he edited, McKay adopts an eminently poststructuralist justification for this presentism: “‘The past no longer exists; and history, which is how modern western societies try to understand and to ‘master’ the past is an intellectual activity undertaken in the present.” Of course, one wants to say, but… See McKay, Ian, The Challenge of Modernity: A Reader on Post-Confederation Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1992), quote from p. xxivGoogle Scholar; , McKay, “Unidentified National Objects”, Labour/Le Travail, 28 (Fall 1991), esp. p. 294Google Scholar.

42 Joyee, Work, Society & Politics; Visions of the People, p. 57.

43 For a brief introduction see , Palmer, “The Eclipse of Materialism: Marxism and the Writing of Social History in the 1980s”, in Miliband, Ralph, Panitch, Leo, and Saville, John, ed., Socialist Register, 1990: The Retreat of the Intellectuals (London: Merlin, 1990), pp. 126–137Google Scholar.

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46 For a detailed discussion see Palmer, Descent into Discourse, esp. pp. 78–86.

47 Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, esp. p. 78.

48 Koonz, Claudia, “Post Scripts”, The Women's Review of Books, 6 (01 1989), pp. 19,20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 This, I would argue, is precisely the strength and the weakness of Riley, Denise, Am I That Name: Feminism and the Category of “Women” in History (London: Macmillan, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 This I take to have been the project of Raymond Williams. For an introduction see his Keywords (London: Fontana, 1976); Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review (London: Verso, 1979); Problems in Materialism and Culture (London: Verso, 1980); The Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists (London: Verso, 1989).

51 The work of Juliet Mitchell is just such an attempt to take the valuable insights of feminist theory – such as attention to the subject and to the importance of the personal – and materialize them. But her early work on psychoanalysis remains anathema to many feminists convinced that Freud is, simply put, the enemy; her later call to appreciate economic determination and limitation has been misconceived as retreat. See Mitchell, Juliet, Psychoanalysis and Feminism: Freud, Reich, Laing, and Women (New York: Pantheon, 1974)Google Scholar; “Reflections on Twenty Years of Feminism”, in Mitchell, Juliet and Oakley, Ann, ed., What is Feminism? (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 34–49Google Scholar.

52 In “Feminism, Humanism, Postmodernism”, in Troubled Pleasures, pp. 228–245, Kate Soper offers a way out of this dilemma, but it is not one embraced by many poststructuralist feminist theorists or historians. For an approach of feminist literary theorists to the problem of essentialism see the volume of Tessera, 10 (Summer 1991), devoted to this issue.

53 See, for instance, the underappreciated Segal, Lynne, Is the Future Female? Troubled Thoughts on Contemporary Feminism (London: Virago, 1987)Google Scholar; , Segal, Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men (London: Virago, 1990)Google Scholar.

54 Barrett, Michèle, Women's Oppression Today: The Marxist/Feminist Encounter (London: Verso, 1988), pp. xxxiii–xxxivGoogle Scholar. Discerning readers will note that although Barrett did not alter her text she did change her subtitle. Originally published under the heading “Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis”, the reprinted edition proclaims itself a text in “The Marxist/Feminist Encounter”. This is a fair distance to travel in eight years.

55 See Kate Soper, “The Socialist Humanism of E. P. Thompson”, in Troubled Pleasures pp. 89–125.

56 Moretti, Franco, Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of Literary Forms (London: Verso, 1988), p. 248Google Scholar.

57 Thompson, E. P., “Agency and Choice”, New Reasoner, 4 (Summer 1958), p. 106Google Scholar.

58 See, for instance, Thompson, E. P., “Socialist Humanism: An Epistle to the Philistines”, New Reasoner, 1 (Summer 1957), pp. 105–143Google Scholar; Palmer, Bryan D., The Making of E. P. Thompson: Marxism, Humanism, and History (Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Wood, Ellen Meiksins, “Falling Through the Cracks: E. P. Thompson and the Debate on Base and Superstructure”, in Kaye, Harvey J. and McClelland, Keith, ed., E. P. Thompson: Critical Perspectives (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), pp. 125–152Google Scholar; “Interview with E. P. Thompson”, in Abelove, Henry et al. , Visions of History (New York: Pantheon, 1983), pp. 3–26Google Scholar.

59 “Interview with Thompson”, Visions of History, p. 21; Thompson, “Poverty of Theory”, pp. 251–252.

60 Johnson, Richard, “Thompson, Genovese, and Socialist Humanist History”, History Workshop Journal, 6 (Autumn 1978), pp. 79–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 See, for instance, Hobsbawm, Eric, “The Historians' Group of the Communist Party”, in Cornforth, Maurice, ed., Rebels and their Causes: Essays in Honour of A. L. Morton (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1978), pp. 21–48Google Scholar; “Interview with Thompson”, Visions of History, esp. p. 22.

62 See, for instance, Williams, Raymond, “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory”, New Left Review, 82 (11–12 1973), pp. 3–16Google Scholar; , Williams, Marxism and Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), esp. pp. 75–89Google Scholar.

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67 Thompson, “The Poverty of Theory”, p. 376.

68 Ibid., p. 384; , Thompson, The Sykaos Papers (New York: Pantheon, 1988)Google Scholar and, for comment on this later text, Palmer, Descent into Discourse, pp. 211–214; Buhle, Paul, “Isn't It Romantic: E. P. Thompson's Global Agenda”, Voice Literary Supplement, 76 (07 1989), pp. 24–26Google Scholar.

69 Samuel, Raphael, “Reading the Signs”, History Workshop: A Journal of Socialist and Feminist Historians, 32 (Autumn 1991), pp. 105–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I have shifted the place of the last sentences in the block quote to enhance coherence. For White on Thompson see White, Hayden, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), pp. 14–19Google Scholar.

70 Howe, Irving, “The Value of the Canon”, The New Republic, 18 (02 1992), p. 42Google Scholar, quoted in and commented on in Robbins, Bruce, “Tenured Radicals, the New McCarthyism, and ‘PC’”, New Left Review, 188 (07–08 1991), p. 156Google Scholar.

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