Man in Marxist theory and the psychology of personality 0391007629, 9780391007628

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NUNC COCNOSCO EX PARTE

THOMAS J. BATA LIBRARY TRENT UNIVERSITY

1

MAN IN MARXIST THEORY and the psychology of personality

MARXIST THEORY AND CONTEMPORARY CAPITALISM General Editor: John Mepham This is a new series of texts, of new British books and of translations committed to : the development of Marxist theory the analysis of contemporary capitalism, its tendencies and contradictions the record of struggles to which they give rise.

Also in this series: Charles Bettelheim The Transition to Socialist Economy Michel Bosquet Capitalism in Crisis and Everyday Life Claudie Broyelle Women’s Liberation in China Carmen Claudin-Urondo Lenin and the Cultural Revolution Colin Henlrey and Bernardo Sorj (eds.) Chilean Voices: Activists describe their Experiences of the Popular Unity Period David-Hillel Ruben Marxism and Materialism : A Study in Marxist Theory of Knowledge Dave Laing The Marxist Theory of Art André Gorz (ed.) The Division of Labour: The Labour Process and Class Struggle in Modern Capitalism Tom Clarke and Laurie Clements Trade Unions under Capitalism

MAN IN MARXIST THEORY and the psychology of personality

LUCIEN SÈVE TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY

JOHN McGREAL

THE HARVESTER PRESS .

SUSSEX

HUMANITIES PRESS . NEW JERSEY

This edition first published in Britain, 1978, by THE HARVESTER PRESS LIMITED Publisher: John Spiers 2 Stanford Terrace, Hassocks, Sussex and in the USA by HUMANITIES PRESS INC., Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey 07716 © The Harvester Press Limited, 1978 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Sève, Lucien Man in Marxist Theory and the psychology of personality. - (Marxist theory and contemporary capitalism). 1. Personality I. Title II. McGreal, John III. Series 155.2 BD331 ISBN 0-85527-374-7 Humanities Press Inc. ISBN 0-391-00762-9 First published as Marxisme et théorie de la personnalité, by Editions sociales, 1974 Typeset by Computacomp (UK) Ltd., Fort William, Scotland and printed in England by Redwood Burn Ltd., Trowbridge & Esher. All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

Foreword I

II

III

I

An Embryonic Science : the Psychology of Personality I. A Science of Fundamental Importance ( i ) Psychology and politics (2) Psychology and anthropology (3) Future prospects of the psychology of personality II. An Incomplete Science ( 1 ) Problems of definition (2) Problems of basic concepts (3) A science in question III. The Contribution of Marxism ( 1 ) Psychology and philosophy (2) Dialectical materialism — an epistemological guide (3) Historical materialism — foundation of the human sciences Notes to Chapter I

ii 11 13 17 20 24 25 33 38 41 41 45

H uman Personality and H istorical Materialism I. The Marxist Conception of Man (1) Philosophical humanism, theoretical antihumanism (2) The conception of man, from The German Ideology to Capital (3) Marxism as scientific anthropology and scientific humanism II. The Articulation of the Psychology of Personality with Marxism ( 1 ) The articulation from the side of Marxism (2) The articulation from the side of psychology (3) The central point : the Marxist analysis of labour Notes to Chapter II

61 65 65

The Object of the Psychology of Personality I. Psychology of Personality and Psychobiological Sciences (1) Natural relations and social relations between acts (2) The personality as a living system of social relations between acts

50 58

74 118 130 130 137 148 158 175 177 178 193

.

A ‘—7

Contents

IV

(3) The mistakes of physiologism II. Psychology of Personality and Psychosocial Sciences ( 1 ) The paradoxes of social psychology (2) Forms of individuality and theory of the individual (3) The psychological sciences and their general articulation Notes to Chapter III

213 231 231 253 276 287

Hypotheses For a Scientific Theory of Personality

295

I. Preliminary Remarks II. Hypotheses (1) Basic concepts : acts, capacities and the problem of needs (2) Infrastructures and superstructures. Use-time (3) Laws of development and problems of expanded reproduction. Biography Notes to Chapter IV

298

304 304 331 356 385

CONCLUSION: DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION OF ANTHROPOLOGY

389

POSTCRIPT TO THE SECOND EDITION

419

POSTCRIPT TO THE THIRD EDITION

439

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS REFERRED TO

504

Foreword

The book you are about to read is quite the opposite of an occasional work, a work of improvisation. I took a passionately keen interest in the problems of psychology from the very beginning of my independent intellectual activity. It was partly the wish to do psychology which, as a student in 1945, made me mm to philosophy (in French education it includes psychology) and later, a certificat de license in science being required for the aggregation1 in philosophy prompted me to opt for the one in psychophysiology. But, although often captivating in detail, existing psychology was nothing but a disappointment overall. I found scientific rigour only in the investigation of highly impersonal subjects and saw hardly anything that had actual bearing on problems of real human life, in the first place my own. It was almost independently of this university education in psychology, and often in opposition to it, that I raised questions about personality in numerous rough literary or philosophical drafts in search of autobiographical understanding. La Crise de la psychologie contemporaine had been published in 1947 by Editions sociales : this profound critique by Politzer played a part in directing my thought towards Marxism. The fact that the uncompromising nature of his rejection of conventional psychology resulted precisely in the promise of a psychology that was both concrete and scientific, which was just what I was longing for, that’s what mattered to me. I agreed about what Politzer rejected as much as about what he proclaimed. Although appearing to me to contain a large kernel of truth in this respect, psychoanalysis interested me less than the disliked work of Janet which, in spite of its many limitations, filled me with enthusiasm with its understanding of psychological activity and the historico-social nature of the personality. A crucial turning point in this reflection on psychology resulted from the fact that from 1950 onwards I seriously undertook the study of Lenin. In Lenin’s school I gained the firm belief that what vitiated the normal view of the individual was that bourgeois ideology which naturalises psychological activity and the personality — that this naturalism may assume materialist or spiritualistic forms. In Lenin, on the contrary, I thought I discerned the basis of a historically concrete and revolutionary psychology in which the real life of the individual is

2

Foreword

understood as the intériorisation of political relations. This is why when, in several articles in its No. 4 (1952) issue, the Marxist journal of psychopathology, La Raison, presented Pavlovian physiology as the basis of a truly materialist psychology, I sent a long letter of disagreement in which I sought to trace the boundary, i.e. the limits of validity, between the Pavlovian science of higher nervous activity and a science of personality which I wished to base on historical materialism, but which at that time I confused, in actual fact, with a ‘social psychology’. It is this position which is expressed in my article in La Raison, ‘Pavlov, Lénine, et la psychologie’ (written in 1953, published in No. 9-10, December 1954) and in my intervention in the symposium on Lenin organised by La Pensée (‘Lénine et la psychologie’, La Pensée, No. 57, September 1954). But in the meantime another crucial turning point had taken place in my thought, of which these publications as yet showed no trace: the close reading and study of Capital in 1953, a reading in which I did not forgo putting my psychological questions to Marx’s text. In numerous notes which remained in the state of rough drafts I began to discern a specific terrain for the psychology of personality articulated with historical materialism, and by way of Capital I thought out a number of essential concepts which the fmal chapter of the present work brings into play, in particular the concept of labour-time, a crucial one in my opinion. However, many indispensable aspects of knowledge in psychology and even more in Marxism were lacking to me. My work on psychology continued until 1956, but it was getting bogged down, and the course of my activities resulted in my devoting myself mainly to other problems during these years : criticism of revisionist distortions of Marxism, the dialectic, the history of French philosophy since the nineteenth century. In actual fact, through the underlying logic of all theoretical research when it concerns a really fundamental theoretical problem and is pursued for several decades, each of these subjects led me in some way to the theory of personality: the struggle against rightist revisions of Marxism and the critique of existentialism presented the problem of psychologism; the history of French philosophy in the nineteenth century that of biologism; as for studying the dialectic, to which I increasingly devoted myself, it is the crucial epistemological prerequisite for any theoretical work which aspires to scientific rigour. Teaching philosophy at the lycée, both through the psychology curriculum I had to cover and through the psycho-educational practice which I had to develop, also never stopped pushing me in the same direction. That is why when the journal L’Ecole et la nation asked me in 1962 for an

Foreword

3

article on the problem of relations between teachers and pupils5 parents, I saw straight away that this was an opportunity to express publicly a number of ideas I had been hatching for years and, in particular, to take up again the ever necessary critique of physiologism at the simple and popular but really central level of the belief in ‘natural aptitudes5. A first brief article published in November 1962 in L’Ecole et la nation provoked a lively discussion in the course of which I returned to the problem in more detail (June 1963), and which forced me to work through a comprehensive specialised bibliography. After very lively private and public discussions, I took up the question again in a long article, ‘Les “dons55 n’existent pas5 (.L’Ecole et la nation, October 1964). In my opinion the criticisms directed at me derived on the one hand from the still inadequately developed concept of the personality underlying this study and, on the other, from the persistence, even among Marxists, of tenacious pseudo-materialist illusions on the subject of man. Nevertheless, with regard to the general thrust of the article, i.e. the refutation of the bourgeois ideology of ‘natural aptitudes5, approval of the main point clearly carried the day in the end. I think that Jean Rostand’s approbation, which has been publicly expressed at various times, should be noted. It is all the more significant if one bears in mind that, on the basis of some of his older works, he is often held to be a defender of the innateness of intellectual aptitudes. By giving me a more acute awareness of everything in the theory of personality that remained to be clarified, both in my own ideas and in the existing scientific literature, these two years of work on the question of ‘natural aptitudes5 were the direct source of the present work. This was all the more so because the really central importance of the problem of human individuality was emerging at all the key points in Marxist research and ideological debate : criticising and surpassing dogmatic distortions of Marxism like its ‘humanist5 deformation; precise elaboration of historical materialism and reflection on the modalities and human aims of socialism ; discussion of recent advances in the human sciences and structuralist antihumanism — all constantly put this formidable question on the order of the day: What is man? At the beginning of 1964 I therefore drew up a plan of a short essay in which hypotheses would be put forward about how to solve this huge question in depth by way of Marxism, and in the summer of 1964 I began a first draft — but lack of time and the sudden appearance of new theoretical difficulties at each step stopped me halfway. The publication of the three volumes2 by Louis Althusser and his comrades in 1965 marked a new stage in my work. The theoretical antihumanist interpretation given there of Capital and, through that, of

4

Foreword

all Marxism, resoundingly confirmed some of the theses in my paper, absolutely contradicted others, and called for a new, deeper investigation of all of them. These extremely rich volumes and the no less rich discussion to which they gave rise, compelled me to develop in a much more forceful way my own position which was fundamentally at issue with, although on the same terrain as, theoretical antihumanism, and therefore to postpone my work on the business entirely, which says sufficiently how much it is indebted to them. In 1966 I began a second draft of my book, which seemed as though it would quickly arrive at its conclusion, and an excerpt from which devoted to Capital, and to the lessons which emerge from it as far as the concept of man is concerned, appeared in La Nouvelle Critique in November 1966. Because of numerous difficulties and because of the way the problem matured, both subjectively and objectively, I was only able to take up this work again in the summer of 1967, this time producing an almost complete third draft which corresponds to the text of a lecture on Marxist theory and human individuality delivered at L’Université nouvelle de Paris in March 1968. The text to be read here is the result of a fourth drafting, which once again involved substantial reworking, starting in April and brought to a conclusion between August and December 1968. I am certainly not blind to the numerous flaws in this work as it is presented here. I can already see many things which would justify a fifth draft. As Marx wrote in a letter to Lassalle on 22nd June 1858, when he was at work on what he believed to be the final version of the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (and what an agonising truth it is), cThe job is making very slow progress because things which one has for many years made the chief object of one’s investigations constantly exhibit new aspects and call forth new doubts whenever they are to be put in final shape. Besides, I am not the master of my time but rather its servant.’3 But a time comes when from the very point of view of conducting research nothing is more indispensable than collective criticism, and this presupposes publication. Thus, written on the basis of successive investigations, publications and enquiries carried on over nearly twenty years, the book you can read here expresses a point of view which, whatever one’s judgement of it, has come to maturity as far as the essential is concerned. I express the hope that it will be read and judged as such. December 1968

Foreword

5

NOTES 1.

Certificat de license -— each of the four examinations for the license (Bachelor’s Degree). Agrégation — competitive examination conducted by the

2. 3.

Lire le capital, Paris, 1965-. (Reading Capital, London, 1970). Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 103.

State for admission to posts on the teaching staff of Lycées and universities.

CHAPTER I.

AN EMBRYONIC SCIENCE THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONALITY

‘Narrow-mindedness and insularity in specialised fields is never a good thing and has deplorable effects particularly where psychology is concerned ... On the contrary, ability to generalise and a universal approach are necessary for psychological research5. (Pierre Janet).1

‘ Psychology by no means holds the “secret55 of human affairs, simply because this “secret55 is not of a psychological order.5 (Georges Politzer).2

anyone who, as a Marxist, is committed to following the development of psychology it appears impossible with the years not to come to a resolutely critical view of the state it is in. Despite the rapid advances of psychology in general along the scientific path, this state is dominated, in my opinion, by a sharp contradiction between the manysided importance and the persistent immaturity of what ought to be its highest achievement : the theory of personality. Until recently, this contradiction did not appear to concern many people : in spite of many signs of the presence of vital unresolved questions and some stimulating bases of such a theory did not develop, at least not in French Marxist publications. Perhaps there was still little conviction that the condition of psychology, which in any case was not thought to be doing too badly as a science, ought to be of much concern to Marxists ? Obviously, if one holds this view, there is no sharp contradiction and no awareness of an intolerable theoretical backwardness, merely a dull complacency as far as discussion about principles is concerned. But theory abhors a vacuum. And for some time, with quite different starting points, and advancing in different directions, several Marxist researchers have implicitly, or more often explicitly, come to draw attention to this unsatisfactory state of affairs at the level of principles in the theory of personality. Some published works and numerous others which have been promised have tried to prefigure this theory or, at least, to explore approaches to it, some through Freud or Meyerson, through Pavlov or Politzer, and some by way of an attempt by philosophy to clarify relations between Marxism and humanism ; some by economists, sociologists and historians concerned with the connection of the individual psyche with social structures and groups ; For

10

An Embryonic Science

some by artists or critics for whom the interface between creativity and biography never ceases to be a problem; or, more directly, by psychologists and psychiatrists who, doubtlessly annoyed at times by this influx of amateurs into what is their professional concern, are disinclined to represent the advances in their science to themselves in the form of a great upheaval of revolutionary discovery but who are among the foremost in the slow development of these problems.3 It appears that a similar development is also occurring outside of Marxism and outside France with obvious mutual interventions. At the present juncture it would undoubtedly take little to launch a revolution in the state of affairs as it now stands or at least a process of concerted discussion of fundamentals. The aim of this book is to contribute — after others — to opening up such a discussion which is of the highest importance at the present time; and, in the first place, in order to sharpen our awareness of them, to go more deeply into these two contradictory facts : the extreme importance of the theory of personality and its scientific immaturity.

A Science of fundamental importance

11

I. A Science of fundamental importance The theory of personality is not only of the utmost importance on the terrain and within the limits of psychology, from the point of view of the specialists; it is of the utmost importance for the present and future of man. It is unnecessary to prove this obvious fact here at length. But the fact that this is even more true for all Marxists and for the whole of Marxism is not something which goes without saying. Does it not go against the deeply rooted idea that, on the contrary, from a Marxist standpoint, what belongs to psychology is necessarily of minor importance ? Indeed, there is no shortage of reasons for forming this opinion of it. Schematically: Marxism is dialectical materialism, i.e. a philosophy for which consciousness is a function of highly organised matter ; is not the neurophysiological investigation of this higher organisation of matter therefore of primary importance, and the ‘psychological’ investigation of facts of consciousness which correspond to it secondary ? Marxism is the materialist science of history, the principle of which is that it is not consciousness which determines social life but social life which determines consciousness; is not the investigation of objective social life —-i.e. above all the science of economic relations — therefore of primary importance and the ‘psychological’ investigation of forms of subjectivity secondary? Furthermore, Marxism is scientific socialism, i.e. a political doctrine, and in Lenin’s expression, politics only begins when the masses are counted in millions ; is not studying the masses — social science as a whole — therefore the main thing, and the psychological investigation of the individual subordinate? Practical verification: still not having cleared up the central problem of the personality, psychology clearly appears not to be a fully developed science; Marxism has existed as a coherent scientific doctrine for more than a century, and half a century ago the Bolsheviks were able to carry through the revolution victoriously. Therefore psychology is not a vital component in Marxist theory and practice, and to see clearly and act correctly a Marxist has no need to look to the psychologist. Not only that; among Marxists there are also great reserves of distrust with regard to psychology. They know, at a cost, that from Maine de Biran and Victor Cousin to certain aspects of behaviourism and Freudianism, psychology is often the indirect way by which ideology introduces bourgeois ideas and the way that idealists try to revise historical materialism and scientific socialism in a subjectivist direction. If things do not go well from a scientific standpoint in this or that domain of psychology, Marxists might ultimately be tempted to find this not merely of secondary importance but almost in the natural

12

An Embryonic Science

order of things. Is not psychology in essence basically a false science ? As though by calling, won’t it always be inclined towards tackling human problems in an idealist and depoliticised way? Physiology, especially all the more, Pavlovian physiology, which is essentially materialist and progressive, there — it has long been thought — is a rigorous science of man and an exemplary corroboration of Marxism which does not threaten to make us deviate towards reactionary idealism and bourgeois individualism. But as far as Pavlovism is concerned, is it not the physiology of higher nervous activity which in a revolutionary spirit replaces outmoded psychology? Let us go further, and at the same time closer, to some recent philosophical debates : does not the act of founding Marxism imply the end of all psychology? If, as Marx writes in the VI Thesis of Feuerbach, the human essence cis no abstraction inherent in each single individual’ but cin its reality ... is the ensemble of social relations’,4 is not all psychology in the usual sense of the word, by seeking the secret of psychic man where it cannot exist: in individuals, by that very fact impregnated with speculative humanism, however concrete it professes to be, and does it not inevitably relapse on this side of Marxist science and the truth ? In the last resort, I consider all these reservations, indeed all these rejections of psychology, which are raised too briefly here, unjustified, and I will give my reasons. Nevertheless, they rest on historical experience and critical reflection which are perfectly valid in principle and which I do not mean to underrate. On the contrary in fact; for if it is true as I think, that scientific psychology has still not reached complete maturity — i.e. in its representation of the human individual it is still only unevenly and incompletely disengaged from ideology — what is astonishing is the fact that it cannot altogether satisfy a Marxist at the present time; especially when he expects from it not only the investigation of psychic functions separately but further the unlimited understanding of the structure and development of human personalities as a whole which, I emphasise to prevent misunderstanding, is the very standpoint from which this book takes up its position from beginning to end. Only, if the theoretical problems which the constitution and growth of human personalities present are still not quite matured, this immaturity in point of fact clearly proves nothing against their importance in principle but, much rather, emphasises the responsibility of Marxist researchers themselves in their necessary maturation. Not to understand this is to turn absurdly in this vicious circle: because a psychology which is still partly in the grasp of ideology does not give complete satisfaction, ond does not trouble to work to free it, and because it does not free itself this is seen as confirmation that it is not

A Science of fundamental importance

13

worth troubling. This vicious circle of unpardonable negligence is made worse by three sorts of unchallengeable facts.

(1) Psychology and politics Although this upsets the common — and partly correct — idea according to which the political and the psychological way of approaching a problem are opposed, it is often precisely political struggles themselves which inexorably present psychological problems. In other words, and this observation may lead much further than it usually does, many political problems consist at least in part of a psychological problem which arises for millions of men. In such cases it must be agreed with strict Marxist rigour that the political battle can only be carried through to the end, or sometimes even be carried on at all, in so far as it can be supported by a really scientific psychology. Take the example of the struggle of the French democratic forces against the Gaullist administration’s educational policy as it developed in the 1960s with the ‘Fouchet Plan’ — an example which is highly important in all respects. At first the problem might appear to have nothing to do with psychology: from a financial standpoint it involves the sacrificing of schools for atomic strike-capacity and, more generally, the distribution of budgetary' funds in the interests of the monopolies ; from a political and ideological standpoint it involves the education of youth increasingly given over to the employers and forces of reaction. But this still does not exhaust the essential point. What it also involves, more fundamentally, is a comprehensive plan to reform the whole educational system by closely adapting it not to the democratically conceived requirements of national development but to strict manpower needs of big capital caught up in a desperate inter-monopolistic struggle (i.e., by scorning the right of the majority of the people’s children to education) thereby worsening social inequalities, this not openly in the name of class politics of course, but under the ‘■objective’ pretext that most of them are not ‘gifted’ enough to exercise their right. ‘Look how democratic I am’, the defender of such a policy says : only aptitudes will be taken into account to direct children either into brief educational studies and minor jobs or into lengthy studies and senior positions. He merely ‘forgets’ to say — among other things — that in so far as one can establish it beyond all doubt, inequality in intellectual abilities is itself substantially predetermined by inequality in social conditions and its system of cumulative effects. Thus selection according to aptitude, which is deeply opposed to the many-sided effort of democratic schools towards the promotion of all in spite of the effect of class inequalities,

U

An Embryonic Science

amounts to making ‘nature’ responsible for a policy of cultural Malthusianism and social discrimination. One of those who thought up this policy calmly declares : On the weight of the evidence there are two pyramids — that of society which, with its hierarchy, corresponds to nature. Then there is also the pyramid of aptitudes. By that very fact, these two pyramids have the same profile. The problem is simply to make them coincide.5

The politics of monopoly capital are therefore bound up here in a pedagogic in the grand style. Whether one likes it or not, pedagogy is inseparably, manipulation and simultaneously politics and psychology. To get to the bottom of things in criticising such a policy it is also necessary therefore to do psychology — scientific psychology. For if the psychological theory of the fundamental innateness of intellectual differences, a ‘popular’ theory which is ‘obvious’ even for welleducated people, if this deeply mystifying theory were true, such an educational policy could still be blamed for many things, in particular for the crying inadequacy of efforts to offset ‘natural’ differences in intelligence. But there would be one thing against which nothing could be said, and against which it would be utopian or demagogic to propose anything along the Unes of the Langevin-Wallon project and, beyond this, of socialist schools: the principle itself— presented by definition as the inevitable result of this ‘natural’ and ‘eternal’ difference — of discrimination between the privileged with a lengthy education and the under-privileged with a short education ; i.e. precisely the worst of all the aspects of the educational policy corresponding to the wishes of big capital would have to be basically accepted. Thus, far from being an intellectual luxury or a dubious and superfluous political argument, the refutation of the bourgeois ideology of intellectual ‘gifts’, i.e., the scientific theory of the development of intellectual abilities — which implies the whole theory of personality in the last resort — is itself a vital part of the question. As for defending, elucidating and tomorrow applying a really democratic plan of educational reform in accordance with the principles presented twenty years ago by the Langevin-Wallon Commission,6 it would quite simply be impossible if one disregarded psychological considerations, for without them one could not understand just what this plan is: a plan which is not only ‘generous’ but realistic, not only democratic but scientific. In fact, let us ask the question: is it still sufficiently well remembered that if the French movement for democratic schools had the Langevin-Wallon plan, that invaluable political weapon, as a focus for their struggle, it owed this largely to advances made before the war by French scientific psychology

A Science of fundamental importance

15

behind which were great materialist scientists like Wallon and Pièron — who were later personally to play a considerable part in working out this plan ? This is one of the clearest examples one can give of the concrete political importance of psychology, and one which Marxists particularly cannot fail to reflect. Perhaps it even appears as too conclusive and to be merely a special case, an exception? This would be a serious mistake. In actual fact, it is an example of general importance, as would no doubt be seen more clearly if more thought was given to such matters. In an even more central domain, let us consider political economy and the allimportant wage disputes on which it throws light. At first it might seem that psychology has nothing to add here either; better, that the psychological way of approaching these questions is fundamentally wrong. And in one sense it is true : turning economic contradictions into psychological problems is one of the standard tricks of bourgeois ideology. However, an economic problem as crucial as that of absolute impoverishment, for example, requires the full clarification of the psychological problems of need — an essential concept in the theory of personality. Indeed, if not the historical but the abstract conception of needs, the falsity of which Marx showed more deeply than anyone, were correct, it would be impossible to reveal in any way the absolute impoverishment of the workers, this crying reality of capitalism even today, since it means that the fundamental tendency of economic development is to make it increasingly difficult to satisfy not ‘eternal’ needs — so-called ‘eternal’ needs are actually only yesterday’s needs transfigured into immutable abstractions — but needs which objectively develop and vary with conditions of labour and with society itself.7 By hiding the true causes and real persons responsible for the constantly growing mass of educational backwardnesses and failures, vulgar psychological mystifications concerning ‘natural aptitudes’ impede the advance of popular struggles for democratic schools. Similarly, by obscuring the methods and effects of capitalist exploitation and giving rise to the illusion of automatic progress in workers’ living conditions with the development of the productive forces, vulgar psychological mystifications concerning needs, attributed to a so-called immutable human nature and separated from the social conditions which determine them, do substantial harm to the development of struggles against the economic and social policy of the monopolies in power. Here too, there is food for thought for Marxists about the depth of the links between psychology and politics and the importance of the theory of personality from the standpoint of concrete political struggles. In the same vein, and with other examples if necessary, let us

16

An Embryonic Science

consider the part psychology — the pan a fully scientific psychology ought to play — in the effort to demystify ideologically and to strengthen political struggles at the level of all problems of relations between social groups — ‘human relations’ in the enterprise, relations between ‘races’, ‘sexes’, ‘generations’, and so on, in the latter case, for example, conjointly with the work of political analysis, by clarifying the many psychological variants of the notion of adolescence, variants which are misleading but which it is not enough to be unaware of. Or again, ought it not also to tackle in this way a scientific theory of development (and of unequal development) of the personality, which would not distract from the political basis of things but, on the contrary, would help to rescue it from the persistent cult of the leader, the superstition of the wonderful great man, in truth, from a certain mythology of genius the magic of which must be dispelled so that the demand for democracy can grow sharper ? More generally, how can the political movement of the masses find its full strength without working for the universal development of awareness and consequently without engaging in struggle against every source of ideological mystification ? Without a scientific conception of personality how can the battle be joined, not in skirmishes over details but in a general campaign, with this enormous mass of superstitions — one of the most enormous and undoubtedly most characteristic of our time — which extends from the oldfashioned and resigned psychology of familial beliefs in ‘atavism’, and ‘defects’ of heart and mind, to that mind-bending ‘modern’ psychology of testological or characterological kind that is churned out in weekly illustrated magazines and floods of low-level scientific vulgarisations; from the emollient everyday psychology of picture-stories, agony columns and television serials ‘made in U.S.A.’, to the knowingly mystifying psychology of Sélection or Planète ; from the cloudy summits of the formal psychology of spiritualist handbooks and ethical humanism to the abysmal depths of horoscopes, astrological newspapers and your guidebook to the zodiac — not to mention many others — an extraordinanlv entangled mass of superstitions at different levels which on all sides obstruct understanding of real life, make easier all forms of conditioning, and, more essentially still, keep the broad masses unaware of the real problems and the real psychological facts. Now — the following pages mean to prove — if nothing is understood about psychological life, nothing can really be understood about man — and of nothing is understood about man, nothing is understood about anything.

A Science of fundamental importance

17

(2) Psychology and anthropology

This last remark leads on to an examination of the problem from a more theoretical standpoint. So far psychology appears to be important to Marxism only in practice and as if in particular points : such and such an aspect of the theory of personality being important for this or that political struggle, and even for political struggle is general. But there is much more : the theory of personality as a whole is necessarily implied in the coherent scientific whole which constitutes Marxism and the area which it occupies is crucial today for the development of research. The fact that this theory is both required and suggested by historical materialism is what will be discussed at length in the next chapter ; at all events it is immediately apparent that if Marx was certain about socialist revolution, it is because the sharpening of contradictions characteristic of capitalist relations of production is experienced in an unbearable way by the exploited in their actual existence as individuals and because, in a quite remarkable turn of phrase in The German Ideology, ‘in order ... to assert themselves as individuals’ the proletarians must ‘overthrow the State’.8 This shows that it is at some very fundamental point, which will have to be located exactly, that the psychology of personality, historical materialism and scientific socialism are necessarily interrelated. But it must indeed be acknowledged that the Marxist theory of this interrelation has still not been clearly and convincingly developed. One has only to look around to be convinced that this question, or, more exactly, this broad ensemble of questions, turns out to occupy a really strategic place today in research into Marxism and the human sciences. Whether it is a question of hypotheses or objections of Marxists or non-Marxists, the big question, the core of the problems, for some years has been and undoubtedly will be for a long time, the question — to borrow conditionally a terminology in general use — of the mediations between the general movement of society — of which historical materialism is increasingly, if not always, admitted to be the theory — and the life of individuals. And in the first place, it goes without saying, the theory of these mediations presents all the problems of the foundation of psychology. This is what Sartre expresses, for example, in the preamble to his Critique de la raison dialectique. In it he forcefully takes Marxists to task for holding to universal socio-political schemas, getting rid of the particular and not ‘studying real men in depth’ but ‘decomposing them in a bath of sulphuric acid’.9 The result, he adds, is ‘that it has entirely lost the meaning of what it is to be a man ; to fill in the gaps, it has only the absurd psychology of Pavlov’.10 And this is how he hoped to justify his commitment to existentialism

18

An Embryonic Science

despite

his

professed

attachment

to

historical

materialism ;

for

existentialism, he wrote, intends, without being unfaithful to Marxist principles, to find mediations which allow the individual concrete — the particular life, the real and dated conflict, the person — to emerge from the background of the general contradictions of productive forces and relations of production." So long as Marxism refuses to do it, others will attempt the coup in its place.12

There are, of course, many things to say in reply to Sartre — many have been said, and I will come back to them. However, there is no doubt that a number of intellectuals are or were coming back again, certainly not always to Sartre’s theses but at all events to the concern expressed here by him in his own terms, because even if it is established that the terms are inadequate, the question which is raised by them has not, for all that, received an answer. This is how, in Pensée formelle et sciences de l’homme, G. G. Granger also criticised the Pavlovian typology as a pseudo-solution to the conceptual determination of the individual writing that Far from representing the final state of a Marxist psychology of personality — final and Marxist surely constituting a contradiction in terms — the Pavlovian doctrine must be regarded only as a first step, quite valuable as a reaction against the ultra-conservatism of ‘idealist’ characterologies but absolutely inadequate and ‘mechanistic’ in the present context.13

It would not be difficult to produce more quotations. Thus, at the present time, there does still seem to be a real gap at the place where there should be a theory of personality consistent with

historical

materialism : this is the all-important fact. And it does not seem

unreasonable to think that in such a gap there is both the opportunity for unceasing attempts by speculative humanism to ‘round off’ Marxism within a more or less spiritualistic perspective — if the gap is held to be contingent and temporary — and, on the contrary — if it is considered to be structural and permanent — one of the sources of an antihumanist interpretation which, within the limitations of structuralism, comes to the point of rejecting, together with the theoretical legitimacy of the concept of man, the validity of‘psychology’ as a whole — in favour of a re-reading of Freud. But, indirectly, the latter trend in research leads us back just as much as the former to the crucial necessity of clearing up the problems on the terrain of Marxism of constituting a scientific anthropology in which the theory of concrete human individuality is at all events a primary component. Is there a need to emphasise how important such a clarification might

A Science of fundamental importance

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be, precisely as a ‘mediationJ between the mass of intellectuals and researchers in the human sciences on the one hand and Marxism on the other. It would be a pertinent proof that, from the theoretical no more than the practical point of view, wholeheartedly going over to Marxism does not imply any disregard either of man or the requirements of scientific rigour. In the theoretical concerns and cultural sensibility of a large number of intellectuals, especially on the left, the attitude with regard to the problems of a concrete idea of human individuals now appears as a major test of whether or not a world view is genuinely alive, scientifically adequate and politically committed. This is a valid test. The fact that today Marxism does not clearly and coherently offer a theory of the concrete individual nor, consequently, of numerous problems which depend on it, plays an objectively negative role among a number of intellectuals on the left engaged in the extremely complex process of uniting with or going over to the working class, crossing over to the positions of historical materialism and scientific socialism. It feeds always unfruitful but ever-recurring attempts to fuse Marxism with theories of individuality and related anthropological, ethical and aesthetic views which are formulated on a basis which is completely foreign and even contrary to Marxism, more or less out of line with the needs of the cause. This basis remains non-Marxist in essence and perpetuates a deep split in the thought of the majority of intellectuals, a fault in theoretical consciousness through which, in the last analysis, the ideology of the dominant class forces its way. Of course, the ultimate reasons for this state of affairs are to be sought outside the ideological spheres. But it is by no means unimportant that the slowness of Marxism to elaborate the theory of personality, and therefore of scientific anthropology, further the persistence of an ideological conjuncture in which the development of a large number of intellectuals towards working-class positions happens to be checked by an illsurmounted attachment in this domain to mystifying theoretical positions. Yet this is still not the essential point. The most essential point is that real scientific elucidation of the problem defined earlier would above all be an invaluable theoretical gain for Marxism itself; in the first place, for effectively and positively settling the accounts, at least in part, still unfortunately outstanding on its books: from those of psychoanalysis and the psychology derived from Pavlovism or Politzer’s concept of cdrama’ to those of anthropological structuralism. It would also be an invaluable gain from the point of view of further and more scientifically elaborating, beyond subjective points of view, huge questions for which uncertainty in the theory of personality constitutes an obstacle; the

20

An Embryonic Science

relations between historical necessity and individual freedom, and between psychology and epistemology, ethics and aesthetics. In addition, and possibly above all, it would be an invaluable gain for ensuring a correct understanding of Marxism, since the place one attributes or denies to man in one’s overall view, and the conception one thereby has of the theory of subjectivity or individuality, basically determine one’s interpretation of its basic principles, in the end either allowing it to be pulled towards or regression to the philosophical humanism from which it emerged or, on the contrary, reducing it to certain scientific theses which it has produced. It would be, in short, a major gain for completing — in a sense we shall be sure to come back to — the Marxist conception of man. This shows what importance today, among all the sciences that of the human personality assumes for a Marxist.

(j) Future prospects of the psychology of personality

Today ... But how much greater still does its importance appear if we look to the future ! A Science which is concretely necessary in many present political struggles and now a crucial area in theoretical research, psychology, in a general sense pointed out earlier, is even more a science of the future, a science the rôle of which can only increase immensely with the winning of genuine democracy, the transition to socialism and the flowering of communism. For example, try to put oneself in mind of the extent and variety of psychological problems which, carrying out a really democratic reform of education, will present, with all that it will imply in manifold efforts to develop every child’s abilities, in ingenuity in setting up a vast remedial system, in overthrowing the old relations between teachers, pupils and parents, opening up forms of individual freedom within a democratic educational community, and so on — and as a result deepening theoretical problems in education too. This enormous demand on basic psychological theory which will result from the reform of education, will be joined with others, which are no less enormous, issuing from the implementation of a vast plan to develop production and therefore the rational search for economic incentives, from urban problems which will be acutely presented by the reorientation of housing policy towards the masses of workers, from policy on leisure activities, or from the necessary recasting of the attitude of millions of people with regard to the State, public property, the law, legal proceedings, etc., which will be objectively in the direction of a radical transformation. Actually, one becomes dizzy when one tries to put oneself in mind of the rate of

A Science of fundamental importance

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progress which the democratic transformations in the France of tomorrow will impose on the science of personality. But this is still nothing. To appreciate its further importance, one must turn one’s attention much further ahead to communism. In this respect, has it been noticed sufficiently that when the Marxist classics defme and analyse communist society, among their key concepts are a number of psychological concepts which, in an unexpected way for those who disregard psychology, assume the function of a higher form of economic and political categories ? The actual definition of distribution in communist society, for example, is no longer characterised by the principle cto each according to his work’, as in socialism, but by the principle cto each according to his needs’ — a definition in which the concept of need (and the need of each person — personal need) is raised to the level of a key economic category. Again, Lenin shows that what replaces the state in its function of governing men after it has withered away in communism, for example, is increasingly common practice (/ ’habitude), a higher completed form of democracy. Here, a psychological concept is raised to the level of an absolutely central political category. More generally one can say that after the multi-millenial era in which, at least for the majority of men, the growth of personalities was essentially subordinate to the economic and political requirements of the dominant class and the psychological point of view was also therefore subordinate, in communism this relation is at last turned the other way round, so that the effective maxim of this society can be for the first time : everything for man. It is the optimal growth of personalities in a given stage of development of the productive forces and culture which tends to become the dominant goal (and instrument) of society. This amounts to saying that communism ensures — but also requires — an unprecedented theoretical and practical advance of psychology as the science of development of human personalities. Here, it appears to me, we go to the core of the reasons why Marxism must regard psychology as a fundamental discipline. If it is true that a scientific psychology is in principle the theoretical means for human individuals to take their own psychic growth in hand, then psychological science is not only a vital instrument for communism regarded as a general process of human emancipation: it constitutes an organic part of it. Let us go even further : and we can see that the reversal of the millenial hegemony of politics over psychology will be accomplished: for politics itself will disappear but psychology will not. When communism has been achieved the Communist Party, its historical task having been accomplished, will dissolve itself, but the task of developing human

22

An Embryonic Science

personalities will not wither away, quite on the contrary. We can now see why we cannot agree at all with the unfortunately widespread idea that Marxism would be edified by ignoring — or rejecting — the human personality and the science of which it is the object. One has misread and misunderstood Marx if one thinks so. But while from the point of view of its basic conception the psychology of personality has, by definition, its place in Marxist theory — a place which will be rigorously defined as the positive science of personality, there is no doubt at all that it has not up to now emulated the extraordinary advance of the Marxist science of society. And this is unfortunate for communism : for in a sense communism begins today. In recent years, in actual fact, we have understood more clearly how often a people pays for its backwardness in all domains, including backwardness imposed upon it by a regime from which it has since freed itself, even when it strives unceasingly to enlighten itself. The face of future communism is already being concretely and inexorably prepared in what we do and do not do in France itself today. Can one not see, then, how serious it would be to mortgage this future by not taking on the task of constituting the genuinely scientific theory of personality and its development without further delay? At the rate history moves we cannot help acutely feeling that we are already behindhand. As for the mistakes which, if it was not made up, this delay would hold in store for the construction of socialism itself, deep critical reflections developed in recent years in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries have helped us to form an idea of them, in relation to problems as varied as economic planning, educating the younger generation or strengthening the materialist world outlook and, more broadly still, the very meaning of life. Increasingly, from the pen of Marxist researchers in these countries, we have read remarks such as these : It is one of the paradoxes of the present era that in order to drive a car, for example, one has to undergo rather strict tests, whereas the upbringing of children, the choice of a husband or wife, or life-style, are essentially left to the free-will and ignorance of millions of people who, quite often, are vainly seeking advice and help in all sorts of false practices.... Mutual relations between men have many more numerous implications — and meet many more needs, than was originally assumed in the theory of socialist society. In particular, there occurs a complex connection between the economy, psychology and politics, the problem of equality and authority, collectivism, and individualism, problems of competition, emulation, the opinion which one has of oneself and others, and the whole gamut of moral, political and economic value-judgments. If, today, in

A Science of fundamental importance

23

economic theory it is proving impossible to maintain the pricing system and the criteria used until now in determining prices, the problem of evaluating men, their qualities and their relations is, with greater reason, even more urgent. In this domain, which is much more vital than the valuation of various categories of commodities, spontaneity, empiricism, subjectivism and the most varied erroneous conjectures rule as masters.14

But, at the same time and in contrast, we can discern more concretely than yesterday the remarkable future prospects to which the advance of the science of personality is closely linked. If it is true that for humanity the greatest liberations of the past — and often still of the present — are freedoms of an elemental character (freedom from hunger, insecurity, brutish oppression and violence) one can foresee at a higher stage of development an enormous liberation on a higher level becoming the order of the day : freedom from stunted and anarchical psychological development, not only for a tiny majority but for all men. In other words, if it is true that communists will replace the government of men by the administration of things, it appears one can also say that in the same movement it will replace the primacy of the production of things by the development of men themselves. This is the whole meaning of Marx’s and Engels’ turn of phrase about the leap from the reign of necessity to that of freedom which communism makes possible for all men : ‘The full development of human mastery over the forces of nature, those of so-called nature as well as of humanity’s own nature’.15 Of course, it is not psychology by itself which will ever be able to give man this mastery over his own ‘nature’: it is communism. But it is not communism by itself either : it is communism incorporating the mature science of personality. Nothing emphasises more strongly how blind Marxists would be to disregard it.

24

An Embryonic Science

II. An Incomplete Science In short, while the idea might at first be surprising, it is not difficult, however, to show that the theory of personality is also of the utmost importance for Marxism itself — even if this raises a number of questions which will have to be gone into carefully. On the other hand, when I say that the psychology of personality, i.e. the very core of general psychology, which is so important in the present and for the future, is nevertheless still not a really fully developed science, it is likely that this assertion will be thought highly vague, subjective, unprovable — and also presumptions from the pen of a layman in psychology : a philosopher. As far as the presumption and, more importantly the rights and powers of Marxist philosophy in respect of psychology are concerned, I will come back to this crucial question later on. But as for the opinion that the psychology of personality is still not a fully developed science, this is anything but a snap judgment. The fully developed character of a science is a precise, objective, provable fact. Criteria can be drawn both from the history of the sciences and the theory of knowledge. Thus political economy before Marx was not fully developed ; with his work it became so. This means that it definitively elaborated its vital elements — through which it has been able to produce everything that one expects of such a science. And what are these vital elements of a science ? A definition through which one can accurately grasp the real essence of its object and, linked with this defmition, the adequate method for studying this object; basic concepts through which one expresses the principal elements and especially the determinant contradictions of this essence. These elements make it possible with some chance of success to try to identify the fundamental laws of development of the object studied and, through this, lead on to mastering it in theory and practice, which is the goal of the whole scientific enterprise. The defmition and the method, the basic concepts and the fundamental laws of development — all of these having attained a degree of truth that puts an end to the groping of the earlier period — here, surely, are the precise, objective, provable criteria of the fully developed character of a science. Neither the psychology of personality — nor, therefore, to be completely rigorous, the general field of psychology, or if one prefers, the psychological sciences in general — appear as fully developed on any of these counts. This is not the rash opinion of an amateur ; in fact it is that of most professional psychologists. CA science making rapid strides, but still very young’ — such is undoubtedly the appraisal which crops up most frequently in the assessments and diagnoses of the

An Incomplete Science

25

specialists. And this youth, i.e. this immaturity, in actual fact, shows itself from the outset in the uncertainty in which it fmds itself over the most vital question for every science : that of rigorously defining its object, coherently demarcating its terrain, and therefore grasping the very essence of that of which it wants to constitute the science.

(i) Problems of definition While emphasising their agreement on a number of significant points in their important statement in May 1957, five of the most outstanding Soviet psychologists acknowledged the existence between them of ‘serious differences over a whole series of theoretical questions, in particular over those concerning the object of psychology5.16 One hardly runs the risk of being contradicted in saying that the situation is similar today among French psychologists — even, no doubt, considering only those who appeal to Marxism. Is it not the same throughout the world? For several decades a highly remarkable characteristic of psychology has been precisely that in studying its object it has advances with rapid strides, even though it still does not know precisely of what this object consists. In 1929, in one of his last lectures on the psychological evolution of the personality, Pierre Janet said : ‘The idea of a science is always a very difficult and vague thing. One nearly always carries out scientific investigations without fully knowing what one is doing and where one is heading. This difficulty seems especially clear when it is a question of psychological science, the newest and fastest moving of the sciences today.517 Thirty years later Henri Wallon described psychology as a ‘science of which the domain is still unclear and the methods more or less doubtful518; in the same spirit René Zazzo wrote: ‘Psychology developed well before it was possible for it to be defined, and the continuous growth of its gains and the gains of related sciences has not, be degrees, gradually constituted a real definition.519 Although, more recently, throughout The Insights and Illusions of Philosophy, Jean Piaget defends the adult status of psychology against the unrepentant tutelage of philosophers, he did not hesitate to acknowledge the ‘still incomplete character of this still young science5 and to quote approvingly Paul Fraisse’s assertion that ‘the territory which it has conquered is increasingly broad but it has scarcely been cleared.520 Others go still further. To the opportunely direct question ‘What is psychology?5 Michel Foucault replied: ‘It is a matter of common

26

An Embryonic Science

knowledge that the scientific status of a psychology is first not wellestablished and second not at all obvious5?21 And elsewhere, with edifying detachment, he says: ‘I do not think that one ought to try to define psychology as a science5.22 It seems to me, therefore, that it was on behalf of the whole community of psychologists that Professor A. Leontiev was speaking, in his inaugural address to their 18th Congress in Moscow in August 1966 when, having remarked that ‘psychology is going through a period of impulsive development5 went on to say: Nevertheless, these undeniable advances should not hide the serious difficulties with which psychology throughout the world is still faced in our time. These difficulties concern the theoretical interpretation of the accumulated facts, the construction of a system of psychological science. Certainly one cannot — like Nicolas Lange at the beginning of this century — compare modern psychology with Priam seated on the ruins of Troy. In our day the psychologist is rather a builder having before him abundant high-quality materials which, in addition, are completed ensembles, but not having at his disposal the general outline of the most complicated architectural whole which he has to erect. Is not this context the source of the impression of anarchy reigning in psychological theory ?23

These few quotations, to which it would be tedious but easy to add many others, clearly reveal the essential point: if, while making enormous progress, psychology on the whole has so far remained an incompletely developed science, this is because this progress has still not been decisive on the problem on which everything rests: the overall map of its domain and the coherent demarcation of its objects. And, indeed, this is also why the theoretical immaturity one finds there is spread very unevenly : insensitive, if not questionable, in studying this or that form of behaviour on its own, it reaches its high point precisely where it is a matter of the whole, where the fundamental problems converge in the theory of personality. Here again it is not a matter of an arbitrary judgment : it is the general opinion of the experts. To convince oneself it is enough, for example, to examine the transactions of the Symposium de VAssociation de psychologie scientifique de la langue française, held in Liège in 1964, on the problem of models of personality in psychology. At the start of her paper Mme de Montmollin puts forward ‘the idea that no existing model of personality simultaneously and coherently accounts for all aspects of the problem5.24 Furthermore, as F. Bresson among others emphasises: One is struck, in the first place, by a heterogeneity : one can see hardly any

An Incomplete Science

27

common features between the factorial analysis of traits and psychoanalysis, or between psychopathological theories and K. Lewin’s analyses. If we had had papers on Pavlovian typology or on Sheldon’s, or on the theories of Hull or Tolman, this heterogeneity would have been compounded still further. The only common feature seems to be the term ‘personality’ but we may doubt if it has the same meaning in these different frameworks.25

Let us proceed still further: is ‘the personality’ a real scientific object? It appears doubtful to many people. D. Lagache declares: I have spoken about the model of the personality in order to fit in with the subject proposed to those giving papers at this Congress. However, I wonder whether psychological circles are not dominated by the cult of personality. For my part I will say that the personality as such does not exist : what exists are systems of relations. But the personality itself is only a model.26

And L. Canestrelli adds that the personality is ‘only a mental construction’.27 Are not theories of personality pure ideological constructions then? R. Pagès thinks so: Characterological and personological ideologies are adaptive features of certain societies. It is in this sense that Ash and Bruner are justified in studying other peoples’ semantic systems of representation and the implicit theories of personality which they reveal. Our scientific psychology of personality is a more or less differentiated part of ideologies which are both normative and cognitive.... 28

And in his turn P. Pichot is of the opinion that models of personality Might be considered as a reflection of social models. There is probably more than a grain of humour in the remark that Spearman’s hierarchical factorial model could only appear in Great Britain where, following the traditional formula such as the g factor, the Queen is the fountain of honours, whereas Thurstone’s ‘democratic’ model reflected the American view of society.29

It is J. Nuttin, it seems, who draws the clearest conclusion from this discussion, by declaring: One is doing science no service in thinking though one has still not been able to tackle in all their complexity. One sometimes psychology of personality is very much

that one has ‘succeeded’ even scientifically the real problems has the impression that the in the state of preliminary

exploration.30

Thus in the opinions of the psychologists themselves the psychology of personality today is still taken up with unresolved problems over the

28

An Embryonic Science

primary question of the determination of its object and the delimitation of its terrain. How exactly is one to elaborate the theory when one undertakes to construct the theory of personality ? It is clear that so long as a question on this crucial point does not receive a satisfactory reply the psychology of personality will remain in a stage of ‘preliminary exploration’, and the actual system of psychological science in general, as Leontiev put it, will continue to be delayed. But there is worse to come : considered at their highest level of generality, problems of definition in respect of the psychology of personality clearly appear not only to be unresolved but irresoluble. To restrict ourselves to the most basic point, let us first pose the problem of the specificity of the psychological investigation of the personality in relation to the biological approach in the broadest sense of the adjective. In other words, let us pose the general problem of the definition of psychism (psychisme) as a distinct scientific object and supposed substance of the personality, in relation to its demarcation from the object of neuro- and physiopsychological investigations. One can try to map out the boundary in three ways, which exhaust all the theoretical possibilities and which nevertheless all seemingly lead to an impasse. One can define psychism as an activity — or any other analogous term — essentially distinct from the nervous activity which corresponds to it. In this case there is no way of avoiding the spiritualistic dualism of ‘soul’ and ‘body’ — idealism in the Marxist sense of the word. Whatever its ‘modern’ variants, such a definition is merely an avatar of the outmoded metaphysical idea of psychology as the ‘science of the soul’, an idea which is definitively untenable in the present state of knowledge, for Marxists more obviously than for anyone. (b) Or, on the contrary, one can define psychism as an activity which is no different from nervous activity. In this case there is no way of avoiding the evaporation of psychology to the advantage of the biological sciences. In the best of cases it will be a question of evaporation at some time in the future, in the meantime leaving a psychology without an assignable status to wander about the fallow lands of the future materialist science. It will be said, for example, that for the moment physiology is unable to tackle certain very complex problems of psychism on its own terrain, and this gives a reprieve to psychological tinkering [bricolage]. But the time of total investment in the investigation of human psychism by the true materialist psychology, i.e., the neurophysiology of‘psychic’ activity, will inexorably come. In the past certain exponents of Pavlovism have supported this liquidationist point of view with regard to all psychology, understood as a basically autonomous science in relation to the physiology of nervous

An Incomplete Science

29

activity. The mistakes to which this physiologism has led, its sterility from the psychological point of view, the harm which it has done to materialism itself in the last resort — one will clearly see why later — all these drawbacks are such that one may doubt whether it finds adherents today among informed and thinking people. (c) Only one more way out therefore remains : while arguing the unity of psychology and physiology, of the subjective and the objective, one can maintain that psychology and neurophysiology are none the less ultimately distinct sciences because they investigate this single object, psychism, from two different standpoints. It then seems as if a big step may have been taken towards a solution. Unfortunately, therefore, the dilemma recurs in terms which have not been radically altered for having been displaced: is this difference of standpoint a subjective difference of point of view of simply one object or, on the contrary, is it a difference grounded on a real distinction within the object itself? In the first case, whatever way one takes it, it will be impossible to justify the definitive existence of psychology as a science distinct from neurophysiology. The only conceivable science of one, exclusively one, object is itself a single science. But, by that very fact, one will necessarily prefer and strive to replace a psychological investigation confined within the limits of a compartmentalised point of view of psychism, and which necessarily abstracts from its neurophysiological aspect (i.e. on the supposition considered, quite simply from the actual reality of which psychic activity consists) by a complete unitary investigation which is able not to abstract from any of its aspects, i.e. in other words, a ‘neurophysiopsychology’ which can raise itself to the rank of the sole materialist science of human psychism. This is what comes out clearly in the work of the very psychologist who has undoubtedly pursued furthest reflection about this problem. In volume 3 of his Epistémologie génétique Piaget maintains that the relations between psychology and physiology are those ofc two mutually translatable languages’: ‘idealist and implicative’ in the first case and ‘realist or causal’ in the second. Now, even if one agrees with the presuppositions on which such a view rests, the fact remains that this ‘parallel’ and ‘isomorphic’ duality of psychological and physiological languages assumes the unity of an identical text. But then the duality of readings of this single text remains contingent in the last analysis and consequently will only be provisional. Piaget admits it. One cannot deny, he writes, that ‘one day, neurology and psychology will become mutually assimilated or constitute a common science like “physical chemistry” ’.3I We can say that this even appears inevitable. This being so, psychology, a temporary stage in constituting a single general

30

An Embryonic Science

science of human psychism, cannot be regarded in itself as an independent science. In short, in a very roundabout way and as if taking a step backwards, one is condemned to falling back into impasse (b) and defining psychology appears like an impossible task. No doubt in actual scientific life and in a partly empirical way a division of labour has developed and crystallised and this seems to cut through this Gordian knot in practice; in the everyday activity of disciplines thus constituted these unresolved boundary problems, i.e. more fundamentally, these problems of rigorously grasping the essence of the objects studied, do not always make themselves so very obvious. But when things get really serious — for example, when it is necessary to clarify the enigmatic concept of personality — the irresolution of primary theoretical questions and the technical, pragmatic (i.e. basically ideological) nature of the demarcation of the field, once more come into focus and one finds that in actual fact, in spite of thriving research work, the stage of ‘ preliminary exploration’ has not been surpassed. This is how at the Liège Symposium on models of personality in psychology, J.R. Paillard, a neurophysiologist, came to regret ‘the absence of expression of a biological standpoint at this Symposium’ and to wish for the opening up of a dialogue and the search for a common language among psychologists — or psychoanalysts — and neurophysiologists.32 What reply did he get ? None. At the very most, D. Lagache reminded him that cat the present time it is important to bear in mind the specificity of domains and respective methods’ (a specificity the theory of which remains absolutely problematical in principle) and referred to the prospect of a common approach based ‘on general models’ when physiology has ‘turned its attention to internal stimuli’.33 In short, confronted with this really basic question, one takes refuge behind a simple statement of fact the principle of which one does not succeed in clearly establishing and which is a precise indication of the fact that psychology in general, and the psychology of personality in particular, has not yet been able to reach a fully developed definition of itself in relation to this part of its terrain. It is this insurmountable difficulty which could be avoided (and this is the final theoretical possibility) by justifying the duality of psychological and physiological standpoints by reference to an objective duality within psychism itself. But since, at the same time, being anxious to ward off entirely the idealism of hypothesis (a), one upholds the essential unity of psychism, this amounts to saying that psychism is conceived as being in essence both unity and duality. In its logical form this idea is not at all unthinkable. It quite simply means that the relations between the object of an independent psychology and nervous

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31

activity are relations of real difference within a unity, which is the case in every dialectical contradiction. Unfortunately it is not enough for a statement to be formally acceptable for it to have concrete scientific meaning. As far as we know the effort to give this abstract formulation a clear and convincing scientific meaning has not produced any decisive result: the precise nature of this peculiar quality of psychism which would qualitatively distinguish it from nervous activity, even though it is nothing else than this has, up to now proved elusive. This is to say that it remains to be seen how the investigation of psychism could, in a sense — at least in principle — be entirely exhausted by physiology and how, at the same time, an objectively specific terrain of investigation could continue to exist for an autonomous psychology. In a word — an impasse. It goes without saying that all the foregoing could also be said and is also true to the same extent concerning methods: from the neurological approach to the clinical approach, via the different types of behavioural experimentation, one finds the same ambiguities and contradictions. For similar reasons it does not appear that the situation is any better if one examines the problems of defining the personality as regards relations between psychology and the social sciences. Here, too, the real difference within dialectical unity remains rather obscure. One may at first detach the personality from the social conditions in which it is formed, but in doing so one deprives oneself of any way of accounting for its deep-seated sociality, and encloses oneself in a hopelessly abstract, non-historical conception of individuality, whether in the form of a spiritualism of the person or a biologism of temperament. In either case the essential historicity of the personality escapes. Conversely one may go so far as to reduce the personality to social facts, but in doing so one fails to account for each individual’s concrete singularity, except by relegating it to chance (i.e. by proving oneself unable to understand its essential character) — or to cbiological facts’, i.e. relapsing into the opposite error — and one falls into a sociologism which can in no wise provide access to a psychological theory of personality. In short, while there is nothing in psychism which is not nervous activity it is nevertheless clearly necessary for it to be distinguished from it in some way, at least if one is to grant psychology a specific object. Similarly there is nothing which is not social in the personality, and yet its singularity must be clearly understood as essential if the psychology of personality is not a false science. In other words, the concept of social individuality being a contradiction in terms, there is no alternative but to recognise the dialectical nature of the personality, a unity embracing the real difference. Unfortunately, the precise nature of this quality of

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An Embryonic Science

the psychological personality which qualitatively distinguishes it from all social facts, although it is social through and through, has so far proved elusive. In other words, we do not see how the investigation of the personality could, at least in principle, be in any way exhausted by the social sciences and how, at the same time, a specific terrain could continue to exist for a psychology of personality. Here again — an impasse. Let us even assume that, in spite of these clearly insurmountable difficulties, the existence of a specifically psychological domain is taken for granted, even though in these circumstances the rigorous definition of its object is obviously impossible : the difficulties of definition are still not exhausted for all that. In particular, what would be the exact position of the theory of personality in relation to behavioural science in this domain? In the first place one can conceive the theory of personality as dependent on behavioural science, personality being regarded as an ensemble comprised of different types of behaviour. In a general way, this is the viewpoint for example of characterological and typological systems, the range of personalities being described in terms of factorial combinations. But if one argues like this, one foregoes in advance the possibility of understanding the personality as a specific structure and process, i.e. in a word, one simply forgoes understanding the personality. On the other hand, one can immediately lay down that the personality cannot be analysed in terms of behavioural functions. One then treats it as an ensemble of differentiated systems which do not correspond to traditional faculties ; the one is not a mnemonic system, the other a perceptual system, a third willpower; each system corresponds to all the psychic aspects of the individual, motivation, affectivity, perception, thought, willpower, brought to bear on an identical object or activity in the external world in its relations with the individual.34

But on this second hypothesis the theoretical demarcation of personality is made according to concepts — systems, instances, roles, etc. — which do not arise from behavioural science and which do not even have a place in it, so much so that it is difficult to see what connection there is between psychology as behavioural science and the science of personality. Let us go further: if the functions which behavioural science studies do not constitute elemental systems of which the personality is the whole, what real status precisely do they have? Indeed, would this not be a leftover of the outmoded psychology of faculties, which the science of personality is expected to dissolve ? Thus we have a behavioural science which fails to understand the personality, or a science of personality which rejects the way behaviour is divided

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up. Here, too, the relations appear highly contradictory and confused, not now externally between psychology and the biological and social sciences but internally, within psychology itself. In short, it is the whole basic demarcation of the human sciences in the domain of the psychism of individuals which is so radically problematic. And it is hardly difficult to see that it is primarily this unresolved problem of demarcation, i.e. of definition, which still stands between the psychology of personality and its full development.

(2) Problems of basic concepts Uncertain about its definitions and methods, the psychology of personality also has hardly any truly basic concepts — though it has plenty of false ones. Moreover, how could a science correctly lay down its basic concepts without a precise knowledge of the essential nature of its object ? Let us consider first of all the series of concepts one meets with most often when it is a question of dealing with the very foundations of personal activity, concepts related to the ‘motor5 — or supposed motor — of this activity such as need, instinct, inclination and desire. All these concepts are at once prone to the general ambiguity pointed out earlier: they all have a biological and a psychological meaning but exactly what each consists of and what their relations are hardly seems clarified. But there is much more : even if one passed over this ambiguity, they would be none the less inadequate as basic concepts. One can verify this even in connection with the one which is undoubtedly the most clearly-grounded of all, that of need. This is definitely a very important concept which corresponds to an undeniably objective reality — whereas, initially at least, the value of concepts like instinct and inclination, which are so often mystifying, and desire, which is inseparable from a complex psychoanalytic problematic, constitutes a problem. The concept of need is straight away articulable with historical materialism, and indeed this is undoubtedly why it is generally disparaged and even ruled out by vulgar psychological idealism. And yet, strictly speaking, it cannot be regarded as a primary psychological concept. If one believes it can it seems that this is so in particular because the early stages of individual development are controlled and rythmed by cycles of satisfaction and reproduction of needs ; nothing is more current in psychology today than to regard what is or appears to be basic in the initial stage of psychic ontogenesis as being the general basis of all developed psychism, i.e. in short, to assert the identity of basic concepts and concepts pertaining to the early stage. Reflection on Marx’s work induces more caution on such a highly

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important theoretical question, Marx showed over and over again in connection with historical development that, as a general rule, it is precisely not what is determinant in an earlier stage of social development which essentially determines the later stage but that, on the contrary, the nature of the transition to a later stage involves deepseeted transformations in the course of which what was formerly determinant is reduced to a subordinate place, while new elements secure the determinant role; i.e. that the historical forms which have given birth to a society are not generally those which provide the basic concepts for understanding it and that, on the contrary, chuman anatomy contains a key to the anatomy of the ape’.35 These are extremely profound views on the dialectic of development, the value of which goes far beyond the boundaries of the social sciences. Since it is often still dependent on genetic ideas which are a little too simplistic, psychology would benefit from assimilating them. The hypothesis, therefore, that the concept of need may be regarded as a basic concept for the psychology of the early years — which is open to question — does not automatically mean that it has value as a general basic concept with regard to the developed ensemble of the personality. This is not all. If it is indeed true that, as opposed to the whole animal world, the nature of man is to born a man in the biological sense of the word, but to be a man in the psychological sense only in so far as he is humanised through the assimilation of the human heritage objectively built up in the social world, it follows that while there is, of course, a continuity between nature and culture it also happens that the relations between them are reversed, so that theory can only derive the cultural from the natural and therefore, also, the psychological from the biological, through an extraordinary optical illusion.36 This concerns human needs in the highest degree. For in their developed form human needs are not at all the expression of a pre-historical, sub-social human nature, absolutely primary with regard to the psychic activity of which they are supposed to be the basis, but are themselves essentially produced by human history, by men in the course of their history, i.e. in the first place, of their labour. If need itself is a historico-social product, this means not only that it is not the basis of psychic activity but that it is this activity itself which plays the part of a basis with regard to it. In one of the numerous passages in which he simultaneously reflects on theoretical problems of society and those of human individuality, Marx wrote: Whether production and consumption are viewed as the activity of one or many individuals, they appear in any case as moments of one process, in which production is the real point of departure and hence also the

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predominant moment. Consumption as urgency, as need, is itself an intrinsic moment of productive activity. But the latter is the point of departure for realisation and hence also its predominant moment ; it is the act through which the whole process again runs its course. The individual produces an object and, by consuming it, returns to himself, but returns as a productive and self-reproducing individual. Consumption thus appears as a moment of production.37

Thus to take need as basic in psychology (or in history, as Sartre does, for example, in the Critique de la raison dialectique, in which need comes before labour38), is to fail completely to understand what, in The German Ideology, Marx calls cthe basic condition739 of all history: labour, the production of means of subsistence ; and it is therefore to fail to understand man. As we shall see further on, it is to let oneself be taken in, through the deviation of biologism, by the appearance of a ‘materialism of need’ which is in reality insidiously idealist. In short, it is a similar error to that in political economy which consists in taking the sphere of consumption as the fundamental sphere and that of production as the secondary sphere. In a word, it is a typical preMarxist error. And it is an error from which a great number of others follow in turn. For example, from the ‘obvious’ illusion that the elementary schema of all activity is: need-activity-need (N-A-N) and not activity-needactivity (A-N-A) also stems the tenacious illusion that activity has no other end than the ‘satisfaction of needs’, i.e. to use an economic metaphor, the circuit of activity has no other function than simple reproduction -, whereas, on the contrary, the least historical reflection on human needs shows that their development and thus their differentiation, from this point of view alone, requires a conception of expanded reproduction of activity. This is what a number of psychologists are beginning to acknowledge today, forced by their science to come round on this point to theses which Marx had established more than a century ago. But this acknowledgement is enough to disprove all psychological theory which regards need as a primary concept, and to necessitate the search for basic concepts situated on the terrain of productive activity itself. These remarks are true not only of the concept of need but of all concepts of the same type including, in my opinion, desire. Of course, in the Freudian sense of the term as it has been refined in the thinking of J. Lacan, desire is no longer a biological concept at all and one can in fact maintain, like Louis Althusser, that ‘the specific reality of desire cannot be reached by way of organic need any more than the specific reality of historical existence can be reached by way of the biological

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An Embryonic Science

existence of “man” \40 The distinction is important. But, nevertheless, in so far as it assumes a representation of activity ruled by the principle of tension reduction, the concept of desire too, just like that of need or other analogues, remains firmly tied to a homeostatic schema of the individual, i.e. it is unable to account for the basic psychological fact of the expanded reproduction of activity. No concept based on the idea of an external ‘motor’, intrinsically preceding activity itself, can play the part of a primary concept and validly identify the basis of a scientific theory of human personality. Whatever efforts one makes to break with it, to not understand this is to remain within a conception in which drives (pulsions) are understood as instincts in the animal sense of the term. It seems that the necessity for concepts located in the sphere of activity itself to be at the basis of the theory of personality has not so far given rise to sufficiently productive research. But perhaps then, in contrast to the preceding concepts behaviour, conduct, pattern, structure, attitude, rôle, etc., which do appear to be situated on the terrain of psychic activity, meet the requirements for a real basis? No more that the former, in my opinion. Because for concepts to be able to play the fundamental part of basic concepts in a science, it is not enough for them to describe and classify in a more or less satisfactory way the phenomena most frequently observed; much more, they have to express in themselves or in their relations with one another the determinant contradictions which characterise the essence of its object. This point is crucial and for Marxists, moreover, well-known. Briefly explaining the starting-point of Marx’s dialectical approach in his A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Engels wrote : In this method we proceed from the first and simplest relation that historically and in fact confronts us; here, therefore, from the first economic relation to be found. We analyse this relation. Being a relation of itself implies that it has two sides, related to each other. Each of these sides is considered by itself, which brings us to the way in which they behave to each other, their interaction. Contradictions will result which demand a solution.41

This is how basic contradictions between utility and value within the commodity, between concrete and abstract aspects of social labour, etc., appear from the very outset in the exposition of Marxist political economy. The discovery of concepts corresponding to the fundamental contradictions in the object are an essential criterion of the maturity of a science. In this respect it is noteworthy that although Pavlovian physiology was not developed by starting from a previous knowledge of the Marxist dialectic, one nevertheless fmds at its base contradictions

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between excitation and inhibition, irradiation and concentration, analysis and synthesis. One cannot help but reflect also on the fact that, in spite of the doubtful character of a number of its concepts, psychoanalysis derives a considerable pan of its theoretical interest precisely from its attempt to represent the contradictory structure of the unconscious and the psychism when, for example, it opposes life and death instincts, the realisation of possibilities and the reduction of tension, object and narcissistic libido, transference and counter¬ transference, etc.42 Moreover, in my opinion Marxists have under¬ estimated this contribution of psychoanalysis, which at least tends towards the dialectic, if only for its symptomatic value. Unless I am mistaken the concepts of activity presently used by the various psychological theories, such as behaviour, structure, role, etc. nowhere manage to express really basic contradictions and remain predialectical concepts unable to express the internal logic of psychic development. But, it seems, there may be one exception: the only contradiction which may seem to have the breadth of a basic contradiction in contemporary psychological conceptualisation is the contradiction between individual and society which, in various forms, one fmds at the basis of all behavioural psychology as well as psychoanalysis, and it is this very contradiction which haunts the relations between psychology and the biological sciences on the one hand, and the social sciences on the other. However, this 'basic contradiction’ must also be a false contradiction as is clear if one endeavours to think about it dialectically. Because: (a) Either the individual-society terminology refers to, or at least includes, a contrast between heredity and environment, innateness and acquisition, nature and culture, or, of one prefers the English terminology, nature and nurture, in short, between biological facts and social conditions. (But in that case, if the biological facts one has in mind are really biologically autonomous — for example, the nervous type in the Pavlovian sense, manifested at a very early stage — then they do not have the least unity with social conditions and they are therefore in no wise opposites in a fundamental dialectical sense. They are not the outcome of the differentiation of a unity into opposed elements the internal struggle of which impels the necessary development, but of the chance encounter of elements which in themselves are independent, i.e. they are what are sometimes called (in an absolutely questionable expression from a dialectical point of view) 'external opposites’ (as, for example, physical geography and political structures can be in the development of a nation) whose reciprocal relations cannot be determined by an internal dialectical law of growth.

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An Embryonic Science

In short, although they may express a real and not negligible aspect of the development of personality, and we will return to this later, they do not, in their external opposition, give rise to really basic concepts expressing the internal contradictions of their object, and therefore can in no wise found, i.e. wholly support, a science.) (b) Or else the facts to which the concept of the individual refers are really themselves masked social facts — as, for example, what is essentially alluded to by referring to needs or ‘instincts’ in man — and, in that case, the ‘contradiction between the biological and the social’ is merely an illusory, mystifying form of a contradiction between social facts and other social facts. This amounts to saying that, in this sense, far from expressing a primary contradiction, the conventional opposition between individual and society in psychology is itself a secondary form of society’s opposition with itself. One can only hope to reach true basic concepts in psychology, therefore, by not merely superficially opposing the individual and society — nor, all the more, by grappling with the absurd task of mathematically estimating the ‘relative’ influence’ of both these ‘factors of development of personality’, ‘heredity’ and ‘environment’, a task in which mathematical formalism clearly appears to the fig-leaf which covers up the extreme poverty of basic concepts — but by analysing the internal psychological effects of social conditions. In other words, so long as the theoretical foundation of the concept of the human individual is not clarified, the theory of personality remains built on the shifting sands of ideological illusion. For the moment there is no such theory of personality, based on a truly scientific elucidation of this concept, to be seen. Moreover, many psychologists concerned with these questions to not even appear to be aware of this state of affairs or resign themselves to it with disconcerting ease. When one reads in Sheldon’s The Varieties of Temperament, for example, the incredible note about the false problem of ‘heredityenvironment’, in which the author can see no alternative to overcoming the opposition all things considered, than to allow ‘no intolerance as to the definition of personality’,43 i.e. in short, when, confronted with this false problem he suggests accepting indecision as a compromise solution, one is tempted to think that if it were to continue in this way, the psychology of personality runs a great risk of growing old without ever growing up.

(3) A science in question As for the general laws of development of the personality, it is hardly

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necessary to emphasise that nothing in this domain has so far been established. Not only does no-one venture to state such laws scientifically but things are at the stage where the mere act of suggesting such a task is likely to be considered completely incongruous. If one thinks about it, this is an odd situation. In every new science one can usually observe a profusion of evocative and ill-founded generalisation, and of ambitious and stillborn theories: shortcomings of youth, of course, but, at the same time, striking signs of life, beginnings which are delusive but highly necessary for what will be the fully-developed science of tomorrow. Not only has the psychology of personality scarcely known such an heroic period, such a flowering of hypotheses announcing great discoveries, even though it is old enough for it, but with regard to these great theoretical ambitions it often appears to sink into a morose scepticism, ready to be satisfied indefinitely with the juxtaposition of fragmentary and contradictory models. From this point of view, to which one must not give too much significance but which is today quite misunderstood, a certain commotion of deliberately slim works, a sort of insuperable bias towards piecemeal science, and a fixation with the classics, which are undoubtedly important but which one must also be able to surpass, give one the fleeting impression of a discipline in a state of epistemological neurosis. And yet one will agree, if one thinks dialectically that is, that the highest aim of a science and the most striking sign of its coming of age is the formulation of general laws of development of its object. And so long as the psychology of personality does not possess the equivalent of political economy’s law of necessary correspondence between forces and relations of production, the general law of capitalist accumulation, or the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, it will no doubt be progressing down the scientific road — as has already been the case for quite a long time now — but it will not be a fully developed science. So one should not be astonished if its very right to existence is increasingly often brought into question, not by those old-style philosophers who uphold the last avatars of metaphysics against the very idea of a psychological science whom Piaget rightly pitches into,44 but rather by others who, in the very name of the needs of the most materialist science there is, regard the fate of what today professes to be psychology as Unremittingly sealed’.45 Of course, it is possible for psychologists to be unaware of these attacks ; their discipline does, after all, exist; it is a hive of ceaseless, resounding, even profitable activity. But one should not be too complacent at having proved that it is possible to walk by actually walking, for it might turn out that one was merely walking on the same spot. They can also hope to reject the

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An Embryonic Science

demand for rigorous basic concepts as hyberbolic by invoking famous precedents. It is Freud himself, for example, who, not in a text of his youth but in the autobiography which he drafted at the age of sixty-five, when the greatest part of his work was behind him, wrote that : I have repeatedly heard it said contemptuously that it is impossible to take a science seriously whose most general concepts are as lacking in precision as those of libido and of instinct in psychoanalysis. But this reproach rests on a complete misconception of the facts. Clear basic concepts and sharply drawn definitions are only possible in the mental sciences in so far as the latter seek to fit a region of facts into the frame of a logical system. In the natural sciences, of which psychology is one, such clear-cut general concepts are superfluous and indeed impossible.46

But however great the signature to such a text, one may think that it is only when it has finally broken with this mutation in epistemological theory from sheer historical impotence that psychology will have a chance of becoming fully developed. It will not be possible for this to come about by ignoring the basic epistemological problems or forgetting them but only with their solution. This is to say that in the analysis, psychology will not reach complete scientific maturity without also doing philosophy.

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41

III. The Contribution of Marxism Here we are then at the very heart of the problem. As a matter of fact, one will ask, why not rely on psychology itself, i.e. on psychologists, for this necessary development fo the psychology of personality ? This is a crucial question, a challenge to the very existence of this monograph. Indeed, is it not a foolish venture from the outset to get involved in such a task if one is a philosopher, i.e. if one is not a specialist ? For, while it is true that psychology is still not a wholly fully-developed science — in the exacting sense which Marxist epistemology confers on this concept —- nevertheless one should not lose sight of the gigantic advances which it has made along the scientific path for at least a century and which are appreciably accelerating. Psychology if possibly still only an adolescent, but it is a 20th century adolescent, a huge adolescent compared with what was in the past, a science in process of development. It is enough to have only a very partial view of the immense extent of the field covered by the multifarious branches of psychology, the high technical proficiency attained by most of them, and the richness and variety of the literature which they have amassed, to understand the extent to which amateurism has every chance of being ridiculously ineffectual here. Furthermore, is there not something inconsistent and even ludicrous about planning to contribute scientifically to completing the transition of psychology to adulthood without being an accomplished psychologist oneself? And does not the idea that a mere philosopher might bring psychology not just a few materials but no more nor less than a knowledge of its rigorous definition and theoretical basis, naively betray a typically pre-Marxist picture of science and the persistence of antiquated metaphysical prejudice ? Contemporary scientific psychology appears to be entitled to vigorously challenge such a pretentiously conceived philosophy to produce its credentials. Therefore we cannot agree with Piaget, for example, when he declares that: As a psychologist I absolutely object to the fact — and I think all men of science in all disciplines are with me on this point — that the representatives of a different domain explain to me what my domain is, and to the fact that in the name of a philosophy above science they set limits to it, saying : this is what mathematics is and what it is not, this is what psychology is and what it is not.47

(1) Psychology and philosophy

In so far as a whole speculative conception of philosophy and its powers — and therefore all 'philosophical’ psychology — is alluded to here, we can only agree of course. Let us even say that Marxists

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automatically agree since Marxism proclaims precisely the end of all philosophy which claims to know the object of a particular science in its essence better than this science itself through a higher order knowledge than its own, and marks the advent of a fundamentally new type of philosophy whose premises, according to the essential analysis in The German Ideology, are nothing other than the real bases of all human history ‘from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination5 and which ‘can thus be verified in a purely empirical way’.48 Historical materialism puts an end to philosophy in the realm of history,49 just as the dialectical conception of nature makes all natural philosophy both unnecessary and impossible. It is no longer a question anywhere of inventing interconnections from out of our brains, but of discovering them in the facts.50

It is precisely for this reason of principle that fifteen years ago I gave up the plan to formulate a number of hypotheses related to constituting a scientific theory of personality, because I had come to the firm belief from Marxism that there is neither any possibility or justification for philosophy as such to move forward on the terrain of psychology — and over the years I have held to this. Moreover, we have had examples under our very eyes of the impasses and errors which befall even research with Marxist intentions, research which forgets this basic principle and tends to identify Marxist philosophy, qua theoretical basis of the scientific conception of the world, with philosophy of the speculative type which constantly imposes its own schemas on things. A text which it is still instructive to analyse from this point of view appears to me to be the collection of studies on Pavlov which was published in 1953 in Volume 4 of Questions scientifiques, an example which is all the more significant because it is a case of one of the best works on Pavlovism in France and because it is representative not only of the views of its authors, with whom we are not concerned here, but of an approach which was common at that time. This approach lies in showing that Pavlovism brings ‘a resounding confirmation, a further vindication of the only scientific conception of the world, which is that of dialectical materialism’,51 and this by establishing that every essential feature of materialism and the dialectic has one or several corroborations in Pavlovism — which is quite true. One may remind — or tell — those who are tempted to deride the style of such a work today that what it was fighting against then did not deserve laughter so much as contempt, for it was quite simply the conspiracy of silence, and the most painful ineptitudes on the subject of

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Pavlovism, like confining onself to the discovery of psychic salivary secretion in dogs, the general practice even in scientific works on the subject. But the serious weakness of this work in 1953 was that in establishing a complete one-to-one parallelism (an ‘isomorphism’) between dialectical materialism and Pavlovism it necessarily implies the view whether consciously or not, that in principle the move from one to the other is equally possible in either direction. In one direction, Pavlovism appears after the event as the experimental proof of dialectical materialism. In the second, dialectical materialism appears as the theoretical framework of Pavlovism even before the latter came on the scene. It does not appear to be very important then that owing to ‘contingencies’ (Pavlov only became acquainted with Marxism ‘towards the end of his life’52) this second direction has not had historical reality : it could have had and things would only (and will only) proceed more and effectively rapidly if this had been so. Moreover, one of the authors asserts, ‘in their general form’ the general philosophical theses of Marxism ‘anticipated the basic principle of Pavlov’s theory’.53 Thus the idea develops that while the sciences confirm Marxist philosophy, conversely, particular scientific truths in their general form are potentially contained in dialectical materialism: ultimately, one only needs to extract them from it by a deduction which specifically determines them, and in actual fact this is what psychology, for example, is urged to do by taking up its stand ‘on the positions of dialectical materialism’. While there is a correct and very important idea here, and we will return to it later, there is also a deceptive illusion, as has often been pointed out in recent years, but perhaps still not enough in the specific case of psychology. It is quite true that the great scientific truths established over the last one hundred years — for example, those which we owe to Pavlov and his successors — substantially fitted with dialectical materialism, while themselves broadening this framework, and this is a fact of primary theoretical importance. For Marxist thinkers especially, it establishes the right and authority to criticise the ideological views which appear in idealist and bourgeois psychology in the name of dialectical materialism as a body of scientifically proven principles — a critique which the Marxist texts in question did not fail to make and often made well in the 1950s. But, for all that, one cannot hold conversely that, like a Sleeping Beauty, scientific truths were lying dormant in Marxist philosophy from its foundation. Because for every particular truth which fits with the general principles of a dialectical materialist conception of the world, there are also a great number of possible errors, which resemble them like sisters which fit, or would

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An Embryonic Science

seem to fit, just as well. Precisely because philosophy is philosophy, i.e. thought which is situated at the level of the most general categories and principles of a conception of the world, it is impossible to deduce particular truths from it even if it has a scientific quality — except by imagining that the concrete can be engendered by way of the abstract, which would amount to the idealist illusion characteristic of Hegelianism. In other words, if it makes sense to say that the principles of dialectical materialism contain future scientific truths — in psychology, for example — in advance, this would be somewhat like saying that the French language contained future literary masterpieces in advance : the only thing which is lacking is a way of producing them other than the effort of writing them. This is why, taken in this sense, the idea that Marxist philosophy ‘anticipates’ scientific results to come, and the exhortation to take up one’s stand in this way ‘on the positions of dialectical materialism’, inevitably continues to be fruitless or, worse still, to run the risk of upholding errors and therefore of obstructing real scientific advances. In my opinion, this is precisely what happened when it was vbelieved that Pavlovism founded the psychology in agreement with Marxism on the grounds that it fitted exactly with the principles of dialectical materialism, an error which a later chapter will reconsider at length. And this is also why one can reply to the demand often presented to Marxism, by Sartrian existentialism for example, that it should constitute a Marxist psychology worthy of the name, failing which ‘others will attempt the coup in its place’, that the act of calling on a philosophy, however scientific, to carry out a task of this nature, is unacceptable in principle. Consequently one can deny that Marxism has any particular responsibility for the persistent immaturity of the psychology of personality. Why should Marxist philosophy be accountable for the fate of this or that particular science? Take phonology or biochemistry instead of psychology, for example, does one not see immediately how this demand is fundamentally mistaken ? In this respect one must take careful notice that if Marxists themselves generally speak of Marxist political economy, this is not because this designation is scientifically necessary but simply because it is indispensable ideologically to avoid any confusion between the economic science founded by Marx and developed by those who have genuinely continued his work, and theories which are not wholly scientific and are even purely and simply ideological, which shamelessly present themselves as the science of economics. But this absolutely does not mean that the criterion of the truth of Marxist political economy consists of its agreement (very real, moreover) with the principles of

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Marxist philosophy, and of its historical origin which was inseparable from Marxist philosophy. The criterion lies solely in its capacity to give a theoretically coherent and practically verified account of the economic facts as a whole. In other words, Marxist political economy is nothing else than scientific political economy, political economy tout court. So, the fact that Marxists have and must have, positions with regard to psychology, just as they do with regard to political economy, phonology or biochemistry, is natural and legitimate. But the quite different idea of a ‘Marxist’ psychology (like a ‘Marxist’ phonology or a ‘Marxist’ biochemistry) is confused on the fundamental question of the criterion of scientific truth — this, in the last analysis, according to the 2nd Thesis on Feuerbach, ‘is not a question of theory but a practical question’54 — and inevitably contains at least the germs of a false idea of the relations between philosophy and the particular sciences which is both dogmatic and subjectivist.

(2) Dialectical materialism — an epistemological guide

There is, however, also something fundamentally correct in the exceptional compliment at least implicitly paid to Marxism in calling on it and no other philosophy to suggest the bases of a scientific theory of human personality. It is correct, in the first place, because while dialectical materialism in no wise contains concrete psychological truths in advance, none the less, as a scientific theory of knowledge, it is the only guiding thread certain to solve the epistemological problems of constituting the psychology of personality into a fully developed science. Secondly it is correct because, as the philosophy of the proletariat, the revolutionary doctrine and science of the emancipation of man in communism, Marxism establishes the only practical and theoretical way of putting psychology in perspective — what direction is it going in ? What use is it? — which can completely protect it from the narrowmindness of bourgeois ideologies and the tendencies which make it serve selfish, indeed oppressive interests — a vital obstacle to the advent of a true science of human personality. In short, it is correct because if, in Lenin’s turn of phrase, Marxism ‘is omnipotent because it is true’,55 — which, in questionable terminology, Sartre acknowledged by writing that it is the ‘philosophy of our time’56 — it is therefore necessarily basically responsible for all the necessary major theoretical tasks of our age, on whatever horizon they appear — which does not mean responsible in the sense of a jealous trustee or an arbitrary tyrant, but answerable in the important sense which the workers’ movement has given this term. If, therefore, there is not and

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An Embryonic Science

literally cannot be a Marxist psychology, what definitely exists and must be further developed, is a Marxist conception and practice of psychology.

This, furthermore, is the general lesson of those old debates and re¬ examinations which arise out of the question of the ‘two sciences’, ‘bourgeois science’ and ‘proletarian science’ — a formulation which crystallised in French Marxist philosophy from 1948 onwards and criticism of which began in 1950-51, following the publication of Stalin’s pamphlet Concerning Marxism in Linguistics. No doubt, in summing up this debate today people usually record only unilaterally negative tendencies. A few years ago, for example, in a work that in itself was already a sad proof to the contrary, Lucien Sebag went so far as to write: ‘Nothing remains of the opposition between bourgeois science and proletarian science’.57 The reality is a great deal more complex : scientific knowledge is neither bourgeois nor proletarian 5 it is true — hence it is one — and the criterion of its truth lies in its adequacy to its object and not in this or that philosophical idea or this or that social class. In this sense, the idea that two sciences might exist is a profound mistake of grave import and which furthermore, is in contradiction with Marxism, qua scientific philosophy, since it inevitably reduces science merely to the level of an historically relative ideology. But through the nature of the ideologies by which it is or is not penetrated at different levels, and the social practices with which it is linked, however indirectly, scientific work necessarily has an ideological orientation and a class character, especially when it concerns the human sciences. In this sense, it remains perfectly legitimate and opportune to speak, for example, of bourgeois psychology — just as over and over again in Capital Marx analyses at one and the same time not only the theoretical merits but also the class limitations of bourgeois political economy. And way back in the past Marxists were perfectly correct to expose (and they were the first to do so) the mystifying ideologies and anti-democratic practices which a certain bourgeois psychology of the time both reflected and sustained. And it was on the trail blazed in the 1950s by Marxist journals like La Nouvelle Critique and La Raison that, for example, Georges Canguilhem was travelling when, in the incisive apologia which serves as a conclusion to his 1956 lecture entitled ‘Qu’est-ce que c’est la psychologie?’, he recalled that when one leaves the Sorbonne by the rue Saint-Jacques, ‘if one goes down the hill one is certainly going towards the Police Station’.58 On the other hand, to tackle the problems of the psychology of personality in the spirit of Marxism — which is not the same thing at all as the unfounded claim to construct a Marxist psychology — is above

The Contribution of Marxism

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all to pose the problem of orgamsing for the full psychological development of all men, which straight away implies a revolutionary political perspective. Moreover, providing that it has not itself been attenuated beforehand on the basis of historical idealism, the whole history of the human sciences attests to the fact that the conditions of progress of true knowledge never come to their logical aspect but also include practical viewpoints and progressive ideological choices. This is why when somewhat terroristic reminders are piled on Marxists today of the error which the Theory of two sciences’ constituted twenty years ago, it is often not difficult to discern implicitly the pretext for a fraudulently ‘impartial’ and really bourgeois conception of research in the sciences in general and the human sciences in particular, and the attempt to combat the party spirit in scientific work, i.e. the conscious adoption and defence of a line of work which holds to a Marxist account of epistemological principles, ideological conditions and practical perspectives — without ever substituting them, however, for specific criteria of the truth. Here, as elsewhere, above all in human sciences while it can arouse appropriate vigilance against any ideological and utilitarian debasement of knowledge, the tendency to revert to so-called a-politicism in scientific work, which is widespread among those holding structuralist ideas also can indicate a retreat, under the manifold pressure of the bourgeoisie, in the fight for the truth. But the contribution of Marxism to the psychology of personality is not confined to a correct ideological and political outlook on work in general; as the scientific theory of knowledge, and therefore as philosophy, Marxism provides the only fully worthwhile guiding thread to solve the theoretical problems of constituting a fully developed science. For if, as Engels says, dialectical materialism ‘puts an end to the philosophy of nature and history’, it in no wise puts an end to the theory of knowledge but, quite on the contrary, itself achieves the status of a mature philosophical science. It is Engels himself who, after the remarks quoted above, adds: ‘For philosophy, which has been expelled from nature and history, there remains only the realm of pure thought, so far as it is left : the theory of the law of the thought process itself, logic and dialectics’.59 In other words, if the birth of Marxist philosophy puts an end to the chimera of ‘philosophical’ knowledge of scientific objects, it marks at the same time the advent of scientific knowledge of philosophical objects; this is the other side of dialectical materialist philosophy. And this raises the competence and responsibility of philosophy with regard to particular sciences — psychology, for example — to a higher level; this time we can see, not at all in the unacceptable sense of an attempt to

48

An Embryonic Science

deduce or construct their content a priori by way of the principles of a general conception of the world but in the quite different sense of providing assistance to science in solving the epistemological problems which it faces. Contributing such assistance has nothing to do with secretly crossing a border i.e., an indirect manoeuvre by philosophy to dominate research which does not fall within its territory. It is clear that problems like criteria of the maturity of a science, the value of the individual-society opposition as a dialectical contradiction, or again, relations between the basis and the initial stages in a process of development — to take only the example of problems already mentioned above — are not specifically psychological problems but general, epistemological ones i.e. philosophical problems presented by psychology, or presented by philosophy to a psychology which is not sufficiently aware of them. And it is up to philosophy — Marxist philosophy — to answer them. It goes without saying that the turn of phrase it is up to philosophy to answer them, does not automatically mean that it is up to philosophers. The psychologist can of course also be a competent philosopher — and a Marxist philosopher — indeed more competent than many a Marxist philosopher: this is only a question of men in so far as it reflects a question of principle. It goes without saying even more, that the role of dialectical materialism as an epistemological guide with regard to particular sciences should not be conceived of as a kind of hierarchy of rank : besides, in what order of rank would such a hierarchy have to be set up? It is quite simply a question of the basic fact that every scientific approach uses a theory of knowledge and that Marxist philosophy, therefore, does not risk any relapse into the now superseded old-style imperialism of dogmatic philosophy but that, on the contrary, it fulfils a necessary duty if it exercises its own vigilance in the service of psychology. Moreover, the fact that the psychology of personality is absolutely in need of the assistance of philosophy on this terrain is fully appreciated today by many a specialist. ‘As systems of classification of people3, writes Mme de Montmollin, for example, ‘or as classifications of the individual, theories of the personality are also and perhaps essentially theories of knowledge, and for this reason must be the object of an epistemological critique3.60 Such an observation is enough to discredit most characterological and typological theories, the epistemological poverty of which is usually shocking. Inadequate knowledge, indeed a complete ignorance, of postHegelian epistemology and even more of the dialectical materialist conception of knowledge unfortunately still prevails even among the theoreticians of personality who take epistemological problems seriously

The Contribution of Marxism

49

— as in Lewin’s case, for example. His 1935 work on the conflict between Aristotelian and Galilean modes of thought in modern psychology offers undeniable theoretical interest and abounds in apposite remarks. As he points out it is quite true that modern psychology too often remains dependent on Aristotelian epistemological principles without drawing all the lessons which concern it from the scientific revolution marked by the founding of Galilean physics. It is inexcusable, none the less, that Lewin only thinks of drawing on teachings in Galilean physics to assist the founding of a truly scientific psychological theory, completely neglecting to analyse epistemological developments in modern biology (‘which I cannot here especially examine, although I regard psychology in general as a field of biology’69) and above all the lessons to be drawn even for non-Marxists from the contribution which is vital to the epistemology of the human sciences constituted by Marx’s method in Capital and more broadly in his work as a whole. If the epistemology which made possible the founding of classical physics four centuries ago still has value for psychology today, how can one not see the much greater value of that which made possible the founding of the science of social formations and their development a century ago ? And is it not time to see that psychology has paid and continues to pay dearly for under-estimating the scientific importance of dialectical materialism, so often emphasised by Henry Wallon ? This underestimation is in no wise justified by its history : it is the effect of bourgeois ideological discrimination which has nothing to do with the interests of science and which leads to the absurd result that professional psychologists who are prepared to study even Galileo to try to see their way clearly in the fairly confused problematic of their discipline, do not even suspect that, if only from the epistemological and strict professional point of view, Marx’s Capital offers exceptional interest for them. But matters are undoubtedly changing profoundly in this respect. For example, it is not unimportant that in his opening lecture to the 18th International Congress of Psychology, Professor A. Leontiev could show how ‘in addition to a gnoseological sense’, the concept of reflection, a central concept in the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge, ‘has another scientific, concrete, psychological sense; [and] that the introduction of this concept in psychology has a heuristic significance of the highest importance for solving its basic theoretical problems’.62 More fully treated examples of this heuristic value of Marxist epistemological concepts for the psychology of personality will be given in the following chapters. For the time being an outline of one of them

5o

An Embryonic Science

will serve to suggest their full significance. I noted earlier that psychology today hardly ventures to tackle the problem of general laws of development of the personality, and it clearly appears that one of the main reasons for this caution is that it scarcely has any idea of the possible form of such laws. Is it without interest, then, to reflect on the fact that several fundamental laws of social development — starting with the most fundamental of all — were identified by Marx in the form of laws of necessary correspondence ? If one takes into account that on different levels laws of this type are precisely able to express the internal determinism of a structured entity in process of development, i.e. that they are capable of combining the strictest rigour in description of necessary processes with the greatest flexibility in application to infinitely varied and changing concrete situations, one comes around to the idea that the psychology of personality would really not be wasting its time in reflecting on the laws of necessary correspondence. Is this not to be hoped for, moreover, for a science which currently handles concepts of projective correspondence, semantic relations or structural causality, on which so many personality tests and an increasing part of interpretation in psychoanalysis or rôle theory, for example, are based, but quite often it seems without it having really ben considered what a necessary correspondence, i.e. a relation of functional determination means.

(j) Historical materialism —foundation of the human sciences

But the rôle of epistemological guide is not the most important contribution of Marxism to the psychology of personality ; much more vital still, in my opinion, although little use has been made of it until now, is its contribution as historical materialism. For, to take up a position on a still controversial question straight away, here stating merely provisionally the conclusions of an argument to which the next chapter will be devoted, historical materialism is the fundamental basis of the science of history — and on this score an integral part of Marxist philosophy — in as much as it is at one and the same time the riddle of philosophical anthropology solved, the foundation of a scientific anthropology, and the corner-stone of every scientific conception of man. In fact it is precisely on this point that in 1845-46 Marx and Engels made the crucial breakthrough to the radically new philosophy which Marxism is: by arriving at the idea in which the human essence, the elucidation of which was .the squaring of the circle of speculative philosophy, is nothing other than the ensemble of social relations which men necessarily establish between themselves, in the first place, in the

The Contribution of Marxism

5i

material production of their existence, Marx and Engels together laid bare the roots of the process of production of ideologies, thus making possible the development of a genuinely scientific theory of knowledge — they completed the materialist conception of the world by rethinking it dialectically and adding to it a corresponding conception of man — and opened the way for the science of history, and therefore to scientific politics and scientific socialism. Extremely schematically, this is the remarkable nucleus of basic discoveries made by Marx and Engels on the eve of the 1848 revolution. For our purpose a major consequence of this is that as the science of concrete human individuality, the psychology of personality must necessarily be articulated with the general scientific conception of man which constitutes historical materialism. Better still, although as a particular science psychology is clearly not constituted by the founding of historical materialism in its concrete content — no more, it must be added, than are the science of history and political economy themselves, which it took Marx and Engels decades of work beyond the actual foundation of historical materialism to elaborate concretely — is not its form of articulation with Marxism as a whole already given, implicitly one might say, in historical materialism as a general scientific conception of man ?

At this point in the argument one can suddenly see the possible rôle of Marxist philosophy in the scientific development of psychology growing, and becoming more precise. This rôle is not only to provide general epistemological guidelines but much more immediately to accurately describe the ‘form’ of articulation by which the psychology of personality must align itself with historical materialism as a whole and with the sciences which it governs — political economy, science of history — i.e. with a corpus of truths related to man, the consistency and degree of practical verification of which it can be said without hesitation, are noticeable superior to those of all current psychological theories of personality. Here, and this point is fundamental, we are poles apart from the imperialism of a speculative philosophy which still tends to some extent to intervene in the affairs of a discipline like psychology, to oppose its free development along the scientific path from within and to impose its own ideological limits on it. Quite the contrary, without intervening in the affairs of psychology, it is a question here of encouraging its development to maturity by, one might say, providing it with an accurate account of its position in relation to the general scientific conception of man and the particular sciences which it governs. In his lecture to the 18th International Congress of Psychology, did not Piaget himself state that, 'sociology has the great privilege of locating its research on a higher level than that of our

52

An Embryonic Science

modest [psychology] and therefore of having in its grasp the secrets on which we depend'.63 — which, after an interval of forty years, vividly highlights the insight of Politzer writing in 1929: ‘Psychology by no means holds the “secret” of human affairs, simply because this “secret” is not of a psychological order’.64 But Piaget’s observation is only true in so far as we are dealing with a really scientific sociology, and there is no really scientific foundation for sociology apart from historical materialism. In short, we are therefore confronted with one of those productive and classical conjunctures in the history of scientific theories in which an advance in one sector of the front-line of knowledge helps to break through in another up to that point less advanced sector; just as, for example, when delineating in advance and in an unchallengeable way the form of articulation which any scientific theory of the living world would have to have with it, Lyell’s evolutionist geology opened up the way for Darwin. But, in the case before us, it is not only a question of theoretically fruitful relations between particular connected sciences but even more of relations between a particular science and the whole general scientific conception of man, the whole body of Marxist science of human history. This is also why the relations promise to be even more fruitful, for, on condition of extreme doctrinal vigilance, and by virtue of what one might call the law of correspondence of theoretical forms, one can extract not only partial views from psychology’s form of articulation with Marxism but the overall conception of a scientifically fully adult psychology of personality. It goes without saying that, if by nature this task is clearly basically philosophical in the Marxist sense of the term, it is in no wise the prerogative of professional philosophers. Is it necessary to repeat that there is clearly no incompatibility in principle between the fact of being a professional psychologist and proficiency in Marxist philosophy in general and historical materialism in particular ? None the less, it remains necessary to understand clearly that it is this latter proficiency which is crucial in the last analysis, for, especially given its present uncertainties as to its very identity, it is not the psychology of personality which can determine what is essential to the ‘form’ of its articulation with Marxism : it is just the opposite. In actual fact, any other idea would amount to revising Marxism in order to adapt it to this or that prevailing psychological ideology.

The preceding remarks place great value on the Marxist conception of man. Obviously this will have to be justified with the rigour which this assurance implies. But I want to emphasise straight away that this has nothing to do with doctrinairism. It is not Marxists who invented the necessity whereby all psychology and, with greater reason, all

The Contribution of Marxism

53

psychology of personality is in a position of having to answer the doctrinal question: on what conception of man do you base yourself? This necessity is emphasised by thinkers who are least inclined to philosophical dogmatism. Thus, in a lecture quoted Georges Canguilhem, in the name of a classically critical conception of philosophical thought, showed that cit is inevitable that in offering itself as a general theory of behaviour, psychology forms its own idea of man. Philosophy must then be allowed to ask psychology from where it derives this idea and whether fundamentally it is not from some philosophy5.65 And, imagining a case in which psychology held that it has no need to take any idea of man from any philosophy in order to develop, he easily shows that cin so far as philosophy is not allowed to try to fmd the answer to it, the question, “What is psychology ?55 becomes, “In doing what they do, where are psychologists trying to get to?55 “What have they set themselves up as psychologists for ? 55 5 — a question which, whether one likes it or not, implies philosophical (and political) reflection on the foundations of psychology. And this is why, after having emphasised ‘the constitutional inability [of psychology] to grasp and clearly display its founding project5, Georges Canguilhem concluded that ‘no man can prohibit philosophy from continuing to ask itself about the status of psychology which is poorly defined in relation both to the sciences and to techniques5.66 It is noteworthy that after this lecture a psychologist, R. Pagès, agreed in his reply that in actual fact all psychology ‘presupposes a certain philosophy of man, partial or total, implicit or explicit5.67 Marxists cannot disagree with the way in which Georges Canguilhem shows that it is impossible for any psychology to impugn its articulation with a general conception of man — and with an ensemble of social practices. None the less, they would consider that one must go a lot further; for the problem of this articulation was not only posed but received a scientific solution which is contained, potentially at least, in the general scientific conception of man which Marxism both founded and is based on. It is not enough, therefore, to question psychology socratically in order to make it admit that it cannot define its foundation by itself; it must be provided with the existing theoretical materials with which it can define them. But what deters a great number of psychologists from trying to find the prerequisite foundation of a general scientific conception of man either in Marxist philosophy, or in any other philosophy, is the firm belief, which is extremely widespread and deep-rooted particularly among men of science that, in R. Pagès5 very significant turn of phrase

54

An Embryonic Science

in his reply to G. Canguilhem, all philosophy without exception is ‘a way of clarifying values which are beyond knowledge’.68 In the same vein, Jacques Monod asserts that there exists ‘a hiatus in relations between objective knowledge ... and all kinds of judgments or theories of values’69 and that consequently the adoption of an ethical system, a principle aspect of any philosophical anthropology, is dependent on ‘a choice [which] will never appear completely satisfactory’.70 Now it is perfectly true that until Marx all philosophy rested at least partly on unproved theoretical premises, on opinions which were scientifically contingent. But the birth of Marxism consists of a radical transformation of the formulation of the problem itself. All philosophy rests on theoretical presuppositions which as such are partly arbitrary, and consequently it is impossible for a philosophy to be founded absolutely by itself. But examined in a radically critical way, i.e. in the light of a real science of history, these arbitrary theoretical premises prove to be nothing other than more or less distorted and abstract ideological expressions of real premises on which philosophical activity itself necessarily rests, i.e. real social life. As Marx writes in connection with Max Stirner (but the remark has universal significance): These real presuppositions are also the presuppositions of his dogmatic presuppositions which, whether he likes it or not, will reappear to him together with the real ones so long as he does not obtain other real, and with them also other dogmatic presuppositions, or so long as he does not recognise the real presuppositions materialistically as presuppositions of his thinking, whereupon the dogmatic ones will disappear altogether.71

A fundamental text in which there turns out to be both the formulation of a decisive critique of all philosophy in the previous sense of the word and the pointer to the path of a radically new conception of philosophy, which has become fully scientific in so far as every arbitrary theoretical presupposition being cast aside, it bases itself on the objective investigation of real conditions. The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they fmd already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way.72

This is a conception ‘which* is not without premises, but which empirically observes the actual material premises as such*and for that reason is, for the first time, actually a critical outlook on the world’.73 To describe Marxist philosophy as scientific is therefore not a

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55

particular kind of self-satisfaction on the part of Marxists, but accurately signifies a fundamental fact of historical importance in the universal development of philosophy, namely that Marxist philosophy — the retention of the word philosophy being justified by the fact that it takes the place of the old philosophy but must not obscure the fact that it brings about a transmutation of its content and forms — does not presuppose the contingent acceptance of unproved premises any more than it presupposes the arbitrary choice of ethical values. ‘Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality (will) have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things’.74 And this is why the general scientific conception of man which Marxist philosophy offers to psychology does not only constitute an irreplaceable critical contribution to it but also a constructive contribution without any dogmatism. On the contrary, dogmatism on these matters consists in assuming without any real examination that, like all ‘philosophy’, Marxism cannot escape contingent foundations and that consequently it cannot be directly articulated in the required manner with a science, rather than in asserting that it alone supplies a truly theoretical answer to questions that arise for any psychology. Fifteen years ago I was far from having an accurate picture of the general formulation of these problems. And yet by grasping the fundamental reasons set out above, which render it impossible for philosophy as such to pursue its investigations on the terrain of psychology, I caught a glimpse of the duties and authority of Marxist philosophy not only as to the epistemological problems of psychology but as to its articulation with historical materialism. Therefore, in 1952-53, I thought it useful to join in the debate on what at the time appeared to me to augur a physiologistic deviation in the conception of psychology in part of the remarkable research effort based on Pavlovism and undertaken by a team of French Marxist psychiatrists and psychologists.75 In order to criticise this physiologistic deviation — without being clearly aware of all the theoretical conditions of the task that I was undertaking — I tried to describe the articulation which historical materialism offers psychology in order to make it clear that this articulation does not concern only the physiology of higher nervous activity founded by Pavlov, but also a science of personality of quite a different nature suggested by the classics of Marxism. Unfortunately, what I then took for the articulation of Marxism and psychology and for the site of a Marxist theory of personality was really something quite different, which will be discussed later, and which in current terminology can be regarded as coming under social psychology, i.e. in

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An Embryonic Science

actual fact, the social sciences and not a psychology of personality. For anyone who rejected this basic error, the internal unity of the enterprise seemed also to invalidate the critique of physiologism itself, which appeared to be the source of the error. By and large it was over this ambiguity that the enquiry floundered and it was brought to a halt at that point. In any case, for my part I had ascertained through these investigations and debates that Marxist philosophy could and should attend to basic problems in the theory of personality, Moreover, the error of my attempt was dependent not so much on lack of experience in psychology as in Marxism. Since the problems which were raised for the communist movement and for Marxist thought throughout the following years, especially from 1956 onwards, led me, like many others, to a more informed reading of the classics and to more careful reflection on the problems of the basic conception of man, I could not but be deeply struck by the fact that on the whole, whatever Marxist intentions, the psychology of personality still appeared to be unaware of everything which remained to be done in the matter of its theoretical bases and to reach full development. I could not but little by little add up the missed opportunities. For, in so far as one formed a high opinion of scientific psychology, was it not natural to expect it, for example, to have taken part in the intense theoretical debates twelve years ago about the reality of absolute impoverishment in capitalist regimes, or, more recently, about the conception of intellectual abilities underlying Gaullist educational reforms, or, again, about the prospects that communism will open up for the full development of individuals, and to have contributed to those many issues in which psychological enlightenment generally remains sadly wanting, from problems of socialist planning to those of the cult of personality, and from those of aesthetics to those of ethics, the benefit of its higher knowledge ? One must admit that the expectation has been disappointed. There was then no alternative but to reflect on the underlying reasons for these silences, and to state that all things considered, psychology, relatively advanced in the investigation of animals, children, indeed even the mentally ill, and very rich in details as in overall views on psychic functions taken separately, with certain exceptions remains exceedingly weak when it is a question of understanding the general economy of the normal, adult human personality, i.e. precisely what interests us most in the last resort. One can thus understand why psychologists are so often silent in ideological debates in which the conception of the human personality is nevertheless most directly involved: in the absence of essential theoretical ideas and precisely

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because they have a sense of their scientific responsibility, their only way out is often abstention. But then the crucial thought recurs : if, as is clear, the bases of a general scientific theory of personality are still lacking, why not concentrate the most intensive collective research activity on what its articulation with historical materialism can already certainly teach us on this matter? Since, we have seen, Marxism is led for the strongest theoretical and practical reasons to attach extreme importance to the psychology of personality, how can it passively await its progress when it can hasten it itself? And since Marxist philosophy has been led through its own research requirements to reflect on this problem, as as much of it as is accessible to it, why, yes why, should it wait any longer quite simply to give its opinion about it ? In doing which, moreover, it will follow the logic of a rich tradition in French Marxist philosophy : that of Politzer and his militant critique on behalf of a genuinely materialist cconcrete psychology’, which the theoretical conditions of his time no doubt did not enable him to conceive accurately but the requirements of which he had the brilliance to formulate. So long as psychology is not definitively constituted into a fully-developed science through the construction of the scientific theory of personality, Marxist philosophy will have the responsibility and the honour not to allow the great Politzerian tradition, i.e. the tradition of Marx himself as we shall see presently, to perish.

An Embryonic Science

58 Notes — Chapter I 1 2 3

P. Janet, L'évolution psychologique de la personnalité, p. 4. G. Politzer, La crise de la psychologie contemporaine, p. 120. Except in concrete cases, I decided in the following pages to forego any explicit reference to all the works — especially Marxist works — which have contributed to my research; not through ingratitude but for precisely the opposite reason : the distinct awareness that in a work of this kind anyway, with which one is constantly taken up over many long years, the debt is always greater than can be stated. If one were to amass un wieldly footnotes they would never be anything but a fairly arbitrary sample of everything there is to acknowledge. It is often impossible to include even the most important. For instance a long conversation with J.J. Goblot in January 1964 marked a crucial stage in my work : could anyone assess the contribution of such a conversation, and where should it be pointed out in the text ? Actually, the most personal research is none the less fundamentally collective. Basically it is a whole individualist and property-conscious ideology of intellectual work which is persistent in philosophy that is questioned here: a questioning which goes far beyond the

4 5

limits of this note. I will therefore restrict myself to what the book owes (even if by being in disagreement on some points) to a number of studies published in recent years, especially in La pensée, Economie et politique, and Recherches internationales a là lumière du Marxisme. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 652. J. Capelle, J. Rueff, L. Armand, M. Demouque, ‘Tout doit changer dans l’enseignement’, Le Nouveau Candide, No. 229, Sept. 1965.

6

Cf. the proposais of the French Communist Party for a democratic reform of education in Reconstruire l'ecole, Paris, 1973.

7

Cf. on this point, for example, K. Marx, ‘Wage Labour and Capital’, K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, p. 163. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 95.

8 9 10 11 12

J-P. J-P. Ibid, Ibid,

Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique, p. 37. Sartre, The Problem of Method, p. 83. p. 57. p. 82.

13

G.G. Granger, Pensée formelle et sciences de l’homme, p. 199.

14

J. Cvekl, ‘Le facteur humain’, Recherches internationales. No. 55, p. 161 and 166.

15 16 17

K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 488. La Raison, No. 19, 1957, p. 98. P. Janet, op. cit., p. 535.

18 19

H. Wallon, ‘Fordements Métaphysiques ou fondements dialectiques de la psychologie?’, La Nouvelle Critique, No. 100, November, 1958, p. 141. R. Zazzo, Les jumeaux, le couple et la personne, Vol. 1, p. 22.

20

J. Piaget, The Insights and Illusions of Philosophy, p. 188.

21

M. Foucault, Philosophie et psychologie, educational television programme, 6 March 1965.

22

Teaching notes for the television programme referred to in note 21, p. 1.

23

A. Leontiev, ‘Discours d’inauguration’, Bulletin de psychologie, December 1966, p. 236.

24 25

Les modèles de la personnalité en psychologie, p. 11. Ibid, pp. 134-35.

Notes 26 27

28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35

36

59

Ibid, p. 133. Ibid, p. 137. Ibid, p. 161. Ibid, p. 171. Ibid, p. 145. This view also provides J. Nuttin with a conclusion to his own book La structure de la personnalité, p. 255. J. Piaget, Introduction a l’épistémologie génétique, Vol. 3, pp. 177T J-R. Paillard, in the Liege Symposium (see note 24), p. 168. Ibid, p. 172. Ibid, p. 33. K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 105.

37 3«

On humanisation, of. particularly H. Pièron, De l’actinie à l’homme. Vol. 2; A. Leontiev, ‘L’homme et la culture in l’homme, Recherches internationales, No. 46, 1965. K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 94. J-P. Sartre, op. cit., p. 165T

39

K. Marx and F. Engels, op. cit., p. 58.

40

L. Althusser, ‘Freud and Lacan’, New Left Review, No. 55, 1969. p. 61. fn6. K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 3, p. 514.

41 42

Cf. particularly D. Lagache, ‘Psychoanalyse et structure de la personnalité’ in La Psychanalyse, No. 6, Perspective structurales, p. 21 ; J. Laplanche and J.B. Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis, p. 295, article on ‘Paris of opposites’.

43 44

W.A. Sheldon, The Varieties of Temperament, p. 369. Cf. his The Insights and Illusions of Philosophy, The phrase is J. Lacan’s: Ecrits, p. 792. Cf. also pp. 859F S. Freud, ‘An Autobiographical Study’, The Complete Works, Vol. 20,

45

46 47 48 49 50 5i 52

pp.57—58. J. Piaget, Entretiens sur les notions de genèse de structure, p. 60. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 31. The word philosophy is taken here in the old-fashioned speculative sense of the term. F. Engels, ‘Ludwig Feuerbach’, Selected Works, Vol. 3, p. 375. ‘Introduction à l’oeuvre de Pavlov’, Questions scientifiques, Vol. 4, p. 49.

55

Ibid, p. 51. Ibid, p. 9. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 651. V.I. Lenin, The Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism’, Collected

56

Works, Vol. 19, p. 23. J-P. Sartre, The Problem of Method, Preface, p. xxxiv.

57 58

L. Sebag, Marxisme et structuralisme, p. 150. G. Canguilhem, ‘Qu’est-ce que la psychologie?’, Revue de métaphysique et de

53 54

morale, January-March 1958, p. 25. 59 6o

6i 62

63 64 65

F. Engels, ‘Ludwig Feuerbach’, op. cit., p. 375. Les modèles de la personnalité, p. 6. K. Lewin, A dynamic theory of personality, p. 35. A. Leontiev, Bulletin de Psychologic, December 1966, p. 241. J. Piaget, ibid, p. 248. G. Politzer, op. cit., p. 120. G. Canguilhem, op. cit., p. 12.

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Ibid, pp. 12, 21, 24, 25.

67 68 69

Ibid, p. 27. Ibid, p. 31. J. Monod, ‘La science, valeur suprême de l’homme’, Raison présente, No. 5,

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November 1967, p. 15. Ibid, p. 15. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 477-78.

72 73

Ibid, p. 3 1. Ibid, p. 254.

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Ibid, p. 47Cf. L. Sève, ‘Pavlov, Lénine et la psychologie’, La Raison, No. 9-10, December 1954, and the added critical replies. Cf. also L. Sève, ‘Lénine et la psychologie’, La Pensée, No. 57, September 1954, and the discussion of this intervention in the symposium on Lenin.

CHAPTER IL

HUMAN PERSONALITY AND HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

.

‘ History is the true natural history of man (on which more later).’1 ‘The cult of abstract man, which formed the kernel of Feuerbach’s new religion, had to be replaced by the science of real men and of their historical development.’2 In the 1844 Manuscripts Marx wrote : We see how the history of industry and the established objective existence of industry are the open book of man’s essential powers, the perceptibly existing human psychology. Hitherto this was not conceived in its connection with man’s essential being, but only in an external relation of utility, because, moving in the realm of estrangement, people could only think of man’s general mode of being — religion or history in its abstractgeneral character as politics, art, literature, etc. — as the reality of man’s essential powers and man’s species-activity. We have before us the objectified essential powers of man in the form of sensuous, alien, useful objects, in the form of estrangement, displayed in ordinary material industry ... A psychology for which this book, the part of history existing in the most perceptible and accessible form, remains a closed book, cannot become a genuine, comprehensive and real science. What indeed are we to think of a science which ainly abstracts from this large part of human labour and which fails to feel its own incompleteness, while such a wealth of human endeavour, unfolded before it, means nothing more to it than, perhaps, what can be expressed in one word — ‘need’, ‘vulgar need’?3 When, today, one re-reads such a text — and others which are no less evocative, especially in the third manuscript, concerning the historico-social nature of the human senses, the dialectic of labour and need, the essential corruption of the personality by money, its radical emancipation through the abolition of private property, etc., one cannot avoid being assailed by a series of fundamentally important questions, first and foremost this one : how is it that such clear, and — on the surface — such categorical suggestions respecting the path to be pursued in order to make psychology a ‘genuine, comprehensive and real science’, have not so far brought about a decisive mutation in the development of psychology, in constituting a scientific theory of personality? No doubt one can see these texts, as well as others belonging to the works of Marx’s youth, quoted regularly with commentaries which are full of promise; no doubt even a few current research trends like the one characterised in France by I. Meyerson’s work use certain suggestions from the 1844 Manuscripts to good advantage when they analyse the historical nature and the objectification

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of the psychic functions of man in his works — and this does provide an idea of what Marx’s analyses may bring to psychology if taken seriously. But it is impossible not to see that, on the basis of what clearly constitutes the central element in the 1844 Manuscripts, like the other texts of this period, the theory of human alienation — i.e., to restrict ourselves to a brief definition here, the loss of man’s being which has become an estranged power in the world of private property, communism meaning the elimination of this alienation — psychology has so far created nothing worthy of note. How can we account for this surprising disability ? The problem immediately gives rise to a second one: how does it come about that Marx himself, it appears, did not undertake this project of a creal psychology’ in his mature works? Ought one to believe that he did not have the time to elaborate this psychology just as he did not have time to give a systematic exposition of his dialectical method ? Or, on the contrary, ought one to believe that, in his maturity, acknowledging it as mistaken, he knowingly abandoned a project of his youth ? In a word, what is the connection between Marxism and the psychology of personality ?

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I. The Marxist Conception of Man One can see that this problem is quite different from a narrow, specialised issue; still much too little studied, in my opinion, it is a fundamental aspect of a central theoretical and historical problem faced by all those who reflect on the significance of Marxism : the problem of the relations which exist within it between its humanist content and its scientific character, i.e. between the youthful philosophico-humanist works and the mature scientific works. In the prolific growth of arguments and answers put forward in recent years, a deep opposition between two tendencies of interpretation has stood out which, extremely schematically, might be characterised like this: for one Marxism is essentially defined as a humanism, i.e. as a philosophy of the progressive realisation of the cwhole man’ throughout history — but which, to justify itself, tends to move backward the time in Marx’s and Engels’ intellectual development when their basic theory may be considered to have been constituted and at the same time to reduce the significance of the deep-seated changes which it underwent between 1844 and 1847, to reincorporate the youthful philosophico-humanist ideas as they are, unchanged, into the mature scientific conceptions, which then inevitably appears to diminish their theoretical rigour and to reduce historical materialism to the level of an anthropology which has scarcely broken with speculative illusions. For the other, on the contrary, Marxism is essentially defined as a science, which therefore prevents the preceding deformation but which then tends to transform the theoretical revolution characterised by the Theses on Feuerbach and The German Ideology into a break (coupure), and purely and simply to reject the content of the works preceding this period as well as the very concept of a Marxist theoretical humanism as being external to Marxism, which comes down to making a restrictive reading of the mature works and, by denying any direct anthropological significance to historical materialism,4 to reducing the content of Marxist philosophy to the theory of knowledge. It is exceedingly obvious that this primordial question of the relations between humanist content and scientific rigour within Marxism has a decisive effect on our problem of the relation between psychological science and the Marxist conception of man and, at the same time, one can see the unavoidable dilemma we are in, in so far as we let ourselves be led by the logic of these two opposed interpretations.

(1) Philosophical humanism, theoretical antihumanism According to the first interpretation the conception of psychology

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defined in 1844, which is an integral part of philosophico-humanist themes and the theme of human alienation in particular, is regarded as a correct outline of a psychology befitting Marxism. One then attributes the fact that Marx himself did not develop this psychology in his later writings to external circumstances, and the persistence of such a lacuna up to our own day to dogmatic deformation. But one maintains that the ‘1844 psychology’ is the key to all enrichment and in fact to every correct reading of the Marxist classics. Thus the theory of impoverishment in Capital is presented as the detailed economic development of the theme of alienation which is still there and of the analyses in the third 1844 Manuscript concerning human ‘wealth’ and ‘poverty’, being and possession, etc. One states as a fundamental principle that for Marxism man is not reducible to the relations of production but is always defmed by free-choice and the creative project. One maintains that to proceed in this direction it would be necessary to develop a whole Marxist theory of subjectivity and that in fading to do so Marxism is mutilated. In a word, one says that Marxism and psychology are articulated in the philosophico-humanist themes in the works of the Young Marx, especially the 1844 Manuscripts, and in the mature texts re-read in their light. Such an interpretation may be alluring. It will be seen further on that it is not without some relation to reality. Yet it must be clearly said that it is unacceptable. It is unacceptable in the first place because, generally speaking, it is based on a mistaken view of the development of Marx’s ideas, an underestimation of the basic changes which they underwent in 1845-46 in an incredible mixture of youthful texts still imbued with speculative illusions and mature texts having reached complete scientific rigour. When, in the 1888 Foreword to Ludwig Feuerbach, Engels describes the Theses on Feuerbach, written in the Spring of 1845, as ‘the first document in which is deposited the brilliant germ of the new world outlook,’5 he establishes a corner-stone of all serious historical and theoretical interpretation of Marx’s thought in a way which later studies have merely confirmed. Everyone who fails to recognise it is led to deviate from Marxism. From our present point of view it is also unacceptable for a more immediate and more decisive reason: this is that precisely from 1845-46 the theory of alienation as one finds it in the 1844 Manuscripts had unquestionably been surpassed by Marx and Engels themselves, and must therefore be considered to be pre-Marxist. Indeed, while it often makes it possible to describe very evocatively a number of characteristic phenomena and aspects of life experienced in bourgeois society and though it is linked, among other things, to a

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fundamental critique of private property and the communist outlook which is very important, none the less, from a philosophical point of view, this theory is based on the speculative conception of a human essence still conceived in the form of cspecies man’, an abstract individuality of which historical development and social relations are the objective manifestation, and, correlatively, on the failure to recognise the basic principles of historical science (in particular, the determination of the form of social relations by the nature of the productive forces) and fundamental concepts in scientific economy (value, labour-power, surplus-value, etc.). Although they mark an important stage in the change from the old, humanist, speculative point of view to the new, historical and economic, scientific point of view, a large part of the analysis in the 1844 Manuscripts is still upside-down, has still not been set right side up in a materialist manner. Through estranged, alienated labour, then, the worker produces the relationship to this labour of a man alien to labour and standing outside it. The relationship of the worker to labour creates the relation to it of the capitalist (or whatever one chooses to call the master of labour). Private property is thus the product, the result, the necessary consequence, of alienated labour, of *he external relation of the worker to nature and to himself. Private property thus results by analysis from the concept of alienated labour, i.e. of alienated man, of estranged labour, of estranged life, of estranged man. True, it is as a result of the movement of private property that we have obtained the concept of alienated labour (of alienated life) in political economy. But analysis of this concept shows that though private property appears to be the reason, the cause of alienated labour, it is rather its consequence, just as the gods are originally not the cause but the effect of man’s intellectual confusion. Later this relationship becomes reciprocal.6

And further: How, we now ask, does man come to alienate, to estrange, his labour ? How is this estrangement rooted in the nature of human development ? We have already gone a long way to the solution of this problem by transforming the question of the origin of private property into the question of the relation of alienated labour to the course of humanity’s development.7

Thus the 1844 Manuscripts assert a circularity between private property and alienated labour, between social relations and the human essence, but in this circularity the fundamental moment is that of the chuman essence’. The essence of the historical process is man still conceived abstractly and its phenomena is in the economic categories :

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in spite of the materialist wrapping which the adoption of the viewpoint of human labour now represents, we are still in ideological speculation.8 In other words, while it is quite true that the 1844 Manuscripts are situated at the turning-point between political economy and philosophy, this is so only in the sense that the (speculative) ‘philosophical’ theory of alienation still stands instead of real economic explanation of capitalist exploitation : as it is, it does not lead to it, therefore, but rather conceals the approach to it. This is why it is impossible to that hold that in 1844, Marx was sketching out from the point of view of lived experience the analysis which he then carries to the stage of scientific completion on the economic terrain : in fact, by its very nature, which is still speculative in essence, the ‘preliminary outline’ in 1844 was scientifically incomputable as such and, in the sense that they show how, far from it being an abstract alienation of man which produces forms of capitalist exploitation, it is capitalist exploitation which produces concrete forms of alienation, the analyses in the mature works are not the completion but rather the transmutation of the theory of alienation. This reversal is clearly indicated for the first time in the Theses on Feuerbach and The German Ideology which, contrary to Feuerbach and also to the former ‘philosophical conscience’ of Marx and Engels themselves, manifestly show that it is not a phenomenology of the human essence which makes clear understanding of social relations possible, but, on the contrary, it is the scientific investigation of social relations which makes possible an understanding of what up to that point was mistaken for the human essence. It is at this precise point that, in Engels’ expression,9 the ‘new conception of the world’ is really bom. But all psychological analysis carried out directly at the level of human individuals is thereby invalidated from the scientific point of view, since the nature of the individual for mature Marxism is not originally to bear the human essence in himself but to find it outside himself in social relations. Consequently, the search for concrete man on the basis of the 1844 Manuscripts can never really succeed in producing truly scientific knowledge; it is merely the last avatar of speculative psychology, which thinks it has made a discovery when it has simply formulated an empirical observation in previous philosophical concepts. One can therefore understand why Marx abandoned it and why it has always remained a barren utopia: the ‘psychology’ of 1844 is an illusory route to the human personality because it is a route to an illusory conception of this personality. In this sense, the ‘wealth’ of the 1844 analyses which literally makes brilliant developments possible, is fundamentally misleading : it is a theoretical will-o’-the-wisp. This is what makes it possible to assert that the 1844

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Manuscripts — or the works of this period — do not constitute the articulation between psychology and Marxism which we were looking for. In actual fact it is not a matter of an articulation here but of a soft point in the theory of the Young Marx, a soft point which betrayed the immaturity of his conception of society. Nothing that one had imagined it possible to construct here would stand up: every theory of the person’ or of ‘subjectivity’ instituted in this way would fall back beyond Marxism into abstract humanism, Into ideology. It appears then that one is led directly to the extremity of the other interpretation. This consists in maintaining that, from the Marxist point of view, not only the ‘ 1844 psychology’ but, in the current sense of the word psychology — i.e. in the apparently obvious sense in which its object is man, the human subject — all psychology is intrinsically ideological for the same reason that all humanism is speculative. Indeed, by way of the break of the Theses on Feuerbach and writing-off the after-effects which are inevitable for a time after such a radical break, it is said that Marx entirely displaced the terrain of his analysis from the human essence to social relations. But this displacement, which is the imperative condition of the change to historical materialism, scientific economy and scientific socialism, involves the unqualified abandonment of the former concepts which are wholly contaminated by the speculative attitude. And this is how, if not strictly the word, at least the concept and the theory of alienation irrevocably disappear. More fundamentally still, according to this interpretation, it is the very concept of man which no longer finds a place in mature Marxism. Not that Marxism ‘overlooks’ the existence and role of ‘real’, ‘concrete’ men of course. But ‘not overlooking’ real men does not at all necessarily imply that one accepts the concept of man as a scientific concept — any more than the economist does not overlook real misery because he considers that by referring to the ‘poor’ one still does not possess a scientific concept. If it is true, as the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach states, that the ‘human essence’ does not lie in the individual but in the ensemble of social relations, a science which hopes to grasp human individuals for its object clearly appears to be a science without an essence, a false science. It is maintained, therefore, that individuals can only intervene in Marxist theory in so far as they personify social relations, hence, in so far as they are not psychological subjects. This is what Marx seems to say in the Preface to the First Edition of Capital: ‘But here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personification of economic categories, embodiments of particular class relations and class interests3.10 Of course, every real individual is not absorbed in social relations : as a living organism he is an object of the

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biological sciences; as an animal become human he is an object of psychoanalysis. But one cannot confuse these sciences with a psychology. Better: if one really wishes to rid psychoanalysis of all parasitic ideology, and not to begin by reducing it to a variant of psychology, is not its most valuable theoretical contribution to confirm, from quite a different angle, that the so-called ‘human subject5 is only the misleading appearance of relations — in this case, the relations between nature and culture which haunt the unconscious and its mechanisms? Let us summarise this interpretation as a whole: albeit unconsciously, all psychology, even the most positivist looking, rests on a philosophical belief, belief in man, in the theoretical validity of the concept of man. Marx5s fundamental discovery is that what exists, theoretically speaking, is not man but social relations; there is no human meaning of historical progress but a succession of social formations; no realization of the human essence but resolution of contradictions between social structures. This being so it can clearly have no part in the articulation between Marxism and psychology. The soft point which existed in the theory of 1844 has been wholly filled in by historical materialism, by political economy. There is nothing more to add. Such an interpretation is at first surprising, even shocking. In contrast to the facile attractions of the preceding interpretation it is, none the less, impressive as a valuable stimulus to fundamental reflection. It does indeed express the truth on some essential points. However, taken as a whole it does not appear to me to be any more acceptable than the preceding one, in the first place because in my opinion it is vitiated from end to end by a mistaken conception of the relation between the youthful and the mature works in Marxism — therefore, also, of the true meaning of the mature works. This conception is particularly evident in the concept of break (coupure): a radical change of problematic having occured between the 1844 Manuscripts and the mature works, nothing really earned over — except by way of temporary after-effects — from one side of the break to the other. Is not this concept of break, with its underlying mathematical meaning, much too simple and too undialectical to express, in all its complexity, a revolution in the history of ideas, as in history tout court ? For what must be clearly understood is not only the rupture in continuity which the theoretical restructuration involved in every great discovery introduces, but also, at the same time, the unity of the process, without which, moreover, the discovery would be well and truly miraculous. In point of fact, in the problem of the development of Marxist thought usage of the inadequate concept of break clearly

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appears to signify the polemical denial of the (untenable) point of view of overwhelming continuity rather than to ensure really scientifically surpassing it, which would preclude all one-sided simplification and every tendency to violate (forcer) texts and ideas. It would most certainly be too little to say that there is a scientific advance from the 1844 Manuscripts to the mature Marxist works. This ‘advance’ was indicated by a rupture — or better, by ruptures — in continuity, the most decisive taking place in 1845-46. This is incontrovertible. But, at the same time, it is unquestionable that, like a sort of process of theoretical orthogenesis, the succession of these ruptures in continuity marks out a continuous effort to master an unchanged domain of the real with transformed concepts. This is how Marx and Engels always represented their own development and, while their point of view is not to be treated with fetishistic deference, it would be even more irrational to disregard it. Thus, in the 1859 Preface, some fifteen years removed, Marx considers the work undertaken by Engels and himself in 1845, work which was to culminate in The German Ideology, as an attempt ‘to settle accounts with our former philosophical conscience’.11 Hence a rupture. But in the same text Marx recalls, as a notable step in his discovery of historical materialism, the fact that as early as 1843, in the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law, he had arrived at the idea that legal relations and the form of the state can only be explained by setting out from ‘civil society’, the anatomy of which must be sought in political economy.12 Hence continuity in the progression of his thought. Much later still, in a letter to Engels of April 24 1867, i.e. nearly a quarter of a century removed, after having again taken up The Holy Family, which dates from 1844, he wrote, c I was pleasantly surprised to fmd that we do not need to be ashamed of this work, although the cult of Feuerbach produces a very humorous effect upon one now’.13 This is not the language of the break. And it is what Lenin, writing opposite a passage in the book in which Marx criticises Proudhon, emphasised in his notes on The Holy Family. ‘This passage ... shows how Marx approached the basic idea of his entire “system”, sit venia verbo,14 namely the concept of the social relations of production’.15 There is more. Throughout his life Marx never stopped taking up again and reincorporating the pre-1845 materials, particularly the 1844 Manuscripts, by reworking them. ‘If one judges by the numerous passages marked by a vertical line, there is no doubt that he referred to them [the 1844 Manuscripts]. Indeed, he was in the habit of proceeding in this way when he was using ideas or passages from the manuscripts he kept in his drawers.’16

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Moreover, these reworkings are easy to detect. Thus, one of the most famous passages in the 1844 Manuscripts, the analysis of the power of money starting with a passage from Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, is taken up again in The German Ideology, then ten years later in the first version of the Contribution, then ten years later still in Capital.11 Another example : in Capital Marx again takes up the analysis of the contradiction within bourgeois society and in the very soul of the capitalist between the passion for accumulation and the desire for enjoyment.18 Again, in the same way, he comes back several times in Capital to the comparison already developed in 1844 between economic and religious alienation.19 One could easily multiply the examples. It is, as it were, the behaviour of a painter who turns back to subjects in his mature years which he has dealt with in his youth because he has never stopped dreaming about them. Naturally, reading the mature version of these analyses, one cannot fail to say to oneself: how they have changed ! — but this is clearly to acknowledge the fact that one has recognised them. Let us get nearer to the root of the problem : — when, after the turning point of 1845—46, in his vitally important letter to Annenkov, dated December 28 1846, a letter which constitutes one of the best systematic expositions of the principles of historical materialism and the résumé of the whole of The German Ideology, Marx writes that The social history of men is never anything but the history of their individual development’,20 — when, in full maturity in 1857-58, he formulates the conclusion that the cmost extreme form of alienation’ constituted by the relation between wage-labour and capital already contains in itself, in a still only inverted form, turned on its head, the dissolution of all limited presuppositions of production, and moreover creates and produces the unconditional presuppositions of production, and therewith the full material conditions for the total, universal development of the productive forces of the individual,21

— when, in Capital itself, i.e. at a time when he has his completed scientific work before him and when, according to the antihumanist interpretation, he should have been poles apart from the humanism of 1844 and the theory of alienation, we read, for example, that The capitalist system presupposes the complete separation of the labourers from all property in the means by which they can realize their labour’,22 but also that the development of large-scale industry imposes The necessity of recognising, as a fundamental law of production, variation of work, consequently fitness of the labourer for varied work,

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consequently the greatest possible development of his varied aptitudes’ and compels society, under penalty of death, to replace the detail-worker of today ... by the fully developed individual, fit for a variety of labours, ready to face any change of production, and to whom the different social functions he performs are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own natural and acquired powers,23

— when he concludes that communism will begin with ‘that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom’,24 — when, in an article summarising the whole of Capital, Engels writes that Marx sharply stresses the bad sides of capitalist production but with equal emphasis clearly proves that this social form was necessary to develop the productive forces of society to a level which will make possible an equal development worthy of human beings for all members of society,25

— or when, finally, in Theories of Surplus-Value, Marx himself does not hesitate to say that although at first the development of the capacities of the human species takes place at the cost of the majority of human individuals and even classes, in the end it breaks through this contradiction and coincides with the development of the individual ; the higher development of individuality is thus only achieved by a historical process during which individuals are sacrificed,26

— when one re-reads these texts, and many similar ones which I will refer to later, can one really think that the humanist preoccupations of the 1844 Manuscripts have been surpassed without anything having passed into mature Marxism? And how must such texts be read in order not to see at the core of the most rigorous theory, in a way which will have to be elucidated, men and the contradictory path of their historical flowering?27 I think enough has been said to make evident the necessity for a systematic and rigorous re-examination of what becomes of the problematic of man as a whole within mature Marxism, from The German Ideology to Capital — a re-examination on which both the understanding of Marxism itself and the true grasp of its articulation with the theory of personality depend. In its scholarly form such a re¬ examination would require volumes. The pages which follow will present a summary.

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(2) The conception of man from The German Ideology to Capital In The German Ideology, i.e. in the first great work which establishes and deepens the theoretical turning-point marked by the Theses on Feuerbach, ‘the brilliant germ of the new world outlook’, Marx and Engels undertake a radical critique of the standpoint of philosophical humanism — philosophical always being taken at this time and in this context in the pejorative sense of speculative. They therefore most categorically reject the concept of abstract Man whose history is merely self-development and, at the same time, the theory of alienation as it was presented in the 1844 Manuscripts. The German Ideology consummates their rupture with what may be called the speculative anthropology-abstract humanism couple. As a matter of fact this is the essential content of what Marx, thirteen years later, in the Preface to the Contribution, called the settling of accounts with their former philosophical conscience and his principal aim was self-clarification. From now on they regard their major mistake as having been that which is revealed for example in this passage taken from among twenty others : If from a philosophical point of view one considers this evolution of individuals in the common conditions of existence of estates and classes, which followed on one another, and in the accompanying general conceptions forced upon them, it is certainly very easy to imagine that in these individuals the species or ‘Man’ has evolved, or that they evolved ‘Man’ — and in this way one can give history some hard clouts on the ear. One can conceive these various estates and classes to be specific terms of the general expression, subordinating varieties of the species, or evolutionary phases of cMan’.28

In a word, this is what Feuerbach does : He never arrives at the really existing active men, but stops at the abstraction 'Man’, and gets no further than recognising ‘the true, individual, corporeal man’ emotionally, i.e. he knows no other ‘human relationships’ of ‘man to man3 than love and friendship, and even then idealised. He gives no criticism of the present conditions of life ... and thus ... relapses] into idealism at the very point where the communist materialist sees the necessity, and at the same time the condition of a transformation both of industry and of the social structure.29

This idealist inversion of real relations between man and history, between individuals and social relations (an ‘inversion which for the first is an abstract image of the actual conditions’, ‘turning everything upside-down’, arises just as much from [men’s] historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical lifeprocess’,30 is what must be radically eliminated: the investigation of the

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historical development of men must materialistically and scientifically be put back on its feet. ‘This method of approach is not devoid of premises. It starts but from the real premises and does not abandon them for a moment. Its premises are men, not in any fantastic isolation and rigidity, but in their actual, empirically perceptible process of development under definite conditions.’31 And, in this sense, one has to ‘leave philosophy aside’, ‘one has to devote oneself like an ordinary man to the study of actuality’,32 for the characteristic of philosophy is to transform everything into abstract categories, even ‘the word “communist”, which in the real world means the follower of a definite revolutionary party,’33 and through that to remain within a viewpoint ‘interpreting’ the world when the point is to change it.’ The transformation, through the division of labour, of personal powers (relationships) into material powers, cannot be dispelled by diminishing the general idea of it from one’s mind, but can only be abolished by the individuals again subjecting these material powers to themselves and abolishing the division of labour.’34 This is why those philosophers who are the most radical in words are ‘the staunchest conservatives’.35 At this stage in their thought, Marx and Engels therefore completely repudiated in principle the speculative attitude which still vitiated their works in 1844 and especially the Manuscripts. They explicitly emphasise it several times themselves. Thus Bruno Bauer indulges in speculations about The Holy Family. ‘The expression “real humanism”, which he found in the preface to this polemic document, provides the main basis of his hypothesis.’36 Marx and Engels put things in focus. They recall that the development towards the materialist inversion of speculative philosophy was already indicated in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher, the Introduction to the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law and On the Jewish Question, hence in 1843—44: But since at that time this was done in philosophical phraseology, the traditionally occurring philosophical expressions such as ‘human essence’, ‘genus’, etc. gave the German theoreticians the desired excuse for misunderstanding the real trend of thought and believing that here again it was a question of merely giving a new turn to their worn-out theoretical garments.37

The German Ideology is therefore indeed the exposition of reasons for an irrevocable rupture with philosophical humanism. But this rupture in no wise removes real men from the theoretical arena: rather, they emerge in it in the stead of abstract Man. As a matter of fact, following the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach, which presents

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the human essence ‘in its reality538 as the ensemble of social relations, The German Ideology is a lengthy demonstration of the fact that ‘the [history] of the productive forces5 is also ‘the history of the development of the forces of the individuals themselves5.39 This is shown in Marx’s letter to Annenkov, dated December 28 1846, in which the whole of The German Ideology is summarised: Because of this simple fact that every succeeding generation finds itself in possession of the productive forces acquired by the previous generation, which serve it as the raw material for new production, a coherence arises in human history, a history of humanity takes shape which is all the more a history of humanity as the productive forces of man and therefore his social relations have been more developed. Hence it necessarily follows that the social history of men is never anything but the history of their individual development, whether they are conscious of it or not. Their material relations are the basis of all their relations. These material relations are only the necessary forms in which their material and individual activity is realised.40

It is therefore precisely the inversion of the sterile viewpoint of abstract humanism and empty phrases about the human essence understood in the idealist sense, which permits the change to a fruitful scientific view of concrete individuals and their historical development because individuals are now understood by way of their true essence : social relations. The German Ideology is a striking demonstration of the fertility of this new standpoint for understanding real men. In wonderfully profound pages, remarkably suggestive, in my opinion, for anyone reflecting on the theory of personality,41 Marx and Engels show, without yet having analysed it completely, how what they call the division of labour — hence an ensemble of social relations — makes human labour lose the sense of ‘self-activity5 and leads the majority of men in bourgeois society to the point where ‘[they are] robbed thus of all real life-content5.42 They also show how by virtue not at all of a mystical development of the human essence but of a concrete development of the productive forces, which have reached a stage where they require ‘the development of a totality of capacities in the individuals themselves5, and class relations, which, by completely denying the proletarians all self-activity, puts them in a position ‘to achieve a complete and no longer restricted self-activity5, the communist revolution necessarily has a total and universal character and opens the way to a society in which ‘self-activity coincide[s] with material life, which corresponds to the development of individuals into complete individuals5.43 This whole analysis grounds the general conclusion that the proletarians, ‘if they are

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to assert themselves as individuals, will have to abolish the'very conditions of their existence hitherto’; ‘in order ... to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State’.44 These last turns of phrase, particularly resistant to the antihumanist interpretation but the significance of which one can see on the contrary for the elaboration of a scientific theory of personality, are by no means isolated turns of phrase in The German Ideology. In particular they are developed at length in the polemic against Max Stirner.45 Marx and Engels show, and this enables one to grasp how deeply historical materialism involves taking men into consideration, that the separation between men and social relations does not only make men incomprehensible but also indeed the development of social relations, the class struggle. In Max Stirner, they write: On the one side he has the ‘transformation of existing conditions’, on the other side — ‘people’, and the two sides are entirely separate from each other. [He] does not give the slightest thought to the fact that the ‘conditions’ have always been the conditions of these people and could never have been transformed without the people transforming themselves and, if that should be the case, without their being ‘dissatisfied with themselves’ in the old conditions.46

The German Ideology thus demonstrates in advance the famous thesis in the Manifesto, and more broadly in all Marxism, in which the bourgeoisie itself produces its own grave-diggers. The proleterian, for example, who like every other person is called upon to satisfy his needs and who is not in a position to satisfy even the needs that he has in common with other people, whom the necessity to work a 14hour day debases to the level of a beast of burden, whom competition degrades to a mere thing, an article of trade, who from his position as a mere productive force, the sole position left to him, is squeezed out by other, more powerful productive forces — this proletarian if only for these reasons is confronted with the real task of revolutionising his conditions.47

At the present time individuals must abolish private property.48 All this amounts to saying that philosophical humanism is not simply cast aside in The German Ideology, which would rid us of it in a negative way; it is denied dialectically, i.e. surpassed — not of course (and this point is fundamentally important) in the Hegelian sense of the concept of surpassing, i.e., discovering a ‘higher’ point of view within philosophical speculation, but in the specifically Marxist sense of a materialist inversion and a scientific transmutation which finally allows us to escape definitively from speculation. Not only is the concept of abstract Man invalidated as speculative, but its historical genesis is also

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explained on the basis of conditions in which real men develop, and consequently a new concept of man as a historically determined social individual replaces it, opening the way to a non-speculative anthropology of which the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach constitutes the corner-stone. The theory of alienation itself, a mystical odyssey of the human essence, can neither reveal its most deep-seated idealism nor therefore be absolutely eliminated except in so far as the totality of historical processes, including the processes of personal life, is understood on the basis of the real and not the imaginary human essence, therefore on :he basis of the concrete investigation of social relations, their actual contradictions and political development. At the same time, the philosophical theory of alienation then gives way to a scientific theory of contradictions and of the conditions of historical flowering of individuals. Thus the new concepts and theories which result from the thoroughgoing materialist inversion (renversement) of speculative relations between human essence and social relations are by no means simply the inverted reflection of idealist theories and concepts whose place they take; such an inversion (inversion) would not really enable us to escape from the world of speculation. But, generated in a new way on the basis of the investigation of objective historical conditions, they fulfil the explanatory function with regard to reality scientifically which the idealist theories and concepts of previous philosophy merely succeeded in fulfilling speculatively. It is this homology of function in the framework of theoretical systems, which none the less are qualitatively different, which permits the reading of the new scientific solutions as an effective answer to the insoluble problems of previous philosophy, on condition that we are careful never to fall into the trap of their pure, unadulterated confusion, the beginning of an inevitable regression into speculative humanism. Marx and Engels frequently proceed in this way in The German Ideology, going so far as to flirt with the speculative terminology even when in other passages they sarcastically discredit it, and this not at all through ‘inconsistency’ (the inconsistency of the ‘woiks of the break’ according to the antihumanist interpretation) but, on the contrary, because the two approaches are basically identical : the possibility of solving a previous insoluble problem by translating it into a new problematic is the most convincing of proofs of the senility of the old one. Thus it is that The German Ideology, like the 6th Thesis, identifies the ensemble of material social conditions as the ‘real’ human essence, ‘the real basis of ... [the] “essence of man”’.49 An extremely condensed version even says that ‘the existence of men is their actual life-process,’50 a statement in which the verb to exist clearly does not

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mean an indifferent identity of subject and predicate but a transcription which can be made from the first into the second — and which, despite appearances, therefore has a totally different meaning from the statement in the 1844 Manuscripts, ‘The individual is the social being\51 a careful examination of which in its context shows that it, on the contrary, asserted the pure and simple equivalence of the language of real society and the language of the abstract human essence. In the same way, The German Ideology transcribed into the new scientific concepts what the term alienation referred to. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to nought our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development till now .... This ‘estrangement’ (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises.52

Elsewhere, criticising Feuerbach, for whom ‘the existence of a thing or a man is at the same time its or his essence’, Marx and Engels consider it possible to reply in Feuerbach’s own terms: Thus if millions of proletarians feel by no means contented with their living conditions, if their ‘existence’ does not then in the least correspond to their ‘essence’, then, according to the passage quoted, this is an unavoidable misfortune, which must be borne quietly. The millions of proletarians and communists, however, think differently and will prove this in time, when they bring their ‘existence’ into harmony with their ‘essence’ in a practical way, by means of a revolution.53

In yet another place, they show that if one defmes them historically as a ‘product of social conditions’, the terms ‘human’ and ‘inhuman’ which, related to an ideal and abstract Man, essentially form part of the mystified terminology of speculative philosophy, are not for all that purely and simply meaningless. The positive expression ‘human’ corresponds to the definite conditions predominant at a certain stage of production and to the way of satisfying needs determined by them, just as the negative expression ‘inhuman’ corresponds to the attempt, within the existing mode of production, to negate these predominant conditions and the way of satisfying needs prevailing under them, an attempt that this stage of production daily engenders afresh.54

This is why the nonsensical judgement of the philosophers that the real man is not man

8o

Human personality and historical materialism is in the sphere of abstraction merely the most universal, all-embracing expression of the actually existing universal contradiction between the conditions and needs of people. The nonsensical form of the abstract proposition fully corresponds to the nonsensical character, carried to extreme lengths, of the conditions of bourgeois society.55

It can be seen that in the very work of Marx and Engels which brings about the decisive rupture between the standpoint of their youth which is still‘philosophical5 and the scientific standpoint of their mature years with regard to the central question of the conception of man, the anthropological-humanist conceptualisation does not disappear. It undergoes a complex scientific transmutation which appears both as a radical critique but also as a new theoretical validation of it. Furthermore, this is precisely what has become of that which I called above cthe 1844 psychology5. Looking at it closely, the great wealth of suggestions which one finds in The German Ideology as far as a psychology of personality is concerned is by no means simply the extension of what one finds in the 1844 Manuscripts, the specious nature and delusive scientific barrenness of which we saw earlier. For, as far as the essential point is concerned, the analyses in The German Ideology on needs, desires, passion, intellectual wealth, concentration of artistic talent in a few individuals and, even more, on the actual structures of contradictions in personal life — analyses which are so remarkable and of which use will be made in the following chapters — are based not on considerations located abstractly in the world of ‘species man5 but on the investigation of real social relations. Their basic limitation, in fact, is Marx’s and Engels5 economic knowledge in 1845-46. But it seems clear that something of fundamental importance for the theory of the concrete individual is born here which prefigures the real solution to this crucial problem. *

*

In order to press forward quickly, let us see what point Marx has reached with regard to these problems some ten years later in the enormous body (nearly 1200 printed pages) of his economic works of 1857-59 which, in the order of their writing, are best entitled the Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy (1857), the Grundnsse or Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (1857-58), the preserved fragment of the Original Version (1858), and the fmal version of the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1858-59) — only the latter work being published by Marx in his own life-time. If one compares these texts with The German

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Ideology from the point of view of the problems discussed here, what is immediately striking is that the polemic against philosophical humanism as such has practically disappeared. At the very most one comes across incidental remarks echoing what constituted the central critical theme in The German Ideology four or five times, if that, in 1200 pages: in the i8yj Introduction, a phrase against Proudhon who finds cof course it is a convenience ... to be able to give a historico-social account of the source of an economic relation, of whose historic origins he is ignorant’56; later in the same text, the brief remark that cthe philosophical consciousness — for which conceptual thinking is the real human being’57; in the Grundrisse, a paragraph almost literally summarising a page in The German Ideology to explain the illusion of philosophers who ‘have determined the reign of ideas to be the peculiarity of the new age, and have identified the creation of free individuality with the overthrow of this reign’58; and elsewhere, in the course of a discussion of the viewpoint of Adam Smith, the following detail; (But what we want here initially is not to go into his view on labour, his philosophical view, but into the economic moments’.59 This almost complete disappearance of the explicit polemic against philosophical humanism obviously does not mean that Marx is calling its validity into question again but that, on the contrary, as far as he is concerned from here on it goes without saying; it is a stage in his crossing onto the terrain of historical materialism that has been wholly worked through and to this extent actually surpassed. It is now no longer a question of demonstrating to the reader, while proving to oneself, the foolishness of speculation about Man, but rather of pursuing critical work in the domain of bourgeois political economy and of constructing a scientific, materialist political economy which can alone provide a correct theoretical basis for studying the ensemble of problems of man, society and history. But precisely for this reason, while the critique of abstract humanism is now surpassed for Marx, on the other hand, the critique of abstraction in general and in political economy in particular becomes a vital task for him. In this sense, more than ever, we will see, there is still a critique of abstract man in the works of 1857—59; it is just that the critical effort is displaced, if I may say so, from the noun to the adjective. In order to complete the working out of new concepts (including the new concept of man) which are to take the place of the concepts of philosophical humanism, it is necessary to complete the working out of the new theory of the concept, of abstraction and of the concrete, of essence and existence, and to pursue to its limits the critique of the speculative conception of knowledge and the construction

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of a materialist, scientific theory which is to replace it. Indeed, this is undoubtedly why Marx begins his immense work in 1857-59 by writing the Introduction and developing in particular The Method of Political Economy’, of which it must be said with Louis Althusser that it ‘can rightly be regarded as the Discourse on Method ol the new philosophy founded by Marx’.60 What Marx, then thirty-nine years old, completed in this text is, in short, the critique of Hegel’s dialectic which he had begun from his earliest youth — the materialist inversion of this dialectic. It goes without saying that this huge question goes far beyond the scope of the present work.61 But now we must take a step back in order to point out a small number of essential facts, the decisive importance of which for the construction of a truly scientific theory of personality will be seen in subsequent chapters. The first fundamental critique of the Hegelian dialectic which Marx devoted himself to is contained in the 1843 manuscript, the very important Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law. The meaning of this critique is summed up in a page which is central in every respect. Hegel’s chief error is to conceive the contradiction of appearances as unity in essence, in the idea, while in fact it has something more profound for its essence, namely, an essential contradiction, just as here this contradiction of the legislative authority within itself, for example, is merely the contradiction of the political state, and therefore also of civil society within itself. Vulgar criticism falls into an opposite, dogmatic en or. Thus it criticises the constitution, for example. It draws attention to the antagonism of the powers, etc. It finds contradictions everywhere. This is still dogmatic criticism which fights with its subject-matter in the same way in which formerly the dogma of the Holy Trinity, say, was demolished by the contradiction of one and three. True criticism, by contrast, shows the inner genesis of the Holy Trinity in the human brain. It describes the act of its birth. So the truly philosophical criticism of the present state constitution not only shows up contradictions as existing 5 it explains them, it comprehends their genesis, their necessity. It considers them in their specific significance. But comprehending them does not consist, as Hegel imagines, in recognising the features of the logical concept everywhere, but in grasping the specific logic of the specific subject.62

Here is the germ of all Marxist criticism of the Hegelian dialectic and its materialist inversion — criticism and inversion being absolutely inseparable. In a word, what does Marx say ? By showing dialectical movement in die sphere of the state, as in all others, Hegel made a remarkable advance. Bt t in him this discovery is still that of an idealist, speculative

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philosopher, i.e., empirical contradictions do not become the object of a materialist science which seeks their real basis, but the subject of speculation which considers them from the viewpoint of their reflection in thought, i.e., turns them into a logical abstraction — the dialectical movement — which, through a classical ideological inversion, in its turn appears like the real essence and origin of the empirical contradictions. This means that in Hegel the brilliant discovery of the dialectic is doubly mystified : in its status and in its content. In its status : the real, material bearer of empirical contradictions not being understood, ‘the mystified idea becomes this bearer5.63 Hegel ‘stands everything on its head564 ; ‘the actual becomes a phenomenon 565, while the idea becomes the real subject; pure ‘logical ... mysticism5.66 In its content-, for, at the same time, instead of ‘the specific logic of the specific subject5 being sought everywhere scientifically, ‘it is always the same categories which provide the soul, now for this, now for that sphere5.67 For example, ‘the logic does not serve to prove the state, but the state to prove the logic5.68 In other words, Hegel does violence to the empirical facts in order to force them into pre-established categories which are therefore characterised by speculative abstraction. There is more. If existing contradictions are merely empirical manifestations of the logical contradiction, their solution can only arise by way of logic, therefore speculatively, and not practically by a revolution in the present state of things. This is Marx’s deepest criticism : the dialectic in Hegel is not really critical. Instead of relating empirical contradictions to the real movement which has produced them and which must surpass them in practice, it projects them into the sphere of speculation in which they obtain their ideal solution in advance -— which therefore also already has its empirical manifestation in reality. Thus dialectical surpassing becomes the most conservative thing there is : to surpass contradictions merely in thought (idealism) means that one uncritically accepts their real basis (empiricism).69 For example: Hegel is not to be blamed for depicting the nature of the modern state as it is, but for presenting that which is as the nature of the state. That the rational is actual is proved precisely in the contradiction of irrational actuality, which everywhere is the contrary of what it asserts, and asserts the contrary of what it is.70

Hegel thereby endeavours to make us believe that the solution to existing political contradictions might be found in the very framework of the state and society which are precisely their real basis, going ‘practically so far as slavishness5 with respect to authority. In reality the abolition of the bureaucracy is only possible by the general interest

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becoming the particular interest, which in turn is only possible as a result of the particular actually becoming the general interest. Hegel starts from an unreal antithesis and therefore achieves only an imaginary identity which is in truth again a contradictory identity.71

Idealist in its content and status alike, the Hegelian dialectic is therefore unusable in this form. And yet cin spite of its speculative original sin’ it provides, as one finds in the Phenomenology for example, ‘the elements of a true description of human relations5.72 This stems precisely from the fact that in spite of the idealist consciousness which it has of itself, the Hegelian dialectic has its origin in the last analysis in the reflection of objective reality. This is a fundamental fact, often poorly understood because until now the history of the development of the Hegelian dialectic has nearly always been written starting from the idealist view which Hegel had of it himself. It is also necessary, of course, to invert the history of this birth materialistically, i.e. to analyse in the spirit of historical materialism how the Hegelian dialectic came to sum up an immense development in practice and theory while inverting it ideologically and mystifying it through speculative abstraction. It therefore appears that the radical critique of the Hegelian dialectic, i.e. the scientific elucidation of its birth, coincides with its inversion, i.e. with the materialist rectification of its status (the dialectic is the reflection in thought of the real movement) and the scientific reformulation of its content (the dialectic not as speculative abstraction but as ‘the specific logic of the specific subject5.)73 The materialist rectification of its status is achieved as soon as it is conceived, since it simply consists of its theoretical representation ; and this is why Marx glimpsed it very early, just as soon as he was able to start to conceive the principle of historical materialism, i.e. in his own estimation in the Preface to the Contribution, as early as 1843 in his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law. The scientific reformulation of the content of the dialectic, on the other hand, which involves critically taking stock of the whole Hegelian dialectic in the light of scientific work and political struggle, represents an immense and in a sense infinite task. One must be on one’s guard against both the temptation to retain Hegelian categories insufficiently critically, which would lead to falling back partly into speculation -— and against misunderstanding of the kernel of truth which they contain, i.e. from the theoretical point of view, regressing. It is this exceptionally difficult but important task which Marx undertakes and which one can follow from book to book, for example, in connection with the concept of the negation of the negation which he never stops going back to in the third of the 1844

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Manuscripts, in The German Ideology (in which he sets over against the Hegelian concept of/negative unity5, the speculative transcendence of two sides of a contradiction, ‘the materially determined destruction of the preceding materially determined mode of life ... with the disappearance of which this contradiction together with its unity also disappears’1*, in other words, a new concept of the negation of the negation, of surpassing), in The Poverty of Philosophy and the Manifesto (in which this new concept gets extensively developed), then in the 1857-59 works and Capital, in which it plays an irreplaceable part. Accordingly, from the actual point of view of elaborating the theory of concrete individuals, nothing is more important in the 1857 Introduction than the critique of speculative abstraction and the scientific theory of the essence and concept which are developed with unparalled depth after fifteen years reflection on problems of method. At the very outset Marx enters into criticism of what he calls the ‘eternalisation of historic relations of production5.75 He writes: ‘all epochs of production have certain common traits, common characteristics. Production in general is an abstraction, but a rational abstraction in so far as it really brings out and fixes the common element and thus saves us repetition5.76 Taken in this sense, abstraction does not imply speculative mystification. But if one wishes to develop the content of this ‘production in general5, i.e. the general conditions of all production, ‘this reduces itself in fact to a few very simple characteristics, which are hammered out into flat tautologies5.77 As soon as one concretely examines production in historically determinate conditions, on the contrary, these traits common to all epochs give way to essential differences which one notes from one social formation to another: in place of the limited abstraction of production in general, always and everywhere the very same, we find the variety of branches and forms of production, the specificity of its occurrences depending on the social body to which it belongs. The terrain of preliminary abstractions must therefore be abandoned if we wish to work out a scientific representation of the concrete. The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for observation [Anschauung] and conception. Along the first path the full conception was evaporated to yield an abstract determination ; along the second, the abstract determinations lead towards

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Human personality and historical materialism a reproduction of the concrete by way of thought. In this way Hegel fell into the illusion of conceiving the real as the product of thought concentrating itself, probing its own depths, and unfolding itself out of itself, by itself, whereas the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind. But this is by no means the process by which the concrete itself comes into being.78

Thus the most fundamental theoretical error in handling abstraction, the speculative error which bars every way to true science, is the one which consists in confusing the abstract generality, which is still only the purely external representation of things themselves, with the real essence, which directs their concrete movement, mistaking this abstract generality, the mere beginning of theoretical labour, for the objective point of departure, the actual basis of the real process. For example, production in general is not on any score what develops and distinguishes itself in the real historical forms and stages of production ; at most it is the designation of what appears to thought as remaining identical through these forms and stages. When bourgeois economists tell us this generality is the deepest essence of their object in their expositions on production in general, they therefore present production to us cas encased in eternal natural laws independent of history, at which opportunity bourgeois relations are then quietly smuggled in as the inviolable natural laws on which society in the abstract is founded. This is the more or less conscious purpose of the whole proceeding’. The essential feature of this mystification is 11 to confound or to extinguish all historic differences under general human laws’.79 Here, at the end of what might first of all have appeared like a digression, one can see how despite appearances, Marx’s epistemological and economic work in 1857 is far from having forgotten the critique of abstract man in The German Ideology : on the contrary, it is a deepening of it from the standpoint of its material base (political economy) as well as its intellectual base (epistemology). Marx writes: cTo summarise: There are characteristics which all stages of production have in common, and which are established as general ones by the mind; but the so-called general preconditions of all production are nothing more than those abstract moments with which no real historical stage of production can be grasped’.80 Every word must be weighed in this statement, in which the whole Marxist critique of abstraction is crystallised. And for anyone who has really done so any accommodation of Marxism with a speculative humanism is necessarily over. Another example shows this eloquently : the example of labour. As a

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matter of fact the central part in the 1844 Manuscripts is played by the concept of labour and alienation of labour. But in what way? All phenomena which relate to it are considered as understood as soon as they can be presented as manifestations of the general alienation of human labour, i.e. in point of fact, amalgamated under an abstraction. But as the concept of alienation of labour in general is immediately suggestive of realities experienced in bourgeois society, for the good reason that it is basically nothing else than their abstract designation, the illusion is created that we have reached the concrete analysis of concrete reality by the short-circuit of philosophical abstraction. In actual fact, this is typically a case of the false concrete the mechanism of which is demonstrated by the Introduction, the false concrete in which the Box and Cox of empiricism and speculation still partially comes into play. The concept of alienated labour can therefore by no means play the part of point of departure, i.e. theoretical basis of the whole analysis which it had in the 1844 Manuscripts. On the contrary, it could appear at the very most as the result of the scientific investigation of all the determinations of capitalist economy. As a matter of fact Marx takes the example of labour up again in 1857 in the Introduction. labour seems quite a simple category. The conception of labour in this general form — as labour as such — is also immeasurably old.81 Now it might seem that all that had been achieved thereby was to discover the abstract expression for the simplest and most ancient relation in which human beings — in whatever form of society — play the role of producers. This is correct in one respect. Not in another.82

It is correct in the sense of a rational abstraction which effectively expresses an ensemble of determinations common to all forms of labour, determinations, moreover, which come down to very little. But is incorrect in the sense that indifference towards any specific kind of labour presupposes a very developed totality of real kinds of labour, of which no single one is any longer predominant’.83 Thus the category of labour in general, i.e. of indifferent labour, corresponds to a determinate stage of development of the productive forces. On the other hand, the reduction of all particular kinds of labour to the abstraction of labour in general, presupposes the full development of market production, capitalist society. Consequently, the simplest abstraction, then, which modern economics places at the head of its discussions, and which expresses an immeasurably ancient relation valid in all forms of society, nevertheless achieves practical truth as an abstraction only as a category of the most modern society .... This example of labour shows strikingly how even the most abstract

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Human personality and historical materialism categories, despite their validity — precisely because of their abstractedness — for all epochs, are nevertheless, in the specific character of this abstraction, themselves likewise a product of historic relations, and possess their full validity only for and within these relations.84

Thus, not only are the abstract generalities far from immediately expressing the universal essence of their object, but, looking at it more closely, the illusion they have of doing so is already proof of their historical particularity. This is what the 7th Thesis on Feuerbach said very succinctly : not only does Feuerbach abstract from the course of history by reducing the real human being to an abstract individual, but he also does not understand that ‘the abstract individual whom he analyses belongs in reality to a particular form of society585, bourgeois society. This theme is taken up again in the 1857 Introduction-. ‘The epoch which produces this standpoint, that of the isolated individual [bourgeois society of the eighteenth century, as he has stated a few lines earlier. L.S.] is also precisely that of the hitherto most developed social (from this standpoint, general) relations5.86 More generally, it is the 1857-59 works as a whole which, in connection with the most varied categories, develop the analysis of the epistemological conditions under which alone a non-speculative anthropology can be conceived : all its categories — individual, need, labour, etc. — taken separately as well as in their relations within the theory, are necessarily not abstract generalities but the conceptual expression of the historical movement, which presupposes their radical criticism and materialist transformation in relation to vulgar anthropological ideology. But as a matter of fact Marx’s 1857-59 works are a further vivid proof that a non-speculative anthropology is possible once these conditions are respected, and that it is even necessarily implied in the development of historical materialism and scientific political economy. It is impossible to become acquainted with them without being forcibly struck by the wealth and fulness of the analyses and insights that one continually finds respecting the historical development of individuals. This wealth is undoubtedly even greater fundamentally than that in The German Ideology, although it bears on a much more limited number of problems. In The German Ideology it is a question of passion and labour, artistic talent and need alike; in the 1857-59 works it is nothing else than a ‘psychology5 both presupposed and suggested in a most immediate way by the analysis of economic relations. In itself this transmutation is highly significant. In The German Ideology it is not only the law of polemic which prompts Marx and Engels to pursue their adversaries on the terrain of the most varied psychological questions,

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including the discussion of Fourier’s psychology,87 it is also, it seems, the very understandable tendency to draw up at once the inventory of the totality of knowledge to which the completed materialist transformation of the human essence provides access in principle. It is like a feverish delight in proving the fruitfulness of the new point of view in all ways at once. But the characteristic of this new point of view is precisely not to afford ‘a recipe or schema, as does philosophy, for neatly trimming the epochs of history. On the contrary, our difficulties being only when we set about the observation and the arrangement — the real depiction — of our historical material, whether of a past epoch or of the present’.88 The inevitable inadequacy of Marx’s and Engels’ concrete knowledge at the time when they were writing The German Ideology had the effect that in spite of their scientificity in principle, which is the source of their profound value, many ‘psychological’ analyses, to refer here only to them, retain not only a conjectural but also a somewhat speculative character. Ten years later, one can judge not only how Marx’s knowledge has developed, particularly in economic matters, but to what extent his rigour has hardened in bringing the new epistemology and its prohibitions into play. It is this rigour which goes so far as to make him forgo publishing in the first part of the Contribution in 1859, the 1857 Introduction, which contains among other things extremely profound analyses concerning the individual and need just as much as labour, since, he says, ‘on further consideration it seems to me confusing to anticipate results which still have to be substantiated’.89 Thus, there are more developments related to individual existence in the Grundnssse and the Contribution than those which result strictly from economic analysis and proof. But what is lost in breadth is made up, and more, in depth. Or rather, in these 1857-59 works, at least for anyone who studies them in the light of what we can understand today of the problematic of the theory of personality, it begins to seem that the materialist inversion of speculative psychology gives birth not to a scientific psychology but, unquestionably, to a complex system of sciences and part-sciences having as their object the psychism of human individuals : a theoretical presentiment incredibly in advance of its time — still that of ‘spiritual faculties’ ! — and perhaps even partly of ours. In particular, it appears that irrespective of all so-called ‘psychology’, economic science has the duty and the means to constitute on its terrain a theory of the historical forms of individuality — forms of needs, productive activity and consumption in their social determination; forms of individuality implied by social relations, for example, the

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hoarder, the free labourer, the capitalist; forms of general contradictions in individual existence corresponding to these social relations. And, at the same time, but in a much vaguer and mainly negative way, it appears that this theory of general forms (in the historical sense of the word) of individuality, must not be confused with a theory of concrete individuality, a theory of personality which, for all that, cannot be conceived outside its articulation with the former, or, on the other hand, with biological science. This asymmetry of the quite simple domain of speculative psychology and the complex field of the real sciences of individuals is perfectly consistent with the very essence of the materialist and scientific inversion, as has already been said. As early as 1843 Marx showed that ‘spirit5 is not the opposite of‘matter’, it is only its ‘abstraction590 : the setting right side up within a materialist science of their relations, which are inverted in ideology, cannot therefore assume the form of a symmetry, but rather the simplicity of the abstract generality is replaced by the complexity of concrete relations. This is not yet the place to analyse this complexity of the field of the sciences of human psychism in more depth. Let us merely say that it may finally convince anyone who might hesitate to consider the ‘1844 psychology5 as specious and sterile: this one fact alone discloses the still speculative character of an attempt which, on the basis of still abstract concepts on which it depends, was necessarily premature. But let us look more closely at what the Grundrisse and the Contribution hold out for us in the matter of a science ot real men.91 In the first place we find a many-sided proof of the fact that on the basis of historical materialism and of political economy, individuals and social relations, anthropological and economic concepts are absolutely indissociable. The conclusive point of this proof is that ‘society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand5.92 In point of fact the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach already said that notwithstanding the ideological illusion, society is not composed of individuals, in other words, that individuals as social beings are not the primary elements of the social ‘body5; the human essence exists not in isolated individuals but in social relations. But precisely because it directly precludes all psychologisation of society, this conception implies the fundamental socialisation of individuals : far from playing the part of primary elements, individuals as social beings are ‘a product of history’.93 It is therefore impossible to found a science of individuals on a different basis from the science of history. But it is equally impossible to found the science of history without at the same time founding the theory of the historical production of individuals. For the

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historical production of individuals is not a by-product which is, as it were, accidental from the point of view of history : it is integrated with it in multiple ways as an essential moment. The Grundrisse provides many examples of this integration. Generally there is no economic process or relation which does not call men into action, no economic concept, therefore, which does not have an anthropological side. Thus ‘the main force of production (is) the human being himself’,94 Every development of the productive forces is at the same time the development of human capacities. In their turn the relations of production are basically nothing else than relations between men ; not, of course, in the sense that men as social individuals pre-existed these relations — on the contrary, this is a complete speculative illusion — but in the sense that these pre-existing relations are the ones in which men necessarily enter into in production and in which they found their real life process, in the social sense of the term, determined in advance. In this respect, the apparently sound idea that the objectivity of social relations as historical materialism conceives them rules out that it might be a case of relations between men, is actually based on the twofold error of misrecognising the objectivity to which the historicalmaterialist concept of man refers — from this point of view, is not theoretical antihumanism in part precisely the last, negative (in the nondialectical sense of the word) avatar of the idealist reduction of the human subject to subjectivity ? — and reciprocally misrecognising the fact that it is relations between men which constitute the real essence of relations between things. This twofold error is therefore nothing else than the ‘reifying’ illusion which in commodity production makes relations between individuals disappear behind the appearance of pure relations between things. In a society in which such a mode of production is dominant, exchange-value ‘is nothing more than the mutual relations between people’s productive activities’ [in which] ‘individuals have alienated their own social relationship from themselves so that it takes the form of a thing’.95 The crude materialism of the economists who regard as the natural properties of things what are social relations of production among people, and qualities which things obtain because they are subsumed under these relations, is at the same time just as crude an idealism, even fetishism, since it imputes social relations to things as inherent characteristics, and thus mystifies them.95

In fact, Marx goes much further: The production of capitalists and wage labourers is thus a chief product of capital’s realization process. Ordinary economics, which looks only at the

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Human personality and historical materialism things produced, forgets this completely. When objectified labour is, in this process, at the same time posited as the worker’s non-objectivity, of the objectivity of a subjectivity antithetical to the worker, as property of a will alien to him, then capital is necessarily at the same time the capitalist ... It is posited within the concept of capital that the objective conditions of labour -— and these are its own product — take on a personality towards it, or, what is the same, that they are posited as the property of a personality alien to the worker. The concept of capital contains the capitalist.97

Capital is not ‘a pure thing’ but ‘relation of production which, reflected in itself, is precisely the capitalist’.98 In view of such analyses it must be clearly stated that the assertion which one comes across here or there according to which there is no conceivable correspondence between social relations and men in Marx’s economic theory, is evidence of a really fundamental lack of understanding. The truth, on the contrary, is that every moment, every essential aspect of social relations directly involves men and determines an aspect, a moment in their life-process. Thus, to give another example, in so far as it is renewal of his labour-power, the personal consumption of the proletarian is immediately a moment in the capitalist reproduction process as a whole. Because ... his reproduction is itself a condition for capital, therefore the worker’s consumption also appears as the reproduction not of capital directly, but of the relations under which alone it is capital. Living labour capacity belongs just as much among capital’s conditions of existence as also do raw material and instrument. Thus it reproduces itself doubly, in its own form, (and) in the worker’s consumption, but only to the extent that it reproduces him as living labour capacity."

One can see to what extent one would be mistaken about Marx’s thought were one to believe that his mature work gives a purely metaphorical meaning to the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach when it calls the human essence ‘in its reality’ the ensemble of social relations.100 Quite on the contrary, the Grundnsse establishes that it is ‘the development of the social individual which appears as the great foundation stone of production and of wealth’ and that the ‘forces of production and social relations’ are ‘two different sides of the development of the social individual’101 • and Marx goes so far as to write: ‘the society itself, i.e. the human being itself in its social relations’.102 There can therefore be no lingering doubts about the fact that historical materialism is also directly scientific anthropology. And the second aspect of what the 1857-59 works bring us in the

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matter of the science of real men is precisely an ensemble of collections of concrete indications concerning the bases of such an anthropology, an ensemble of materials for a theory of the historical forms of human individuality. Its principle is that the individual, in the developed social sense of the term, is a product of history: 'human beings become individuals only through the process of history’.103 Consequently, all the categories through which one thinks individual life must be thought first of all by starting from the social relations which are its real basis. Take the category of need, for example. Not only are the forms which needs take and the modes of satisfying needs in individuals in any given social formation determined by it — an idea already formulated in the 1844 Manuscripts and to which the Marxist critique of the concept of need is often reduced —- but, much more important still, their very essence appears as its product. Although this thesis was outlined in the 1844 Manuscripts in the partially speculative reflections on money, the Grundrisse here goes much further. In 1857-59 the investigation of the anthropological effects of money is taken up again by Marx scientifically. Money is therefore not only an object, but is the object of greed [Bereicherungssucht]. It is essentially aim sacra fames [‘that accursed hunger of gold’, Virgil, Aenid, Bk. 3, line 57]. Greed as such, as a particular form of the drive, i.e. as distinct from the craving for a particular kind of wealth, e.g. for clothes, weapons, jewels, women, wine etc., is only when general wealth, wealth as such, has become individualised in a particular thing, i.e. as soon as money is posited in its third quality. Money is therefore not only the object but also the fountainhead of greed. The mania for possession is possible without money ; but greed itself is the product of a definite social development, not natural as opposed to historical.104

There is a remarkably penetrating view here on the deepest economy of the personality in a society dominated by money and which vulgar psychological ideology has no chance of ever reaching. The 1857-59 works abound in such valuable views not only on money and need but also on labour, personal freedom, the types of individuality produced by particular social relations, from the individual in the primitive commune to the modern capitalist and proletarian, passing through the roman citizen and medieval hoarder, and again, the forms of social unconsciousness which go with these types of relations. There is a huge amount of scientific materials here totally unused until now. In the third place — and perhaps it is this that strikes the reader most because of the insistence with which Marx comes back to it — there is in addition to the above what I referred to earlier as the theory of the contradictions and conditions of the historical flowering of

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individuals, which in actual fact represents the surpassing of the 1844 theory of alienation. Marx’s approach is easy to understand : if it is true that individuals are inseparable from social relations, the contradictions in the latter clearly determine the contradictory bases of the lifeprocesses of the former ; but the historical movement which necessarily abolishes the contradictory form of real social relations also, at the same time, gives rise to social individuals freed from the corresponding contradictions. The 1844 theory of alienation has therefore by no means disappeared without trace: it, too, has been inverted, in the materialist and scientific sense defined above. Of course, it is not a movement of alienation and then of disalienation of the human essence as an abstract generality which constitutes the meaning of history ; this speculative view of things disappeared for good as early as 1845-46. But, for all that, the reality that it was alluding to has by no means disappeared. One can say, rather, that it is enough to read the 1857-59 works without blinkers to see a new concept of alienation, asymmetrical with the previous one and thoroughly scientific, functioning there in the clearest possible way. All generalising speculation aside, what is alienation from the strict point of view of the science of real men and their historical development? It is the fact that in society based on commodity production the social character of activity, as well as the social form of the product, and the share of individuals in production here appear as something alien and objective, confronting the individuals, not as their relation to one another, but as their subordination to relations which subsist independently of them and which arise out of collisions between mutually indifferent individuals. The general exchange of activities and products, which has become a vital condition for each individual -— their mutual interconnection — here appears as something alien to them, autonomous, as a thing.105

At first in money ‘that one finds the transformation of mutual social relations into definite overwhelming social relations which subjugate individuals5.106 But it has its most deep-seated origin in ‘the ... process which divorced a mass of individuals from their previous relations to the objective conditions of labour, which were, in one way or another, affirmative, negated these relations, and thereby transformed these individuals into free workers’, therefore setting these objective conditions of labour over against individuals.107 It is because it drives this contradictory historical process through which the growth of the productive forces is achieved to an extreme, that capitalism also produces the ‘extreme form of alienation’,m But the conditions of its

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destruction mature by the same historical necessity. The barrier to capital is that this entire development proceeds in a contradictory way, and that the working-out of the productive forces, of general wealth, etc., knowledge, appears in such a way that the working individual alienates himself [sich entaussert]; relates to the conditions brought out of him by this labour as those not of his own but of an alien wealth and of his own poverty. But this antithetical form is itself fleeting, and produces the real conditions of its own suspension.109 The cultivation of all the qualities of the social human being, production of the same in a form as rich as possible in needs, because rich in qualities and relations —- production of this being as the most total and universal possible social products, for in order to take gratification, in a many-sided way, he must be capable of many pleasures [genussfahig], hence cultured to a high degree — is likewise a condition of production founded on capital.110 The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few, for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange-value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of penury and antithesis. [Hence] the free development of individualities ....Ul In fact, however, when the limited bourgeois form is stripped away, what is wealth other than the universality of individual needs, capacities, pleasures, productive forces, etc., created through universal exchange? The full development of human mastery over the forces of nature, those of so-called nature as well as of humanity’s own nature? The absolute working-out of his creative potentialities, with no presupposition other than the previous historic development, which makes this totality of development, i.e. the development of all human powers as such the end in itself, not as measured on a predetermined yardstick?112

For anyone reading these stirring texts who recalls the passage in the 1844 Manuscripts in which Marx wrote that in communism cit will be seen how in place of the wealth and poverty of political economy come the rich human being and the rich human need. The rich human being is simultaneously the human being in need of a totality of human manifestations of life’113, the continuity of subject — the absence of a break — is obvious. But in 1857 it is the real dialectic of forces and relations of production — concepts which were not even formulated in 1844 — rather than disalienation still conceived as an abstract necessity, which makes it possible to anticipate rationally, although not unpoetically, the future flowering of individuals : here also there is inversion. A mass of antithetical forms of the social unity, whose antithetical

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Human personality and historical materialism character can never be abolished through quiet metamorphosis. On the other hand, if we did not find concealed in society as it is the material conditions of production and the corresponding relations of exchange prerequisite for a classless society, then all attempts to explode it would be quixotic."4

It is not the mystical quality of the Hegelian negation of the negation, which in actual fact is fundamentally conservative, that will act as midwife for the new society and at the same time for the new social man : it is the class struggle. None the less, this objective movement of history takes on the form of a negation of the negation in a new sense of the concept : the real destruction of a contradiction and, through that, from a specific point of view, the recovery of the former unity on a higher level. Relations of personal dependence (entirely spontaneous at the outset) are the first social forms, in which human productive capacity develops only to a slight extent and at isolated points. Personal independence founded on objective (sachlicher) dependence is the second great form, in which a system of general social metabolism, of universal relations, of all-round needs and universal capacities is formed for the first time. Free individuality, based on the universal development of individuals and on their subordination of their communal, social productivity as their social wealth, is the third stage. The second stage creates the conditions for the third."5 The most extreme form of alienation, wherein labour appears in the relation of capital and wage labour, and labour, productive activity appears in relation to its own conditions and its own product, is a necessary point of transition — and therefore already contains in itself, in a still only inverted form, turned on its head, the dissolution of all limited presuppositions of production, and moreover creates and produces the unconditional presuppositions of production, and therewith the full material conditions of the total, universal development of the productive forces of the individual."6

Such is the overall perspective of the Marxist conception of man in I857-59*

*

Ten years later we have Capital, the wealth of which from the point of view we are considering here, goes far beyond the limits of the short summary of it which it is possible to give here. Moreover, everything in it confirms what has just been seen in connection with the 1857—59 works: it is unnecessary, therefore, to repeat it at length. If Marx has again moved forward during these ten years as far as method is

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concerned, it is in the direction indicated by the 1857 Introduction, the quintessence of which is taken up again in particular in the famous conclusion to the first chapter, cThe Fetishism of Commodities and the Secrets Thereof’ and in the Afterword to the second German edition. If one does not see this one runs the risk of making extraordinary misinterpretations of Capital. Let us take, for example, Part III of Volume One which deals with ‘The Production of Absolute SurplusValue’. We are confronted here by one of the most key texts in the whole of Marxism. At first it may appear as if Marx bases his whole analysis on preliminary philosophical theses — in the old sense of the word. We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will.117

Let us assume that, for want of taking sufficient account of the theoretical revolution which occurred between the method of Capital and that of the 1844 Manuscripts, we say that Marx’s turn of phrase ‘we pre-suppose labour ... ’ has the (speculative) meaning ‘we pre¬ suppose labour (in general) as our theoretical basis ...’. Hoping, what’s more, to profit by the explicit support of Capital, we would then present the quintessence of Marxism as a ‘philosophy of man’ and his ‘creative labour’, i.e. as a speculative humanism. Speculative, as a matter of fact, and in the first place, because by holding to this interpretation, by detaching this page from the five which immediately follow it and which together with it form an indissociable whole, one arrives at the absurd result of making Marx endorse a characterisation of specifically human labour by reference to ‘the aim which already exists ideally in the imagination’, in other words, by consciousness alone. In actual fact Marx immediately goes on to write, ‘The elementary factors of the labour process are 1. the personal activity of man, i.e. work itself, 2. the subject of that work, and 3. its instruments’.118 And developing this third point in its turn, Marx writes in particular that ‘the use and fabrication of instruments of labour, although existing in the germ among certain species of animals, is specifically characteristic of the human labour-process, and Franklin

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therefore defines man as a tool-bearing animal’.119 In this way a materialist definition of the general concept of labour is stated which includes consciousness not as the specific essence but as a moment of a material whole. Detaching the page on consciousness from the analyses of the objective elements of the labour process, on the contrary, constitutes a gross idealist falsification of Marx’s conception.120 It is also, more profoundly, speculative because the whole point of this concept of human labour in general is that it can provide access at the very most to the analysis of the simplest and most abstract elements of the labour process : the personal activity of man, the subject on which he works, and its instruments — all this in general. Marx devotes the first six pages of Part III (which contains five chapters and 126 pages) to this analysis. After which, he writes : The labour-process, resolved as above into its simple elementary factors ... is the necessary condition for effecting exchange of matter between man and Nature; it is the everlasting Nature-imposed condition of human existence, and therefore is independent of every social phase of that existence, or rather, is common to every such phase. It was, therefore, not necessary to represent our labourer in connection with other labourers; man and his labour on one side, Nature and its materials on the other, sufficed.121

In other words, in these preliminary considerations this sufficed so long as it was still not a question of concretely understanding a determinate economic formation, hence also, determinate individuals. But in order to see this, it would be enough to try to give some account of capitalist exploitation by taking the abstract generality ‘creative labour’ ‘conscious of its purpose’ as a ‘starting-point’. In actual fact in order to do this — i.e. in order to arrive at one of his most decisive discoveries, the secret of capitalist profit — Marx needed to take up again or successively elaborate a whole series of concepts which went further and further away from the empty simplicity of ‘labour in general’ — concrete labour and abstract labour, value of commodities, value of labour-power, surplus-value, constant capital and variable capital, rate of surplus-value, etc. — and finally he had to connect with an aspect of the concrete — the working-day, the workers’ struggles for the reduction of the working-day — but a concrete which this time is understood scientifically, as the effect of a large number of determinations. It is therefore not the false concrete, in itself sterile, of human labour in general — which is not the real human essence — which ought to be taken for the theoretical basis but, rather, the particular forms of social

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relations typical of capitalism. One can then understand in what sense Marx can write at the beginning of Part III ‘we pre-suppose labour ...\ If one really wishes to make an effort to understand Marx, ‘we pre-suppose5 must clearly be taken not in the sense of theoretical basis but, on the contrary, simply in the sense of the start of the exposition. It is not by way of this that everything else can be understood but, on the contrary, it is what must be absolutely surpassed in order to understand anything at all. Moreover, Marx explicitly emphasises this in his ‘Notes on Wagner5 : ‘My analytic method, which does not start from Man but from the economically given period of society, has nothing in common with the German-professorial concept-linking method5.122 Thus it would be unfortunate to give such a text without qualifications as characteristic of what is most fundamental in Marxism. Not, of course, that it is false to say that man is in the first instance a being who works and who produces himself through labour. On the contrary, this is a great truth which by itself situates Marxism and suffices to distinguish it from many other general conceptions of man. But one has no more defined the specific essence of Marxism when one has said that, than one would have defined the specific essence of the dialectic by saying that it is a ‘theory of evolution5. It is necessary to go radically further than these abstract generalities which still convey nothing of the real content of Marxism and to which one can subscribe without at all being a Marxist. It must be said in relation to the problem we are considering that what defines Marxism is the inversion of the speculative relation between the human essence and social relations, with all the theoretical consequences which this leads to in the conception of real men. Failing which, ‘man5 and his ‘creative labour5 in general again become metaphysical entities or else mystical ideas. Perhaps it will be found useful to cross-check these conclusions by way of analysis of a further, seemingly limited, but no less significant example. Unable as one would expect to give a coherent picture of Capital as a whole, the speculative-humanist interpretation of Marxism tries to dispel the confusion by wielding a few paragraphs, sentences and phrases which it has unearthed here or there in which it ecstatically finds the undiscoverable ‘proof5 that Marx is in agreement with it. And this is how, we are told, in a note in Chapter XXIV of Volume One, Marx wrote that one ‘must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch5.123 This ‘human nature in general5 which one ‘must first deal with5 is likely to be presented to us, of course, as a weighty argument in favour of the philosophico-humanist interpretation of Marxism, and this regardless of the mass of texts which entirely contradict it — as if, in

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any case, whatever the meaning of this little phrase, which will be gone into, a line of a footnote could outweigh the glaring scientific consistency of the opposite meaning which leaves its stamp on 2,000 pages of Capital and more broadly still on all of Marx’s and Engels’ work from 1845-46. But let us consider this curious line and its context a little — for in actual fact, what is presented to us as an independent aphorism is merely the main proposition of a circumstantial sentence itself included in a paragraph devoted to criticism of Bentham. Bentham, says Marx, is a cgenius in the way of bourgeois stupidity5. The principle of utility was no discovery of Bentham. He simply reproduced in his dull way what Helvetius and other Frenchmen had said with spirit in the 18th Century. To know what is useful for a dog, one must study dog nature. This nature itself is not to be deduced from the principle of utility. Applying this to man, he that would criticise all human acts, movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch. Bentham makes short work of it. With the dryest naivité he takes the modern shopkeeper, especially the English shopkeeper, as the normal man. Whatever is useful to this queer normal man, and to his world, is absolutely useful. This yard-measure, then, he applies to past, present and future.

Thus Marx’s biting criticism consists in showing that Bentham is not even able correctly to apply the method of analysis of the French 18th century materialist philosophers. It does not seem impermissible to expect a Marxist philosopher to recognise in this criticism a resumé of the long analyses in The German Ideology which Marx and Engels devoted precisely to the theory of utility in the philosophy of the Enlightenment and in particular to Helvetius and Holbach, as well as to its reduction to moralising platitudes in Bentham.124 Reading these pages, which Marx clearly had in mind when he was writing this little note in Capital, leaves no room for doubt about his opinion on this question. In The German Ideology we read: cThe apparent stupidity of merging all the manifold relationships of people in the one relation of usefulness, this apparently metaphysical abstraction arises from the fact that, in modern bourgeois society, all relations are subordinated in practice to the one asbtract monetary-commercial relation’.125 In other words, the utilitarian theory amounts to mistaking the bourgeois for man in general : One sees at a glance that the category of ‘utilisation’ is first of all abstract from the actual relations of intercourse which I have with other people (but

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by no means from reflection and mere will) and then these relations are made out to be the reality of the category that has been abstracted from them themselves, a wholly metaphysical method of procedure. In exactly the same way and with the same justification, Hegel depicted all relations as relations of the objective spirit. Hence Holbach’s theory is the historically justified philosophical illusion about the bourgeoisie just then developing in France, whose thirst for exploitation could still be described as a thirst for the full development of individuals in conditions of intercoursefreed from the old feudal fetters.126

In Bentham, this philosophical system gets an economic content, at the same time as the idealised man of the French thinkers becomes much more clearly bourgeois; in that way the philosophy of the Enlightenment becomes ca mere apologia for the existing state of affairs’.127 cThis generality devoid of positive content, such as we find it in Helvetius and Holbach, is essentially different from the substantial comprehensive view which is first found in Bentham and Mill. The former corresponds to the struggling, still undeveloped bourgeoisie, the latter to the ruling, developed bourgeoisie’.128 Let us now go back to the note in Capital. Its meaning is clear: He that would criticise all human acts, movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility [in other words, he that wishes to argue like the French 18th philosophers by speculatively idealising real relations] must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch [in other words, in such a speculative attitude it is logically a question of presenting bourgeois social relations as corresponding to the requirements of the flowering of “human nature”]. Bentham makes short work of it. With the dryest naivité [for he does not even understand the crucial theoretical function of the abstract idea of human nature in the philosophical theory which he takes up again on his own account] he takes the modern shopkeeper ... as the normal man.129

Now it is clear that the fragment of the sentence which philosophicohumanist prejudice imputes to Marx as an unanswerable statement of his scientific method in spite of the context, is really the summarised characterisation of a typically speculative method, that of 18th Century bourgeois philosophy. The fact that in all peace of mind one can confuse in this way Marx’s method, which is the very soul of Marxism, with the entirely opposite one of which the whole of his work from 1845-46 constitutes a crushing refutation, appears to me to prove, with selfsufficient eloquence, the absolutely mistaken nature of the speculative humanist interpretation.130 Does this mean to say that in his mature works Marx never makes his own use of the concept of human nature ? Not at all. Leaving aside a

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few, exceedingly rare, cases in which the expression really has no other meaning than ‘civilised man5, ‘socialised man5 in general, with all that this implies,131 one often finds the noun nature or the adjective natural designating a very specific reality: the biological basis of all human existence considered independently of the effects which socialisation produces on it. This is how The German Ideology places ‘natural bases5 at the starting-point of all history, among which are ‘the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature5,132 and the ‘needs arising directly from his human nature5.133 In the same way the Grundnsse describes the ‘working subject5 of pre¬ bourgeois societies as a ‘natural being5, all the more so because ‘the first objective condition of his labour appeals] as nature, earth5 which is his ‘inorganic body5, just as he possesses an ‘organic body5.134 And it is in exactly the same spirit that Capital analyses, for example, the ‘natural wants5 which determine the value of labour-power5135 or the ‘physical maximum bounds of the working day5.136 But what it is absolutely essential to understand fully is that this human nature is precisely not the ‘human nature5 to which speculative humanism unceasingly refers, i.e. the ensemble of the manifestations of the life of man as a socially developed being-, as the 1844 Manuscripts said in a turn of phrase in which the dialectic is still highly abstract but already extremely profound; ‘man is not merely a natural being: he is a human natural being ... History is the true natural history of man (on which more later)5.137 The whole of scientific anthropology turns on this point which Marx was the first really to understand. And his entire work is the reasoned development of it. The German Ideology already shows very clearly the principle of the process which, through the production by man of his means of subsistence, at the same time generates the production of new needs, ‘and this production of new needs is the first historical act5.138 Furthermore, one must not only understand by ‘new needs5 the fact that desires ‘existing under all conditions5 (natural basis) see ‘their form and direction [change] under different social conditions5, but also that others arise from them ‘originating in a particular social system under particular conditions of [production] and intercourse5,139 which absolutely does not mean to say that they are ‘artificial5 (‘Artificial need is what the economist calls, firstly, the needs which arise out of the social existence of the individual; secondly, those which do not flow from his naked existence as a natural object. This clearly shows the inner, desperate poverty which forms the basis of bourgeois wealth and its science5140) but that, on the contrary, they ‘have become second nature5.141 More generally, everything which is specifically human, in

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the developed social sense of the term, is a product of history and not a natural given, even ‘the advantage of an individual as such over other individuals’142 or so-called ‘natural human affinity’.143 All the more reason ‘in order to modify the human organism, so that it may acquire skill and handiness in a given branch of industry’,144 is there need for an education which itself rests on all previous social development. Only the ideological illusion analysed earlier could make the bourgeois thinkers of the 18th Century take the individual ‘as the Natural individual appropriate to their notion of human nature, not arising historically, but posited by nature’.145 This is the illusion of Malthus who abstracts from these specific historic laws of the movement of population, which are indeed the history of the nature of humanity, the natural laws, but natural laws of humanity only at a specific historic development, with a development of the forces of production determined by humanity’s own process of history. Malthusian man, abstracted from historically determined man, exists only in his brain.146

One can therefore see to what extent the belief that Marx founded his analysis in Capital, to however small an extent, on the concept of ‘human nature’, in actual fact has nothing to do with what is most essential in Marxism. And one can understand once more why, in this respect, the underestimation of the revolution carried out by Marx and Engels in 1845-46 with regard to the 1844 Manuscripts, the central thesis of which concerning the fusion of naturalism and humanism in communism, humanism as consistent naturalism,147 is most deeply vitiated within itself at least by a speculative ambiguity, is always the sign of fundamental theoretical misinterpretations. And yet it is no more correct to conclude that man disappears in Capital. What undoubtedly strikes anyone most who re-reads it in the light of the vital questions discussed here is first of all the unceasing demonstration, at once rigorous and impassioned, of the fundamentally inhuman nature of capitalism — in the concrete, historical sense of this adjective defined in The German Ideology. All those who have some knowledge of Marxism remember the texts: capitalism ‘attacks the individual at the very root of his life’,148 manifests ‘the vampire thirst for the living blood of labour’,149 brings about ‘the most extravagent waste of individual development’.150 Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers ; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade

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Human personality and historical materialism him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into hated toil ; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power- they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness ; they transform his life¬ time into working-time and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital.151

Can one imagine a more striking picture of the ‘alienation in which they [social relations] place the labourer vis-à-vis the means incorporating his labour’152, in a phrase from Capital itself, i.e. of the tendency of capitalist relations of production to subordinate to themselves the whole life of the concrete individual ? Can one even avoid recognising in passing many phrases which one has already come across in the 1844 Manuscripts} And, more broadly, how could one not understand that what is referred to in this page from Capital is the actual reality which was alluded to in the 1844 Manuscripts when, for example, Marx noted there : According to the economic laws the estrangement of the worker in his object is expressed thus : the more the worker produces, the less he has to consume; the more values he creates, the more valueless, the more unworthy he becomes ; the better formed his product, the more deformed becomes the worker; the more civilised his object, the more barbarous becomes the worker; the more powerful labour becomes, the more powerless becomes the worker; the more ingenious labour becomes, the less ingenious becomes the worker and the more he becomes nature’s servant.153

But what in 1844 was merely an empirical investigation reduced without real analysis to the still speculative dialectic of alienation, in spite of the extraordinary brilliance of form and even the richness of most of the suggestions, in Capital became the really concrete result of a far-reaching scientific analysis which went as far as the discovery of the general law of capitalist accumulation. It is advisable to be extremely careful here: the mistake of a speculative humanist interpretation is not, for example, to maintain that certain aspects of the reality expressed by the scientific theory of impoverishment — which includes a new concept of alienation — were already recognised and formulated in 1844, for this is an indisputable fact. The mistake lies in not seeing that in 1844 this reality was not understood scientifically : its real basis remained unknown. Adequate concepts of it were not formulated. Therefore it could neither be

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explained as a whole nor forseen in its concrete forms. It could not serve as a starting-point either for a more complex process of knowledge or for definite organisation of revolutionary action. In this sense one is therefore justified in saying that in spite of the external resemblance, it is no longer a case of the same reality in Capital. And from this point of view, like the comparison between texts on the atom in the works of the philosophers of antiquity and in contemporary science, the comparison suggested by the external resemblance of two texts like these, which do not separate twenty-five years of theoretical effort by Marx by chance, runs every risk of being an epistemological play on words. However — and through this one touches on the mistake of an antihumanist interpretation in the positive sense — while it is not a case of the same theoretical reality, it is well and truly a case here of the same material reality in the last analysis. The concepts and theory of this reality have altered enormously; one can even say in certain respects they have altered beyond recognition. But it is certain that there are still elements in them which reflect real men, their conditions and their actual exploitation — not as a philosophical starting-point, of course, but as a scientific result. This itself is such an obvious thing that one cannot avoid asking oneself how an erudite interpretation of Capital in an antihumanist sense is actually possible. And is not the fact that it does exists the sign that, masked by its obviousness, the former analysis overlooks a vital confusion ? The fact that there are theoretical elements in Capital — for example, the concepts of capitalist and of wage-labourer — the objective correspondents of which can be found at the level of real men, concrete individuals, is obvious — and in this sense some forms and certain formulations of the theoretical antihumanist interpretation straight away appear as unacceptable. But is one entitled to assert conversely that real men, concrete individuals as such have their objective correspondents in the theory of Capital? One can see immediately that the question is quite different from the preceding one. It comes back to asking in what form and on what grounds real men intervene in Marxist economic science. This is the real problem. And to this problem the antihumanist interpretation proposes the following answer : strictly speaking real men considered in themselves as persons have no place in the theory of Capital; they only figure in it as supports of economic relations,154 This means that in meeting its own particular requirements economic science carves out concepts of individuality — the capitalist, the wage-labourer — from the totality of real relations, concepts which, being objective do of course reflect reality and therefore possess a correspondent among concrete individuals but which, on the

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theoretical level, are only articulated with other economic concepts unconnected with the form of individuality — for example, value, surplus-value, rate of profit — and not with other concepts of individuality in order to constitute with them a theory of the concrete individual. The capitalist in question in Capital does not at all coincide with the person of this or that capitalist, although the person of this or that capitalist empirically verifies what Capital tells us about the capitalist. This is why, while it is not false to say as one did above that Capital refers to men according to such an interpretation, it is vital to understand and to argue intransigently that these men are not the concrete individuals of immediate experience, the subjects of vulgar psychology, the ‘real men5 of philosophical humanism; they are exclusively economic categories, bearers of economic functions divested of all other human ‘depth5. Failing to understand this one would inevitably finish up outside of science, outside of Marxism, in ideological illusion. This view appears quite consistent with Marx’s numerous indications in Capital, beginning with the very well-known paragraph in the Preface to the First German Edition: To prevent possible misunderstandings, a word. I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense couleur de rose. But here individuals are dealt with only insofar as they are the personification of economic categories, embodiments of particular class relations and class-interests. My standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them.155

Marx takes up this idea again scores of times in Capital : [The capitalist] as capitalist ... is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital.156 Collective capital, i.e. the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e. the working-class.157 Except as personified capital, the capitalist has no historical value, and no right to historical existence ... And so far only is the necessity for his own transitory existence implied in the transitory necessity for the capitalist mode of production.158 If ... the proletarian is but a machine for the production of surplus-value ; on the other hand, the capitalist is ... only a machine for the conversion of this surplus-value.159 The capitalist is merely capital personified and functions in the process of production solely as the agent of capital.160 The principal agents of this mode of production, the capitalist and the wage-labourer, are as such

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merely embodiments, personifications of capital end wage-labour; definite social characteristics stamped upon individuals by the process of social production; the product of these definite social production relations.161

Things therefore seem perfectly clear: in Capital, men — the capitalist, proletarian, etc. — are not at all concrete persons but ‘abstract social persons5,162 simply social characteristics which the relations of production stamp on individuals. Moreover, this is strictly the theoretical result of the whole inversion demanded by the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach : if the human essence is not an abstraction inherent in isolated individuals but in its reality is identifiable with the ensemble of social relations, it is therefore not individuals as such who produce history. On the contrary, it is history which produces individuals. From this point of view, one cannot be too careful with regard to a turn of phrase which Marx and Engels often use from the 18th Brumaire to Ludwig Feuerbach according to which it is men who make history. Nothing is easier, one might say more tempting, than to make the same kind of misunderstanding about this formulation as the misunderstandings noted earlier concerning labour as the ‘startingpoint5 or concerning ‘human nature5: here philosophical humanism finds another dreamed of opportunity to take the place of historical materialism. What does this statement really mean for Marxism ? It is The Holy. Family which supplies the answer here. As they say from the Foreward onwards, in this work in 1844 Marx and Engels attack spiritualism or speculative idealism ‘which substitutes “selfconsciousness” or the “spirit55 for the real individual man5.163 With this they start the critical work which was to be successfully concluded two years later with The German Ideology. Attacking the speculative conception of history, they write : Once man is recognised as the essence, the basis of all human activity and situations, only ‘Criticism5 can invent new categories and transform man himself into a category and into the principle of a whole series of categories, as it is doing now. It is true that in so doing it takes the only road to salvation that has remained for frightened and persecuted theological inhumanity. History does nothing, it ‘possesses no immense wealth5, it ‘wages no battles5. It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights ; ‘history5 is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims ; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims.164

And further on : ‘Ideas can never lead beyond an old world order but only beyond the ideas of the old world order. Ideas cannot carry out anything at all. In order to carry out ideas men are needed who can

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exert practical force3.165 In these 1844 texts one can see straight away the imprint of a speculative terminology and conception which are themselves still partly speculative: ‘man3 is described as cthe essence of all human relations3. This is before the Theses on Feuerbach and the inversion of philosophical humanism which founds historical materialism is still not completed. But the meaning of the critique is very clear and it is a materialist meaning. The idea that man makes history is not at all opposed to the vital materialist thesis according to which men are themselves products of history — this thesis was still not really formulated in 1844 — but clearly to the idealist thesis according to which history itself unfolds without real men as an autonomous movement of consciousness and ideas, abstraction made of its ‘basis3, i.e. in this case, ‘civil society3166: thus reduced to an abstraction, ‘history does nothing3; it is real men who make history. The phrase ‘men make their own history3 always retained this materialist meaning in Marx and Engels while, on the other hand, it progressively lost its humanist ambiguity. The 3rd Thesis on Feuerbach objects to the (preMarxist) materialist doctrine ‘which holds that men are products of circumstances3 for forgetting that ‘it is men that change circumstances3,167 not at all, of course, in order to say with philosophical humanism that ‘ “Man33 has made history3,168 — on the contrary, this is what The German Ideology sharply takes exception to in Stirner — but in order to highlight the vitally important role of ‘revolutionary practice3.169 Moreover, The German Ideology comments unambiguously on this 3rd Thesis in saying that : History does not end by being resolved into ‘self-consciousness3 as ‘spirit of the spirit3, but that in it at each stage there is found a material result : a sum of productive forces, a historically created relation of individuals to nature and to one another, which is handed down to each generation from its predecessor ; a mass of productive forces, capital funds and conditions which, on the one hand, is indeed modified by the new generation, but also on the other prescribes for it its conditions of life and gives it a definite development, a special character. It shows that circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances.170

Forty years later Engels expresses himself no differently: ‘We make our history ourselves, but, in the first place, under very definite assumptions and conditions3, so that ‘history has proceeded hitherto in the manner of a natural process3.171 Thus the men whom Marx and Engels say make history are themselves through and through products of history and if they display

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initiative by revolutionising social relations this is not by virtue of one does know what creative essence or transcendental freedom inherent in man, but because they are compelled to do it precisely by the contradictions in these social relations. It is therefore a radical mistake to use the phrase: men make their own history against the thesis, repeated a hundred times in Capital, according to which the persons of which political economy speaks are the personification of economic categories, the support of social relations. This idealist type of mistake finds expression again in another related idea particularly dear to all speculative humanist interpretation of Marxism : the idea that men are not reducible to social relations. That individuals in themselves are something else than social relations is, of course, an obvious fact : and one has seen that the 6th Thesis precisely identifies the ensemble of social relations not with the individual, which would be absurd, but with the human essence. In this sense, one would make a mistake fraught with consequences if, in the statements from Capital recalled above, one disregarded the vital little word: here, i.e. from the standpoint of political economy. ‘Here individuals are dealt with only insofar as they are the personification of economic categories,m ‘the worker is here nothing more than personified labourtime’,173 etc. The antihumanist interpretation does not pay enough attention to this which, as we will see, leads it to another basic mistake. But this can not in the least justify the idea which philosophical humanism always seeks to convey in its formula: individuals are not reducible to social relations — and which is even its raison d’etre-, i.e. the idea that as far as what is most essential, most inward and most elevated in him, man is not the product of history but transcendent, that within his inmost being he is not determined, but only influenced, by the social relations in respect of which he possesses an essential freedom. As early as The German Ideology Marx and Engels proved, in the strong sense of the word, that what ‘up till now has been called personal freedom’ for real men, is nothing else than the ‘right to the undisturbed enjoyment within certain conditions, of fortuity and chance’174; that their emancipation from these conditions which determine them does not depend on their personal freedom ‘just as the weight of their bodies does not depend on their idealistic will or on their arbitrary decision’175 ; and that their actual liberation from them depends entirely on the revolutionary abolition of private property and the construction of ‘communist society, the only society in which the original and free development of individuals ceases to be a mere phrase’.176 Likewise, in the Grundnsse, comparing individuals’ freedom in pre¬ capitalist and capitalist social forms, Marx writes that in the latter

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Human personality and historical materialism since the single individual cannot strip away his personal definition, but may very well overcome and master external relations, his freedom seems to be greater in case 2. A closer examination of these external relations, these conditions, shows, however, that it is impossible for the individuals of a class etc. to overcome them en masse without destroying them. A particular individual may by chance get on top of these relations, but the mass of those under their rule cannot, since their mere existence expresses subordination, the necessary subordination of the mass of individuals.177

And in its turn Capital repeats that in this domain, ‘freedom ... can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature’.178 Furthermore, it must be clearly understood that even in such a society individuals have not acquired anything like a transcendent freedom with regard to objective social laws: cNo natural laws can be done away with. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws assert themselves5.179 Communism will transform objective social laws from external, coercive laws into collectively controlled laws: this is precisely what ‘the leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom5180 will consist of for humanity. Thus opposing to the central Marxist thesis of the production of individuals in and by social relations the idea, which in a strict sense is correct, that individuals are not reducible to social relations and that it is men who make history, clearly indicates that one is playing on the sense of these phrases which the whole development of Marx’s and Engels’ work surely defined unequivocally, and that this game represents a refusal to acceDt the consistent totality of historical materialism in its strictest rigour. By once again distancing itself from mature Marxism in the direction of the works of the Young Marx and Feuerbach, one relapses into idealism. Once can see here in striking fashion the theoretical havoc produced by the apparently harmless tendency to replace the plural men, a plural which in actual fact registers the whole theoretical revolution carried out by Marx in the Theses in 1845, by the philosophical singular and abstract man. All the idealist illusions which Marx and Engels had so painstakingly dispelled, from the question of labour to that of freedom, comes rushing back through the breach of this uncriticised category. Taken in this ambiguous way the idea that men are not reducible to social relations is all the more grossly untrue because the tragic reality in capitalist society is that, given their real lifeprocess, the majority of individuals well and truly are reduced to something infinitely poor compared with the remarkable wealth of the

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ensemble of social relations. The whole problem is precisely to create the historical conditions in which every individual may succeed without external restraint in assimilating the wealth of the objective social heritage, and this class society is quite unable to do. In this sense the philosophical exaltation of man who is not reducible to social relations rests albeit unconsciously on an idealisation of bourgeois relations. It is therefore certainly not in this way that one might manage to defeat the antihumanist interpretation of Capital; this way of challenging the idea according to which men are merely the supports of social relations in Marxist economic theory is the best proof a contrario of its fundamental correctness. In Capital, the capitalist and the proletarian are not concrete persons but social characteristics stamped on individuals by the process of production ; these are not psychological but economic categories — and through this one gets an indication of the extraordinary ambiguities which the notion of social psychology inevitably contains: the next chapter will come back to this at length. In emphasising these points the antihumanist interpretation is unquestionably right. It is no longer right when it concludes from this that the problem of individuality and place for an anthropology disappear. One has only to read Capital without making arbitrary breaks to perceive in it continually analyses that constitute what, in the economic works of 1857-59 already clearly appeared as a scientific theory of general historical forms of human individuality. Is it true, in this respect, that the concepts of capitalist or wage-labourer are only articulated on the theoretical level with concepts which have nothing to do with the form of individuality (value, surplus-value, rate of profit, etc.) and not with other concepts of individuality which together with them might constitute the bases of a theory of the concrete individual ? No, this is not true. In Capital, just as in the Grundrisse and the Contribution, Marx systematically elaborates concepts like those of need, consumption, labour and freedom, which aie concepts of economic relations and individuality at one and ihe same time. While it should be emphasised that it is not at all a matter here of a psychology of personality encased goodness knows how in an economic theory developing on a totally different level, nevertheless Capital clearly does provide, in the sense outlined, an ensemble of scientifically consistent materials in which, in a way which remains to be clarified, a psychology of personality may ultimately find a theoretical foundation. But there is more, a great deal more. For while it is perfectly true that in economic theory and from its standpoint men are only considered in principle as the supports of social relations, as abstract social persons, the individual as a whole none the less unceasingly appears on the

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margin of the analysis and many times in fact is partially integrated in it. This results from the really crucial fact that has already been pointed out, and the misrecognition of which in substance is the main mistake of the antihumanist interpretation, that social relations are relations between men-, not, of course, in the sense of pre-existing social individuals who, on the contrary, are entirely the result of social relations, but in the sense that the very substance of these relations is the productive activity of men. Being a social activity, the productive activity of men is wholly governed by the objective dialectic of social relations — and in this sense, which is that of economic theory taken in itself, men only appear as supports of economic categories ; but, on the other hand, being an activity of men, it also at once constitutes a fundamental aspect of their individual life-process. These are two sides of the same reality. Consequently it is impossible to trace the boundary of economic science without at the same time delineating that of the theory of the concrete individual, and in many cases, in fact, to analyse an economic relation thoroughly without outlining the analysis of a social individual life-process through which it is manifested. Without this in the least constituting the abandonment of mature Marxism’s demands for rigour (on the contrary, it is by virtue of these demands) economic science is led to produce not only the theory of the general forms of individuality but, as far as concerns what is within the limits of its own boundary, to outline the theory of the concrete individual ; not only, now, the capitalist as an economic category but the whole concept of the individual person. Is it necessary to emphasise that a new concept is involved here, entirely independent from vulgar moral, psychological or philosophical ideologies, and directly articulated with economic science, historical materialism ? It is because it fails to identify this new concept, the origin of which was surely already contained in germ in the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach, that the antihumanist interpretation thinks it can discover relapses into philosophical anthropology throughout Capital : what it rejects as dross are actually the extraordinarily precious nuggets of a new science, the science of the individual — this temporary and still imprecise term will have to be reconsidered — which Marx did not develop but the site of which he identified. It is in The German Ideology that this site appears distinctly for the first time, in particular in this page which is of the highest interest : Individuals have always built on themselves, but naturally on themselves within their given historical conditions and relationships, not on the ‘pure’ individual in the sense of the ideologists. But in the course of historical evolution, and precisely through the inevitable fact that within the division of labour social relationships take on an independent existence, there

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appears a division within the life of each individual, in so far as it is personal and in so far as it is determined by some branch of labour and the conditions pertaining to it. (We do not mean it to be understood from this that, for example, the rentier, the capitalist, etc., cease to be persons; but their personality is conditioned and determined by quite different class relationships, and the division appears only in their opposition to another class and, for themselves, only when they go bankrupt.) In the estate (and even more in the tribe) this is as yet concealed : for instance, a nobleman always remains a nobleman, a commoner always a commoner, apart from his other relationships, a quality inseparable from his individuality.This division between the personal and the class individual, the accidental nature of the conditions of life for the individual, appears only with the emergence of the class, which is itself a product of the bourgeoisie. This accidental character is only engendered and developed by competition and the struggle of individuals among themselves.181

In this analysis, which catches a glimpse of a whole new scientific world to be explored, one can clearly see how the concept of personal life, the personal individual, is strictly articulated with the historicoeconomic analysis in which it fmds its starting-point, and how nevertheless it belongs not to the science of economic relations alone but to a possible science of the individual considered in himself. And precisely for this reason one can fully understand that, however great the interest which he clearly showed in this second order of considerations in 1845-46, Marx was still led to devote himself to the first, not only because of the determinant political importance of economic science but furthermore because, from the theoretical standpoint itself, it is the key to every investigation into problems of the individual. From the standpoint we are adopting here, however, the main point is that while devoting himself to the critique and scientific elaboration of political economy, Marx by no means overlooked and still less rejected this other possible direction of research. In actual fact, he never misses the opportunity to sketch in passing the connections which would enable one to take it up as I showed earlier. Thus, in the Grundrisse, which is the most important text for a correct and precise understanding of the historical connection between Capital and The German Ideology, one finds suggestions over and over again concerning the imbrication of the social individual and the personal individual; these must be carefully distinguished from the standpoint of political economy of course, but at the same time they cannot be separated in the overall movement of the analysis. Tackling the problems of the turnover of capital, for example, Marx was led to note that, the time a capitalist loses during exchange is as such not a deduction from

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In one primary respect, such an analysis makes quite evident the rigorous distinction between the personal and the social ’ndividual, the concrete and the abstract person on which the whole of economic science as Marx develops it rests. From this point of view, he goes on, ‘Circulation time — to the extent that it takes up the time of the capitalist as such — concerns us here exactly as much as the time he spends with his mistress ... The capitalist absolutely does not concern us here except as capital’.183 But this here is, at the same time, the reverse of an elsewhere, which naturally does not give rise here to scientific development in itself, but which is briefly pointed out as it were on the margins of the analysis : ‘the capitalist’s necessary labour time is free time, not time required for direct subsistence. Since all free time is time for free development, the capitalist usurps the free time created by the workers for society, i.e. civilisation’.184 This observation makes it possible to speculate on what a scientific analysis of time would be in the individual life-process. And it proves to what extent Marx was aware that, as he wrote later, ‘the capitalist is not merely capital’,185 so that if economic theory in the strict sense ought to regard him only as the support of economic relations, theory as a whole, as historical materialism founds it, is on the contrary, perfectly able to treat him as a personal individual. [The] only subjects [of the direct production process] are the individuals, but individuals in mutual relationships, which they equally reproduce and produce anew. The constant process of their own movement, in which they renew themselves even as they renew the world of wealth they create.186 Not only have considerations of this kind not disappeared in Capital but, while being even more strictly subordinated there to what the economic analysis permits, they are deepened. This is the case, for example, in Parts II and III of Volume One, the core of which is constituted by the analysis of labour-power and surplus-value, or in Chapter XXIV, Section 3, which analyses the relations between the

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capitalist’s accumulating function and his personal consumption: for anyone who is not sworn beforehand to antihumanist blindness, there is there an exceptionally interesting collection of remarks concerning the problems of the individual ; it is misunderstanding these remarks which makes it possible to argue that a scientific theory of personality has no chance of being constituted. There is no point in quoting here by way of a down payment : to analyse these texts would be to begin straight away the very task of determining this theory, i.e. to perform here the work of the following chapters, whereas we are as yet still concerned to solidly establish its foundations. I shall restrict myself to pointing out, for example, how in three lines of a footnote Marx remarkably condenses entire pages of The German Ideology and the Grundnsse by transposing them into a fully scientific formulation and thereby provides a really central guideline to the theory of the individual: cthe capitalist epoch is therefore characterised by this, that labour-power takes in the eyes of the labourer himself the form of a commodity which is his property; his labour consequently becomes wage-labour’.187 It is this which also enables us to understand the undeniable presence in Capital of a thoroughly non-speculative concept and theory of human alienation.188 It is crystal clear, in fact, that if men only figured in Capital in the guise of economic categories then there could be no question of their alienation. On the other hand, in so far as they are also considered as concrete persons and personal individuals, however marginally, all economic processes can equally be read as individual life-processes, and the historical development of society, including the phenomenon of alienation as a basic internal contradiction, as development of social man, as social anthropogenesis. Numerous passages in Capital leave no room for doubt that this is indeed the case. In particular, Marx often goes back to the analysis of the historical inversion which the development of exchange-value and then commodity production, reaching its highest point in capitalism, produced in the relations between needs and labour and between the concrete and the abstract individual. It is, however, clear that in any given economic formation of society, where not the exchange-value but the use-value of the product predominates, surplus-labour will be limited by a given set of wants which may be greater or less and that here no boundless thirst for surplus-labour arises from the nature of the production itself. Hence in antiquity over¬ work becomes horrible only when the object is to obtain exchange-value in its specific independent money-form; in the production of gold and silver. Compulsory working to death is here the recognised form of over-work.189

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But capitalism drives this inversion, through which individuals are deprived of the most essential content of their life, to extremes. In capitalism, it is self-evident that the labourer is nothing else, his whole life through, than labour-power, that therefore all his disposable time is by nature and law labour-time, to be devoted to the self-expansion of capital. Time for education, for intellectual development, for the fulfilling of social functions and for social intercourse, for the free-play of his bodily and mental activity, even the rest-time of Sunday (and that in a country of Sabbatarians !) — moonshine ! But in its blind unrestrainable passion, its were-wolf hunger for surplus-labour, capital oversteps not only the moral, but even the merely physical maximum bounds of the working-day. It usurps the time for growth, development, and healthy maintenance of the body. It steals the time required for the consumption of fresh-air and sunlight. It higgles over a meal-time, incorporating it where possible with the process of production itself, so that food is given to the labourer as a mere means of production, as coal is supplied to the boiler, grease and oil to the machinery. It reduces the sound sleep needed for the restoration, reparation, refreshment of the bodily powers to just so many hours of torpor as the revival of an organism, absolutely exhausted, renders essential.190

In this extraordinary description, which is far from being the only one of its kind in Capital, one can see how little Marx hesitates to pursue his analysis beyond the frontier of strict economic categories, advancing onto the terrain of related processes of individual life. And he concludes : It is not the normal maintenance of the labour-power which is to determine the limits of the working-day; it is the greatest possible daily expenditure of labour-power, no matter how diseased, compulsory and painful it may be, which is to determine the limits of the labourer’s period of repose.191

This inversion is a process characteristic of the individual’s alienation in such social relations. One meets it again at every important moment in the analysis. Thus the division of labour under manufacture, converts the labourer into a crippled monstrosity, by forcing his detail dexterity at the expense of a world of productive capabilities and instincts ; just as in the States of Plata they butcher a whole beast for the sake of his hide or his tallow. Not only is the detail work distributed to the different individuals, but the individual himself is made the automatic motor of a fractional operation, and the absurd fable of Menenius Agrippa, which makes man a mere fragment of his own body, becomes realised.192

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Moreover, the capitalist too is subject to processes of alienation, of specific forms. It must never be forgotten that the production of this surplus-value ... is the immediate purpose and compelling motive of capitalist production. It will never do, therefore, to represent capitalist production as something which it is not, namely as production whose immediate purpose is enjoyment or the manufacture of the means of enjoyment for the capitalist.193

In this respect, one can sum up the alienating nature of capitalism by saying that ‘the aim of capital is not to minister to certain wants, but to produce profit’.194 In as much as this inversion is not clearly understood one can discover here, moreover, the origin of the illusion that economic theory in general is sworn by a kind of abstract epistemological necessity to regard men only as a support of its own relations: being wholly subordinated to the economic necessity in which he only intervenes as an abstract social person, the concrete individual falls outside the field of this science. But in actual fact a pre-eminently historical characteristic of the political economy of capitalism is involved here; to be precise, what is involved is the expression in epistemology of the concrete historical phenomenon of individuals’ alienation in capitalist relations. This is why Marx has a high opinion of Ricardo. It is that which is held against him, it is his unconcern about ‘human beings’ and his having an eye solely for the development of the productive forces, whatever the cost in human beings and capital-values — it is precisely that which is the important thing about him.195

The ‘humanism’ of vulgar bourgeois economy, on the contrary, is merely an insipid sweetening of the reality of capitalism. Only, at the same time as one rigorously differentiates abstract relations and concrete individuals on the terrain of the economy of capitalism, it is essential to bear in mind that in real historical development this distinction is neither eternal nor absolute, that behind their alienated form the relations between the abstract person and the concrete person none the less continue to exist and that therefore if, from the economic point of view itself, it did not try to follow the objective movement which abolishes this alienated form and makes the development of individuals an end in itself, political economy itself would miss its own object, i.e. the bringing to light of the law of development of a given social organism and its replacement by another higher one.'96 This is what Marx adds immediately after his defence of Ricardo : ‘Development of the productive forces of social labour is the historical

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task and justification of capital. This is just the way in which it unconsciously creates the material requirements of a higher mode of production5.197 The characteristic of Marxist economic science is that it raises this process which is achieved unconsciously to the level of true consciousness. But this would be impossible in principle if, as the antihumanist interpretation wishes, Marx did not allow himself to interpret the process of social anthropogenesis which comes about at the same time as the development of capitalist relations, i.e. if he himself remained prisoner to the limits and dissociations which they involve. There is not the slightest sign of a relapse into speculative anthropology in Marx when over and over again he shows the necessity with which modern industry, indeed, compels society, under penalty of death, to replace the detail-worker of today ... by the fully developed individual, fit for a variety of labours, ready to face any change of production, and to whom the different social functions he performs, are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own natural and acquired powers.198

One may even think of asserting, that as it happens it is the antihumanist interpretation which does not succeed in breaking away from the speculative conception of the concrete individual — except possibly in the field pioneered by Freud — and which because of this does not succeed either in recognising in Capital, the elements of a non-speculative theory of the individual without which, however, the whole coherence of Marx’s work remains unintelligible — a coherence which one passage, among others, already quoted from Theories of Surplus Value sums up and which says everything. Although at first the development of the capacities of the human species takes place at the cost of the majority of human individuals and even classes, in the end it breaks through this contradiction and coincides with the development of the individual ; the higher development of individuality is thus only achieved by a historical process during which individuals are sacrificed.199

(3) Marxism as scientific anthropology and scientific humanism Let us now go back to the crucial problems that we were trying to elucidate. We asked whether and in what sense one can say that Marx in his mature works eliminated the concept of man, renounced the theory of alienation and abandoned the humanist perspective. The obvious fact — which is not simply an illusion — is that Marx never

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stopped explicitly referring to man, his alienation and his whole development. Marxism is therefore a humanism as the speculative interpretation maintains. But, satisfied with this obvious answer and misrecognising the complexity of Marx’s scientific epistemology, such an interpretation forgets to raise the question of the real status of the concepts which are operative beneath the words. It is not enough for the word man or the word alienation to be used in Capital as well as in the 1844 Manuscripts for there to be automatically an identical concept, a concept of the same status. And what defines the status of a concept is the nature of the essence which it designates. In the 1844 Manuscripts the concept of man refers to the idea of an abstract human essence, the subject of history, of which social relations like economic categories are the phenomena, the external manifestation. When it is said that ‘the individual is the social being’, this means that, even though ‘we must avoid postulating “society” again as an abstraction vis-à-vis the individual’, that the social being is no different from the individual and that the individual is therefore ‘the totality’.200 On this crucial point the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach breaks with the Manuscripts and, more broadly, with all previous conceptions. The social being is conceived as quite different from the individual. It is ‘this sum of productive forces, capital funds and social forms of intercourse, which every individual and generation finds in existence as something given’.201 Such is the actual basis of what the philosophers represented to themselves as ‘substance’ or ‘essence’ of man: the old concept of man must therefore be radically inverted. This does not mean at all that every concept of man must now be rejected as illusory but rather that the abstract concept of man must not be confused with the concept of abstract man: every scientific concept is abstract as a concept but according to Marxist requirements it is only scientific if it grasps the concrete essence of its object. Thus when one reads in The German Ideology, for example, that ‘the existence of men is their actual lifeprocess’,202 this statement cannot be taken without misinterpretation for the equivalent of the 1844 statement ‘the individual is the social being’. In a way it has the opposite meaning : human being is not what it first seems to be when one considers it in an immediate, pseudo-concrete way in the form of the isolated individual; on the contrary, it is what must be laboriously sought in the investigation of the objective social conditions in which this individuality is produced. It is therefore a case not of an abandonment but of a scientific transfiguration of the concept of man; the concept of human essence is to have a meaning for mature Marxism, quite a new meaning, a materialist and dialectical meaning : the essence is not abstract but concrete, not ideal but material, not

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natural but historical, inherent not in the isolated individual but in the ensemble of social relations. Or further, to transpose this conclusion into the terms of our specific problem, human being cannot be encountered directly on the terrain of a psychology in the usual sense of the term but on the terrain of historical materialism. The antihumanist interpretation isolates and distorts this conclusion. For it Marxism as theory is no longer a humanism at all : in fact it is the exact opposite of a humanism since it is above all else the assertion that existing man — not, it goes without saying, as a biological being but as a historico-social individuality — is not a real, autonomous substance and has no really independent history (alienation, return-to-himself) either : man is not the subject of history ; what theory can know of him in each epoch is only the result of the concrete mode of production in that epoch; the support of social relations, the personification of economic categories and the various aspects which this involves have no reason to coincide in the unity of a concrete person. Despite appearances ‘man’ is therefore as little a real concept as ‘souT, for example — his unfolding in history is as little a real process as the avatars of the soul — and his full development has as little real future as the soul has of being saved. And, in this sense, it is as unreasonable to believe in a ‘science of man’ as in a ‘science of the soul\ Historical materialism should not therefore be regarded as the general scientific theory of man, an integral part of Marxist philosophy, but solely as the foundation of the science of history. In short, for the same reason and in essence, humanism and psychology would both be a return to speculation. All this springs from a correct idea, and certainly these analyses do not entirely miss the truth. But what the antihumanist interpretation does not see, what it misses from the moment it distorts the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach, is that although it is no longer in any degree an abstraction inherent in the isolated individual, the human essence, coinciding with the ensemble of social relations, is none the less an essence, which precedes the existence of each particular individual, and of which the existence of individuals is in actual fact the reproduction in another form, a reproduction which is necessarily contradictory, fragmented and incomplete in class society but which the very law of modern production will make whole in as much as the form of individuality requires it, and relative to the stage of development reached in each epoch by classless society. This is why the Marxist science of social relations, which started with a rupture with the speculative conception of man, a rupture which above all must not be attenuated, by no means prohibits a return, on the basis of its results, to

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the scientific knowledge of human individuals and their concrete forms of life. In fact, it is much too little to say that it does not prohibit it: it demands it. It demands it for the crucial reason which we have seen, that social relations fundamentally are no different from relations between men. This is the key point. Of course this does not mean that social relations are ‘human relations’ in the usual ideological sense of the expression, i.e. relations between men thought of as preceding in their essence these very relations: this is out of the question from 1845—46 onwards. No, in the last analysis men are produced by social relations — which does not at all make freedom ‘disappear’, moreover, but on the contrary, makes evident what it actually consists of and on what it is based : historical necessity. But if men can be produced by these relations it is because, far from being unconnected with them, these relations constitute their real life-process, and they can only constitute their real life-process in so far as they are relations between them, men. Among a hundred other texts, this is said in the clearest possible way in the most famous and most studied general account which Marx gave of historical materialism, in the Preface to the Contribution, and which it must be remembered begins like this: ‘In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production’.203 An unambiguous statement : the relations of production, the basis of all social relations, existing objectively and independently of mens’ will, are not what speculative philosophy calls ‘human relations’, ‘intersubjective relations’, a reflection of their ‘consciousness’ and ‘freedom’ — yet these objective and necessary social relations are nothing else than the relations ‘connecting’204 men in the social production of their existence. To be sure, commodity fetishism, the reification of social relations, their ‘independence in relation to the agents of production’,205 and all the objective^ illusions characteristic of capitalist society, makes these relations between men appear in ‘the fantastic form of a relation between things’.206 But Marxist analysis precisely demonstrates that it is a case of an illusion, the mechanism of which it takes to pieces. It proves that all this ‘mysticism’ peculiar to a society in which commodity production universally predominates vanishes if we consider other forms of production, which makes it very clear that, whatever the appearances, social relations are always ‘social relations between individuals'.™ In other words, Marxism has by no means replaced the investigation of men by the investigation of social relations; on the

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contrary, it showed the fundamental unity of these two investigations. But it has also demonstrated that the investigation of social relations in their objective material form is necessarily primary because they are the real foundation of all social human life. The mistake of the 1844 Manuscripts was not to assert the unity, the circularity between human essence and social relations — a truth the continued existence of which in mature Marxism one loses sight of if one transforms the theoretical revolution of 1845—46 into a radical break. After all, the 1844 formulation, ‘The individual is the social being5 occurs again word for word in the first draft of the Contribution forty years later. What was transformed in between times — a huge transformation — was that the real relation expressed by this unchanged wording and which in 1844 remained in a state of pre-scientific ambivalence, was completely inverted in the materialist sense ; while the human essence was regarded in 1844 as the basis and the social relations as its manifestations, while consequently it still depended on a conception of essence which was still at least partly metaphysical, in 1858 on the contrary, it had become clear that everything depends on the objective conditions ‘which result neither from the will of the individual nor from his immediate nature, but from historical conditions and relations which already make the individual a social being determined by society5.208 Here the concept of man — the ‘human essence5 — has become a scientific, dialectical concept. The circularity between man and social relations continues to exist, but inverted — therefore modified in all its moments and aspects but not abolished. By failing to recognise this major fact one misses the significance of the whole of mature Marxism. For the return to real history and to concrete individuals by way of the investigation of social relations is nothing else than the aim of whole scientific enterprise in the Marxist sense, i.e. the concrete analysis of the concrete situation with a view to its revolutionary transformation. This is why above all one ought not to separate arbitrarily in Capital the investigation of abstract determinations from that of their invariable outcome, i.e. the concrete human reality, pursued by Marx as far as the monograph209 stage, as in Part III of Volume One on the production of surplus-value in which, in one example among many others, the analysis goes as far as the tragic history of Mary Anne Walkley, a twenty year old milliner, killed in June 1863 ‘from too long hours of work5210 — as in Part VII of the same volume on the accumulation of capital, in which one fmds the general law of this accumulation, which one cannot understand if one forgets that it is the law of ‘the influence of the growth of capital on the lot of the labouring class5211 and the motion of which, for example, Marx follows as far as the statistical table of

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workers’ overcrowding in twelve bedrooms at Langcroft in which seventy-four people sleep.212 This is also why it ought not to be forgotten that if it had been written as Marx conceived it and to the final page, Capital would have achieved its theoretical point of arrival in the class struggle. This is what Engels expressly recalls in his Preface to Volume Three: ‘the class struggle, an inevitable consequence of their existence, is the actual consequence of the capitalist period’.213 And in his very important letter to Engels of April 30 1868, in which he sets out for him the overall plan of his work as far as the question of the rate of profit is concerned, Marx himself finishes his outline like this: ‘We have, in conclusion, the class struggle, into which the movement and the smash-up of the whole business resolves itself’.214 Furthermore, more generally, this is why neither Capital as a whole — nor the other texts in economic theory — should be arbitrarily separated from Marx’s historical works and political writings, since these concrete applications of theory to living history are by no means external and minor illustrations of historical materialism but its very truth in action. This is why, in short, under penalty of transforming into a cliché the last Thesis on Feuerbach, which contains the whole spirit of Marxism (‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways -, the point, however, is to change it’,215) Marx’s and Engels’ writings as a whole should not be arbitrarily separated from their political practice. The 1844 Manuscripts already said quite correctly: ‘In order to abolish the idea of private property, the idea of communism is quite sufficient. It takes actual communist action to abolish actual private property’.216 And actual communist action implies the scientific understanding of concrete reality : here we meet up with again the observations presented from the start of the previous chapter about the fact that political struggles themselves present fundamental problems for the psychology of personality, for the theory of the individual. The return of theory to the problem of human individuals, therefore, is part of what is most central in Marxism. This return to concrete individuals is only effective theoretically and practically at the price of the long patience reqmred by the prerequisite analysis of the ensemble of abstract social determinations — in the absence of which the exaltation of the concrete, of man and of practice does not make it possible for us to escape from ideological illusions but assuredly plunges us into them. One can therefore see in what sense historical materialism, precisely because it is the basis of the science of social relations, the concrete essence of man, is in fact at the same time much more than that : it is the basis of every human science — beginning with political economy, of course, but without forgetting the psychology of personality either —

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the general theory of the scientific conception of man, which completes materialism as the general theory of the scientific conception of nature and which is therefore an integral part of Marxist philosophy. Historical materialism being the ‘science of real men and their historical development’, in Engels’217 highly accurate expression, its object coincides with what one may call social anthropogenesis, the development of ‘the human being itself in its social relations’218; it is therefore also scientific anthropology and, more precisely, the sociohistorical part of scientific anthropology which is articulated up with its biological part. It is profoundly incorrect that historical materialism is constituted by dispensing with the theoretical services of the concept of man; quite on the contrary, it involves the production of a new, nonspeculative concept of man which at once refers to a new essence : social relations. This is why the scientific use of the concept of man normally requires the plural : as opposed to actual men in their social relations, Man is always an idealist mystification which thinks the human essence is to be found directly in the abstract, isolated individual. However, the concept of man may be used in the singular in two precise senses : on the one hand, when it designates the ensemble of social (and with greater reason, natural) characteristics which remain more or less common to all men through all historical epochs as a simple abstract generality — a frequent use in Marx — which is permissible but dangerous since the least confusion between this abstract generality and a concrete essence involves backsliding into speculation; on the other hand, when it designates the individual as such — the term individual then being highly preferable to avoid any confusion with the speculative singular. This new, scientific concept of man does Marxist theory the most obvious services. In the first place, it is a basic concept of historical materialism itself and as such, since neither the productive forces (men being the principal productive force) nor the social relations (which are always relations between men in the last analysis) can be thought without it. It is also just as necessary in thinking the class struggle and the socialist revolution, since the effect of social contradictions on the men who are produced in their midst is an essential link in the historical movement as a whole ; and this is precisely why the antihumanist interpretation of Marxism is unable clearly to account for the internal necessity of the class struggle and of revolution. But the new concept of man can also do other invaluable theoretical services for Marxism and in particular this one: it can finally make possible the construction of a scientific theory of individuality and of the individual. The failure to recognise this last point is at the root of unceasing attempts to constitute a theory of the individual articulated

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with Marxism — a task the necessity of which cannot be denied by anyone, not even by an adherent of theoretical antihumanism — but by setting out from bases quite different from those of Marx, which obviously makes their reciprocal articulation impossible. In this respect, the clear recognition of the scientific anthropology which historical materialism constitutes is the key to any correct solution of the problem. One can also see in what sense Marxism may be described as scientific humanism : as the theory of the contradictions and conditions of the historical flowering of individuals and of the necessary advent of what Marx calls the fully developed individual in communist society. Certainly, the two terms humanism and scientific are often considered to be incompatible. It is a fact worthy of note that this incompatibility is indeed the common postulate of the speculative humanist interpretation and the theoretical antihumanist interpretation, since in their diametrical opposition they appear as two ways of making sense of an exclusion between humanist content and scientific rigour which is accepted as unquestionable. For the former the humanism of Marxism could not accommodate itself within the yoke of pure science, since this does not reach what is fundamental in man; for the latter, the scientificity of Marxism could not accept the relapse into humanism which could only emerge from ideology. But the essential fact which escapes in both cases is that by founding historical materialism and at the same time the dialectic, Marx enables science to reach the human essence because, beyond the ideological forms of this essence, he discovers its actual being ; the old incompatibility between an empiricist conception of science and an idealist conception of essence therefore falls. Moreover, since the change to the conception of real essence signifies the change to a historical conception of this essence, Marxist anthropology is right away a science of the development of men, individuals being engaged in the processes of reproduction of social relations. In this sense, although it is naturally no longer a question of an autonomous realisation of the human essence conceived as an independent substance, all history can most legitimately also be regarded as the history of the progressive flowering of human individuals. This is what Marx said in 1846 in his long letter to Annenkov: cthe social history of men is never anything but the history of their individual development, whether they are conscious of it or not’.219 Marx never varied on this point either; all his later work is a development of it, especially Capital, in which the whole trajectory of evolution of the social individual, from the primitive societies characterised by ‘the immature development of man individually’220 up to communism in which ‘the fully developed individual’221 will flower,

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is sketched on the way. It is true that in spite of its profound theoretical legitimacy one might hesitate to claim the name of scientific humanism for Marxism owing to the particularly numerous and tenacious ideological ambiguities with which the term humanism remains linked in practice and to the speculative, indeed revisionist, orientation often taken by interpretations of Marxism which appeal to it. It is quite true that the label humanism has covered and still covers the most varied wares, from attachment to the classical humanities to Feuerbach’s speculative anthropology, from the naive faith in the value of immediate knowledge of man by man to the abstract idealisation of bourgeois relations, from the proclamation that man is the supreme being for man to the attack on ‘totalitarian’ socialism in the name of Christian ‘personalism’. Father Teilhard’s famous ‘everything which evolves converges’222 has more recently opened up another career for ‘humanism’, albeit in self-defence: that of the eclecticism of ‘philosophies of good-will’, of the confusion between the peaceful co-existence of States with different social regimes and a mystifying co-existence of opposing ideologies, a mealy-mouthed form of the struggle of ideas. In order to be open in all respects, it is clear that Marxism cannot obliterate its boundanes. Marxism is not a voice, not even the bass, in the speculative polyphony of an ecumenical humanism. This is obvious. However, it is no less obvious that to refuse to characterise Marxist theory as scientific humanism while retaining only its refutation of speculative humanism is also to nourish tenacious ideological ambiguities, indeed an interpretation of Marxism which is no less speculative and revisionist, though in quite a different direction. Marxism is not one of the components, not even the excipients, of a generalised structuralism which abstracts from man. It is all the more vital not to sanction the false idea that possible deformations of the ‘human face’ of socialism might have their natural source in the fundamental characteristics of the doctrine. Throughout their work Marx and Engels did not come back to the idea that men make their own history inadvertently : this is not at all opposed to the materialist primacy of social relations over individuals but to the abstraction of an impersonal history which, should the occasion arise, may become something else than a theoretical error. History is the history of men. This is why, on the whole, while there are unquestionably reasons of ideological expediency which might tend to make one reject the characterisation of Marxism as scientific humanism, there are other no less important reasons which militate in the opposite direction. There are therefore no serious grounds for not adhering to what pure theoretical considerations lead one to assert : in so far as it is the science

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of history coinciding with the science of man, Marxism is scientific humanism. Fundamentally, the term humanism is like most of the terms with the assistance of which Marxism defined itself. We know, for example, that at one time Marx and Engels took the term materialism in bad part and refused to acknowledge their own philosophical position in it. This is understandable : in spite of its merits, in so far as materialism was the method, in some respects metaphysical, of French 18th Century thinkers, of Feuerbach’s speculative anthropology, and of the banal scientism of ‘itinerant vulgarisers’223 à la Vogt, it was always a philosophical ideology. Marx’s and Engels’ task was not to practice but to break with this ideology. However, when the rupture was accomplished and a proper position was taken in relation to it, Marx and Engels are the first to whom it becomes evident that the new conception is the scientific transmutation of the old materialism, a higher stage in the development of materialism and that, given every precise detail about its fundamental originality, it is appropriate to designate it too by the term materialism. The same goes for the term dialectic which might seem at the outset irremediably stamped by Hegelian idealism but which was retained by Marx basically because although his materialist dialectic breaks with Hegel’s and re-works its content on profoundly new bases, none the less, from a more general standpoint, it is the development of its rational kernel. Let us take another example, the term philosophy itself. In a sense, Marxist philosophy is no longer at all a ‘philosophy’ in the pejorative sense of the word that one comes across especially in The German Ideology, i.e. in the sense of an ideological view of the world, man and knowledge. On the contrary, it marks the end of‘philosophy’ and the advent on its terrain, profoundly transformed by this fact, of a truly scientific standpoint in the widest sense of the term, i.e. in the sense of a radical (materialist) critique of all speculation, the elucidation of the concrete (dialectical) essence. To call the basis of Marxist theory philosophy is therefore to risk fostering unfortunate, speculatively oriented ambiguities. This is true. But not to describe the principles of the conception of the world, man and knowledge which constitute the basis of Marxism as philosophy is to foster other, even more unfortunate ambiguities, particularly of a positivist orientation, letting it be thought that Marxism implies the re-absorption of ‘philosophy’ in ‘the’ sciences, i.e. opening the way in the name of Marxism for the return of the worst vulgarised remnants of the worst philosophies. In fact, Marxism rests on a scientific transmutation of the old philosophy, and in this very precise sense, all naively subjective value-judgements aside,

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one can and must refer to the scientific philosophy of Marxism. Indeed, this is why all attempts to dispense with the term philosophy, starting with Marx’s and Engels’, or to fmd a substitute for it, have ended in failure, not for terminological but for basic theoretical reasons. In this respect, in spite of its merits, the epistemology of the break appears like an unacceptable distortion of the materialist dialectic of knowledge. It is profoundly true that revolutions in the theoretical order do not involve a mere change in continuity from questions to answers but the rupture of a restructuration in depth of the old held of questions and answers. But as Marx recalls in the 1857 Introduction, it is just as true that cthe real subject retains its autonomous existence outside the head just as before’,224 so that while they both clearly aim at the same real subject, the change from one theoretical world to another necessarily rests on the unity of the ‘already given concrete living whole’225 of which they are different mental representations. The later then appears like a higher state in the same process of the ‘reproduction of the concrete by way of thought’.226 Nothing is more mistaken in this matter than to fail to recognise, even at the terminological level, what changes and what remains from one to the other. After having emphasised Ricardo’s error, with which he broke, Marx went so far as to write : On the other hand ... the history of the theory certainly shows that the concept of the value relation has always been the same — more or less clear, hedged more or less with illusions or scientifically more or less definite. Since the thought process itself glows out of conditions, it is itself a natural process, thinking that really comprehends must always be the same, and can vary only gradually, according to maturity of development, including the development of the organ by which the thinking is done. Everything else is drivel.227

In the last'analysis, is not the epistemology of the break, a one-sided distortion of the dialectic of the qualitative leap, the outcome of an insufficiently materialist analysis of the history of ideas which loses sight of the unity of being behind the restructurations of consciousness ? A final example deserves reflection for anyone who might hesitate to describe Marxism as scientific humanism — the example of the term socialism — the parallel here being all the more illuminating because the two concepts are immediately related: in Marxist theory humanism is to scientific socialism what anthropology is to historical materialism. As Engels explains in his 1890 Preface to a re-issue of the Manifesto, there could be no question of Marx and himself entitling it The Socialist Manifesto in 1847 for at that time there were included under the name

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of socialists on the one hand ‘the adherents of the various Utopian systems’, and on the other ‘the manifold types of social quacks’.228 It is unnecessary to emphasise the fact that even today the term socialism is less than ever free from ambiguous resonances. Everything that one can say, rightly, against the ambiguities linked to the term humanism, one could therefore say with all the more reason in connection with those which beset the term socialism. In one way, Marxism has been and remains the most radical critique of these ‘socialist’ ambiguities. It was born of the rupture with them. And yet it could not occur to anybody to refuse to describe Marxist political theory as socialist any more than it could occur to one to call Marxism ‘theoretical antisocialism’. Marxism is the scientific transmutation of utopian socialism, socialism become science. The expression ‘scientific socialism’ is therefore by no means a play on words, a contradiction in terms; on the contrary, it is the correct formulation of a revolution which marks both the end of the prehistory of socialism and the beginning of its real history. To the same extent and in the same sense, socialism is scientific humanism.

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II. The Articulation of the Psychology of Personality with Marxism All this gives us the answer to precisely that problem which motivated

this lengthy but necessary theoretical analysis of the relations between Marxism, science and humanism: the problem of the articulation of Marxism and psychology. At the point we have reached it is clear that in so far as Marxism is the general theory of the scientific conception of man, its articulation with the psychology of personality, i.e. with the science of the concrete individual, necessarily exists, at least potentially, and if we have still not so far described it completely and in detail, it is now at all events identified and localised. In order to describe it more precisely from the side of Marxism, we must look more closely at the correspondence between various aspects of the concepts of historical materialism and the fundamental aspects of individual life-processes, of the production of the human personality.

(i) The articulation from the side of Marxism Let us first of all summarise the results we have arrived at on this question. The first one is that on each of its fundamental levels the concepts of historical materialism correspond with the new concept of man. Between the productive forces and men there is the basic correspondence that men are precisely the most important of the productive forces. Considered in the first place as producers, as labourpowers, i.e. as cthe aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being’,229 men constitute the subjective factor of production. Everything which is said by economic science about the productive forces and their development directly concerns men. The instruments of labour are ca standard of the degree of the development to which human labour has attained, but they are also indicators of the social conditions under which that labour is carried on’.230 And in the purely technical sense of the word the appropriation of the productive forces by the producers cis itself nothing more than the development of the individual capacities corresponding to the material instruments of production’.231 Between the relations of production and men there is the basic correspondence that the relations of production are in fact necessary relations which men enter into in order socially to produce their existence, so that they cfind their conditions of existence predestined, and hence have their position in life and their personal development assigned to them by their class, become subsumed under it’.232 The social and technical division of labour essentially determining the

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general forms and modes of development of individuals, this subordination does not concern only their conditions of labour — or leisure — moreover, but also their conditions of consumption, their incomes and their mode of satisfying needs since ‘an individual who participates in production in the form of wage labour shares in the products, in the results of production, in the form of wages’.233 Between the superstructures and ideologies on the one hand, and men on the other, there is the basic correspondence that cconsciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product’,234 that on the whole individuals’ consciousness cannot therefore surpass the limits or escape the problems — nor the solutions — characteristic of their class and the general degree of historical development,235 and that at their level the objective institutions and representations of a society determine the life-processes and representations of individuals. And all this being the case, there is reason to expect that the characteristic contradictions of a social formation, especially the contradiction between the character of the productive forces and the relations of production, also have this basic correspondence with men, that they induce in them basic contradictions between capacities and real development, needs and satisfactions of needs, labour as means of subsistance and labour as selfexpression, etc. Thus one can easily understand that ‘in order to assert themselves as individuals’, proletarians in capitalist society ‘must overthrow the State’,236 and more generally that every social formation by and large produces the men which it needs, including those whom it needs to transform it in a revolutionary way, so that ‘mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve’.237 The correspondence between the specific concepts of historical materialism and the structure of human individualities is therefore not only clearly pointed out in detail in Marxist texts but is overall necessarily required for the coherence of the theory and moreover is strikingly borne witness to by the development of revolutionary practice. One may even wonder how it is possible, for example, to read the pages in Capital on the distinction between concrete and abstract labour, the value of labour-power and the wage-rate, the division of labour in capitalist manufacture, the effect of money in commodity relations, the extraction of absolute and relative surplus-value, the general law of capitalist accumulation, etc., right up to the very last pages on revenues and social classes — without seeing that individuals are involved at the same time as economic categories. At its simplest level, the answer to this question is that in order to perceive everything which is articulated with a possible science of the individual in Marx’s economic analyses, it is necessary to be ready to conceive to a certain

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extent as a whole the very idea, which is radically new, of such a science as articulable with Marx’s political economy and historical materialism. In short, the failure to recognise everything in Marx’s work which prefigures and makes the elaboration of a scientific theory of the individual possible is merely the last avatar of the speculative conception of the individual : in so far as one remains influenced by the idea that all psychology of personality is speculative — which up till now, and in varying degrees depending on the doctrines, is an empirical truth but not an essential necessity — one does not expect mature Marxism to contain vital elements making its scientific transmutation possible and therefore one does not in fact perceive them. The denial of all psychology of personality is the latest negative form of belief in the old psychology of personality in which one has still not managed to conceive its surpassing but merely its suppression. In this sense, positive theoretical antihumanism, which denies all anthropology, is to scientific anthropology what conventional atheism is to the Marxist theory of religion. But while the existence and general position of the articulation between historical materialism and the scientific theory of the individual are perfectly clear, the concrete structure of this articulation remains somewhat obscure. Like every articulation, it necessarily has two sides. We have seen that the first, the side of historical materialism, presents itself to us from the point of view of a theory of general historical forms of individuality : forms of needs, productive activity and consumption in their social determination; forms of individuality involved in social relations ; forms of general contradictions of individual existence corresponding to these social relations. This theory is in no way a psychology. Its object is not individuals but individuality. It is elaborated solely on the basis of materials provided by the analysis of social relations and more broadly the mode of production. It therefore belongs wholly on the terrain of the science of society. However, it constitutes articulation with the scientific investigation of individuals in themselves for the obvious reason that these forms of individuality, the essence of which is situated in social relations, none the less exist in individuals whose life-processes they determine. And this is how in Capital, analysing the 'Faustian conflict between the passion for accumulation and the desire for enjoyment’ which necessarily manifests itself in the soul of the capitalist, a conflict which in spite of appearances is not at all a psychological but an economic conflict, Marx says of the historical stage in which avarice and the desire to get rich predominate that 'every capitalist upstart has personally to go through [it]’.238 In other words, everything in the general historical forms of individuality is

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social — except the actual fact of the form of individuality, the fact that social relations exist through individual life-processes, i.e. in short, the historical expression of the biological fact that like every species, the human species reproduces and develops through an ensemble of individuals. The second side of the articulation is precisely the one which appears when one sets out not from society but from the individual ; when one considers not the unity of the ensemble of social relations, with regard to which the individual only appears in the exceedingly partial form of a support for this or that economic category or form of individuality, but the unity of the ensemble of individual life-processes in the personality, with regard to which it is society in its turn which appears in the very partial form of general forms of individuality. This second standpoint, which is specifically psychological, because its object is the individual as such, can be found in many places, as we have seen, in mature Marxism : the Grundrisse and Capital in particular offer many nuggets on which a really scientific psychology of personality could cut its teeth. But it is quite true that one does not find anything more in this respect than teething stones. This absence of a fully worked-out theory of the human personality in the great Marxist texts has played such a role in the ever-recurring speculative-humanist critique of Marxism and more recently in the anti-humanist interpretation that it is important to go into its causes, which have nothing to do with ruling out all psychology in principle. In the first place, one must call to mind that at the time when Marx wrote Capital psychology as an experimental, positive science did not yet exist in practice. Broadly speaking, it is the enormous contemporary development of the psychological sciences which informs our present reading of Capital and may make the problem presented here obvious, but one could not present it to Marx retrospectively without a certain theoretical anachronism. In other words, to be astonished that Marx did not develop the elements of a theory of personality further at the time when he was writing Capital amounts to being astonished that, while carrying out the colossal work of constituting political economy into a fully developed science, he did not also and as if by the way, at a stroke invent and construct the scientific psychology which a century later still does not possess a fullgrown theory of personality. One could go further and say that it would be to misunderstand that in a sense he was precisely able to make political economy a full-grown science only by entirely escaping from the temptation to do psychology as in 1844, by strictly distinguishing the object of political economy from that of psychology in the 1844 sense. To understand this clearly

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one must objectively consider all the different moments of Marx’s reflection on the problems of man in their logical and historical connection. The starting-point is the ensemble of illusory forms assumed by the products of labour and the producers themselves in capitalist society and which mystify individuals’ immediate consciousness just like more or less worked out ideological systems. In so far as social relations seem to be relations between things, natural facts, the human essence appears as being alien (étrangère) to them and the more it seems to be alien to them the more it itself looks like a natural fact. A complementary fetishism of the producers’ capacities necessarily corresponds to the fetishism of the products of labour, a fetishism of the individual to fetishism of the commodity. All abstract humanism and all speculative psychology sink their roots here. Marx throws particular light on this point in important pages in the first draft of the Contribution : for the producer situated in such social relations ‘the particular characteristic of his labour — and in the first place its materialisation — has its origin in its peculiar nature and what it specifically presupposes’. Conceived in this way, ‘the division of labour is the reproduction of particular individuality on a social basis which, at the same time, is thus a link in the whole development of humanity’.239 This conception, which turns real relations upside down, is ‘the current conception of bourgeois political economy’.240 It is also the current conception in the speculative psychology and philosophy which Marx was already battling with in Stirner in The German Ideology, showing that the division of labour must not be made to derive from differences between individuals but on the contrary differences between individuals from the division of labour.241 More precisely still, as far as they are not the result of the division of labour, the differences between individuals are at most one of the causes which make a given individual come to occupy a given position in a social system of division of labour which is in no wise the result of these differences but, on the contrary, the source of differences between individuals which overlays and dominates their other differences. To grasp the reality behind these illusory forms it is therefore essential to break with this substantialism of the human essence, a decisive obstacle to the materialist inversion of the whole conception of society and history — therefore, it appears, in the first place, to give up spending time on human individuals in order to turn one’s attention to objective social relations. This moment of rupture with direct reflection on the human essence, which was still very much to the fore in the 1844 Manuscripts, is an essential and necessary stage in Marx’s thought. In 1844, psychology — a still speculative psychology — was all the more

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developed as, in the confusion, in many cases it took the place of economic and historical analysis. This is why the 1844 Manuscripts are the most captivating as well as the most deceptive of Marx’s works as far as the articulation between Marxism and psychology is concerned. From the Theses on Feuerbach onwards this 1844 psychology is rejected in principle, and elaborating economic and historical science is conceived as an autonomous task, absolutely primary in relation to any reflection about the individual person. But precisely because it settles its accounts with the speculative conception of man, The German Ideology pays considerable attention to problems of personality : the new science in process of being born relieves the 1844 psychology of its duties in analyses of remarkable richness and insight. Economic knowledge is still very slight however, and the change from the standpoint of the abstract human essence to the standpoint of social relations is distinct but only embryonic. Because of this all the psychological remarks in The German Ideology retain an elliptical, conjunctural character — it also is embryonic. And the more Marx advances along the path which he had opened up, the more historical materialism, political economy and scientific socialism — the practical importance of which in revolutionary struggles of course is primary — gain ground, breadth and time for research, and the more the theoretical detour which will be necessary in order to return to the problem of the human individual becomes more lengthy and complicated. One can therefore understand why on the whole Marx devoted a decreasing part of his work to direct, visible elaboration of the theory of personality, to the extent that the ever more advanced development of political economy made the only real route to the foundations of the individual life-process, for anyone seeking it with the old point of view, seem to be indirect and invisible. At each further stage in his work Marx was then led to consider that the indications which he had provided concerning this problem in the preceding stage of his investigations were still premature in certain respects, i.e. insufficiently scientific. From The German Ideology to the Grundrisse and from the Contribution to Capital, he extrapolates less and less on the terrain of the theory of the concrete individual at the same time as he increasingly deepens the theory of the forms of individuality, an integral part of economic science. But he is thereby doing precisely the work which is really the most decisive from the standpoint of problems of the concrete individual too, since it is their absolute prerequisite. Above all one must therefore not allow oneself to be surprised by the usual failure to recognise immediately the bases of the theory of the concrete individual in the ‘unrecognisable’ forms which Marx gave them — unrecognisable for anyone who clings to the

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traditional fetishism of the human individual, the old representation of the individual as the bearer of an abstract human essence, a representation which of course has no equivalent in the science of social relations which is its negation. It must not be inferred from the rupture with speculative illusions about the possibility of an immediate psychology that Marx ruled out all psychology, when this rupture is precisely the discovery of the theoretical detour which finally makes it possible to think the psychology of personality in all its rigour. This summary of Marx’s development with regard to the problem before us not only makes it possible to put an end to the extraordinary mistaken idea according to which Marxism is unable to account for the individual but it also makes us clearly see that what serves to support this idea is precisely the fact that Marx was the first to discover the paradoxical ways by which alone an account of the individual can be given. And it is true that although he indicated its starting-point and the shape of its outline, in discovering these ways Marx was not able to pursue to its conclusion what amounts to the science of the individual. This gives us an idea of the theoretical task which remains to be carried out on the terrain of the theory of personality, not only for psychology to attain full development but for the completion of Marxism itself in this area — the word completion being meant not at all in the sense in which completion means brought to a final end and therefore lifeless, which is incompatible with Marxism of course, but in a thoroughly dialectical sense in which completion means completely formed and therefore at full strength. Only the acute awareness of this partial and relative failure to complete Marxism in a direction which it itself discovered can make the ever-recurring nostalgia of so many Marxisants thinkers, and even Marxists, for the works of Marx’s youth, and especially for the 1844 Manuscripts, intelligible in all its aspects: they are seen as richer than the mature works, it is said that the fruit has not fulfilled the promise of the blossom, that a destruction of humanism occurs with later developments, etc. In this nostalgia one can usually see above all what in actual fact is the main thing nearly every time: inability to make our hostility to the switch which everyone who starts from bourgeois ideology must remake on his own account from a still speculative humanism to scientific socialism. But one must also know how to discern here what presentiment makes this nostalgia possible: while it is completely false to see in fully developed Marxist science the result of an impoverishment with regard to the germs to be found in the youthful works — in actual fact there is a remarkable enrichment — it is true on the other hand that, in addition to the germs of what was to be raised to the level of a fully developed science in mature Marxism, these

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youthful works also contain many other elements which seem to be the germs of something else which has not yet been raised to the level of fully developed science and in particular — at the same time as those of an ethics and an aesthetics — the germs of a psychology which should also be raised to the level of a fully developed science. Hence the everrecurring temptations at regular intervals to go directly there for the starting-point of what fully developed Marxism appears to have let slip away. Actually the advance which culminated in Capital is not only the sole path which leads to scientific economy and history : more generally it is the sole path which leads to any human science, since it leads to the science of what constitutes the basis of all human acts. There is therefore no short cut to a scientific psychology by way of the 1844 psychology — and this goes for many of the ethical and aesthetic speculations too. But this does not prevent the 1844 Manuscripts in their, as it were, naive totality of human facets at the level of a still partly speculative humanism, from remaining a striking appeal for the constitution of a fully developed totality of human sciences at the level of rigour of Capital. In this sense, yearning after the 1844 Manuscripts is not pure irrationality ; it has a rational kernel; it not only looks backwards but forwards; it is not reactionary but militant. What it expresses, therefore, is quite simply the deeply-felt necessity for the development of Marxism without which it is impossible in theory and practice to resolve the new and immense problems which constantly emerge in the present stage of the transition of humanity to socialism. In my opinion, the elaboration of the scientific theory of personality today constitutes the principal link in this development.

(2) The articulation from the side of psychology So far we have considered the connection between Marxism and psychology from the side of Marxism, i.e. by starting from the question : how do Marxist political economy and historical materialism come to the problem of human individuals and what do they necessarily imply in relation to how it is to be conceived? To proceed further with the investigation of this crucial question, while remaining on the terrain of Marxism, it is now necessary to triangulate it, i.e. to consider the articulation from the other angle, from the side of psychology, by examining this new problem : how is that psychology, how is that the attempt to constitute a scientific theory of personality, comes to rely on historical materialism and Marxist political economy for support, and what does such support necessarily involve for it ? The question is all the less arbitrary because from its birth, in actual

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fact, scientific psychology has never stopped seeking theoretical supports in all quarters. Wrested from spiritualistic metaphysics and private diaries only to drift in the first instance into positivism, it was exposed right away to the teachings of very different sciences — physical and biological sciences yesterday, mathematical logic, cybernetics or linguistics today — always hungry for ‘models’ to import, even if only to try them out. While it is quite true that in the last resort the only criterion to determine the legitimacy of these epistemological hybridisations is their fertility, this fertility itself cannot simply be proved by the proliferation of published works but rather by their theoretical relevance. In other words, one must be able to prove that the use of some particular externally derived ‘models’ is permissible in psychology by showing that to a given extent there is an essential identity or at least connection between the object of psychology and these external objects. To justify the transposition of linguistic concepts to the theory of the ‘subject’, for example, it is not enough to argue that rhetorical figures such as metaphor and metynomy might be relevant there on the grounds that the unconscious appears to be structured like a language ; it must be proved more radically that it is structured by language, so that the linguistic rendering of psychic structures and processes appears not as the more or less successful selection of a formulation for a subject matter the particular essence of which is still not understood, i.e. precisely, not as a metaphor, but as an actual grasp of this essence. Failing which, however much it is useful to get a perspective and can be an incentive to reflection, this propagation of ‘models’ is basically merely a theoretical expedient, doomed from the outset to degenerate into ideological modishness, in this case to a panglossia (panglossie) in G.G. Granger’s term,242 a lingualism Chnguahsme) in M. Dufrenne’s,243 in truth a linguistomania, younger sister of the cybernetomania of the Sixties. The only conceivable underlying legitimation for psychology’s theoretical support by another science is, therefore, the objective articulation of their respective essences. In its efforts to construct a valid theoretical representation of its object, psychology, whatever its aversion to such questions, is thus led by its own logic to ask itself about the essence of that entity of which it wishes to be the science ; it cannot avoid asking itself what man is in his essence. It thereby confronts a problem the solution to which is not on its terrain but on the terrain of historical materialism. This is what Politzer had seen clearly: ‘Psychology by no means holds the “secret” of human affairs, simply because this “secret” is not a psychological order’.244 This ‘secret’ is the ensemble of social relations. In other words the

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essence of the human individual is not originally within himself but outside in an excentric * position in the world of social relations : this is what Marx discovered and formulated for the first time through the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach. This theoretical view has been strikingly borne out ever since by the progress of all the human sciences : as opposed to animality (‘animal-being’), humanity (in the sense of‘human-being’) is not a given, naturally present in each isolated individual: it is the human social world and each natural individual becomes human in being ‘humanised’ through his real life-process within social relations.245 All psychologists well know this. But this therefore means that between psychology and historical materialism there exists not at all in fact a ‘homology’ sanctioning the transfer of ‘models’, but a primordial essential articulation requiring a conscious theoretical articulation of the former with the latter. In generally failing to recognise the crucial importance that historical materialism has for it, the psychology of personality fails to use to advantage what it nevertheless knows perfectly well about the excentration of the human essence. As an instructive example let us look at the interesting work of a professional psychologist, Joseph Nuttin, who teaches at the University of Louvain, La structure de la personnalité. After giving an exposition of and analysing in detail in the body of the work a number of conventional conceptions of personality from Spearman to Sheldon, Cattel to Kretschmer and from Heymans to Jung, the author writes at the beginning of a fmal chapter that each of these theories may undoubtedly ‘throw some light’ on the subject but that the latter ‘still largely eludes us’. Starting from this essentially critical assessment the author then comes round to developing his own idea in a fmal chapter, that, ‘the reality from which one must start as a basic fact in psychology is not the personality er the organism but the schema of concrete or potential interactions at either level of complexity between the two poles of the psycho-physiological biosphere: the ego and the world, or the organism and the environment’,246 and that ‘the world of our psychic life constructs our personality as much as the hereditary factor’.247 * This spelling, rather than the more usual ‘eccentric’, is chosen for the following reasons. The proposition that the human essence is excentric (excentrée) is central to Sève’s theoretical position but its connotations are, perhaps, not so immediately clear in English. Basically Sève uses the term and its cognates to distinguish his position from (i) that of speculative philosophical humanism, for which the human essence is in the centre, i.e., in the individual subject, and (ii) that of those versions of structuralism and theoretical antihumanism which assert that there is no essence, often put by saying that the human subject is decentred (décentré'). Translator’s note.

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This relational and non-substantialist concept of the personality governed by the ‘Ego-World structure5 may at first seem satisfactory and to be in agreement with the spirit of everything we have shown so far. But then, if the structure of the personality is constructed through its relations with the ‘world’, it is clear from the standpoint of psychology alone that one will only be able to move forward in the scientific investigation of this structure by relying on a scientific investigation of the c ego’s5 relations with its ‘world5, in other words, on the science of social relations: whether one likes it or not one here comes up against the necessity for the articulation of the psychology of personality with a real science of history and economics. What is essentially striking in reading J. Nuttin’s final chapter is what must be called the utter poverty of the remarks concerning these relations, the absence of any serious examination of the concrete historical forms and content of these ‘Ego-World relations5. All the richness of real social relations disappears behind the most poverty-stricken abstractions, ‘the World5, ‘the Other5, which are the ‘Ego’s5 only known associates in the network of its relations. And as it is obviously impossible to account for all the actual richness of individuality by means of its relations with all-purpose and shallow abstractions, psychological substantialism comes charging back, reducing the attempt to construct a relational concept of the personality to a mere pious wish. One is left with a ‘pre¬ existing structure which constitutes the core of the functional personality5 as the ‘requirement and active potentiality of some types of interaction and communication with the world5.248 One can understand that on the last page of his book the author has the feeling that the theory of personality has still not gone beyond the stage of ‘preliminary exploration5.249 What does this attempt which starts with such promise end in abortion ? The reason is that the basic lesson of historical materialism and the materialist meaning of the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach have not been learned. The author has not taken seriously his own assertion according to which it is man’s social relations with the world in which he lives which construct his personality. Consequently he is not really interested in understanding the objective logic of these social relations. Far from actually recognising ‘the objective and social world5 as that by way of which the personality is constructed, the author writes that it is ‘the objective and social world5 which is ‘constructed by our psychic activity5250 : pure sociological idealism. The ‘fact5 that ‘personality or human behaviour has transformed “nature55 into “culture” and “civilisation” ’, he calls ‘striking5,251 without understanding that, on the contrary, it is really the objective social process transforming

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‘nature’ into ‘culture’ which has also transformed the archaic natural individual into a developed historico-social personality. He thinks that ‘in our society’, ‘the basic source of human conflict as a whole lies in the variety and complexity of possible paths of actualisation for the personality’.252 without even saying a word about the social division of labour, the division of society into classes, as the real objective source of this ‘variety’. In the end, it is the old speculative abstraction of philosophical humanism, Man in general, which is presented to us as the deus ex machina of ‘Ego-World’ relations. At birth, man is so poorly equipped that it is impossible through his own means to achieve the forms of communication with the world which are necessary for him to stay alive. This almost complete lack of preestablished integration is what one might call the biological condition of his freedom and individual personality. Indeed, owing to this lack, man [my emphasis — L.S.] himself is bound to construct the behavioural forms which will constitute his integration in the world and consequently his own personality.253 In this way one conceals behind the individual’s lack of biological equipment at birth the fabulous wealth of his excentric social ‘equipment’, one transforms the crying fact of the individual’s total pre-established insertion in a determinate world of social relations into an ‘almost complete lack of pre-established integration’, and thereby the necessity of individual life-processes disappears behind the antiquated myth of the freedom of an ‘Ego’ which so-called scientific psychology borrows uncritically from traditional philosophy. Is it not time to consider the lesson there is to be drawn from this sort of failure ? No genmnely relational theory of personality, no effective surpassing the impasses of psychological substantialism and naturalism and therefore no really scientific theory of personality are possible so long as one does not take Marx’s crucial discovery absolutely seriously: in reality the human essence is the ensemble of social relations within which men not only produce their means of subsistence but are themselves produced. What has happened most often until now is that when it proclaimed the altogether determinant role of social factors in the development of the human personality, psychology thought it had largely taken the social sciences, indeed historical materialism itself, into account — a highly naive and painfully contradictory proclamation in actual fact since, owing to the mere fact that one regards man’s social world, social relations, as external factors in development — as the ‘environment’254 — of an individual, consequently conceived as naturally pre-existing them, one makes clear that one just has not understood that social

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relations are not external factors in development but the very essence of the personality. Until now, all the inferences from this idea are far from having been drawn in psychology, even in those works which appeal to Marxism. Thus Marx never stopped showing from beginning to end in his work that human needs are historical and social in their very essence^ this may therefore seem a well-known truth. However one may read in an unpublished and most interesting research text on sexuality — most interesting owing to the mere fact that it was a fundamental psychological investigation based on Marxism — that ‘in order to be satisfied, sexual need has need of the Other (sex): it is therefore social and socialised in its essence5 — whereas as far as other needs supported by biological functions are concerned ‘social mediations are never fundamental5, and as for need to eat, for example, social mediations at most influence ‘its forms and norms5 but not ‘the fundamental exercise of the alimentary function5. I regard this thesis as a remarkably instructive example of the fact that the illusions of speculative psychology are alive even at the heart of the greatest efforts to rethink it in the light of Marx’s most essential ideas. Actually, like every human need, human hunger is social not only in ‘its forms and norms5 — ‘the hunger gratified by cooked meat eaten with a knife and fork is a different hunger from that which bolts down raw meat with the aid of hand, nail and tooth5255 — but in its essence. The illusion that this is not so comes here from considering in need only the act by which it is satisfied, i.e. the side of consumption, while simply neglecting Marx’s essential discovery in this respect, that in man consumption is inseparable from production, or rather that production is the productive source of consumptive activity itself. If one considers the need for nourishment and sexual need merely from the side of ‘consumption5, i.e. if one presupposes that their object is already given, already present — food, ‘the Other5 — it is quite true up to a point that the latter then appears as basically implying other people whereas the former does not. All the same, one ought then to be disquieted by the fact that, made in these terms, such an analysis would be as true of animal sexuality as of human sexuality, and this in itself allows one to state that in this way one must still not have grasped the most specific essence of the latter. But above all man is an animal who socially produces his means of subsistence, i.e. in order to eat, drink, clothe himself, house himself, etc., he has to work, to earn his living in the world of the social division of labour, and accordingly he basically needs ‘the Other’ to produce the object of his need. In this sense, not only does the need for nourishment appear as being fundamentally in need of others, but its sociality is even deeper than that attributed by the analysis

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discussed here to sexual need, since this only takes into account the not really social but merely inter-personal need of an other at the level of consumption, whereas the need for nourishment needs others for the very production of what it wishes to consume and, as we shall see, it is deeply determined by this production. One can see the harm done by the 0844 psychology’ quite clearly here. Indeed, behind this analysis of sexual need it is not difficult to recognise showing through the impressive analyses in the 1844 Manuscripts on man’s relation to woman as the most significant relation of man to man, indicating how far ‘man’s needs have become human needs’ and consequently ‘how far the other person, as a person, has become one of his needs’.256 But as a matter of fact the limitation of these 1844 analyses, which are far from being without value, is that they describe the effect of social relations not yet understood scientifically, whereas mature Marxism yields the scientific theory of the production of these effects. This is why to proceed no further than the level of the 1844 psychology always implies that one lacks the decisive factor of the development of the personality and consequently that one at least partly remains prisoner to substantialist, i.e. speculative, illusions. One can see how the articulation of the psychology of personality with historical materialism is not only an offer of assistance which Marxism is led through its own logic to make to psychology but reciprocally a call for help which psychology clearly has to send to Marxism if it takes its own firmly held beliefs about the ultimately relational character of the human personality wholly seriously. This means that while being a specific science, the science of personality is in a position of deep-seated epistemological dependence with regard to historical materialism in general and Marxist political economy in particular. This point is of the greatest importance and needs to be carefully gone into. In the first place it is quite clear that if one fails to recognise this dependence, a position which is very widespread until now and which basically means that the human essence is more or less considered abstractly and is insufficiently identified with social relations, this makes the solution of basic problems impossible. However it is not correct either to describe the personality as a superstructure of social relations (not even in the broad sense of the term) on the plea that the base of a social formation is also the base of the forms of individuality which are produced in it; for the concept of superstructure figures in the classics of Marxism in two distinct senses. In a narrow sense (the only one which one remembers as a rule, wrongly) it refers selectively to the legal and political institutions which arise on the base of the relations of production and correspond to them, excluding ideologies

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(also a term with complex meaning) and forms of social consciousness. But on the other hand, as a much broader historical concept, it refers to any structure (formation) which appears on the base of another and its internal contradictions 3 which, while exhibiting new aspects and a relatively autonomous mode of development, is functionally determined by them and reciprocally plays a regulating role with regard to them; which disappears if its base is destroyed, not immediately and mechanically of course but nevertheless inevitably ; but which in certain cases may also gradually assimilate its own base and take its place. It is in this sense that the term superstructure sometimes refers to the ensemble of institutions, ideologies and forms of social consciousness — hence, formidable ambiguities. It is in this sense that, in a letter in 1879 to Danielson, Marx writes that ‘ where capitalism was confined to a few summits of society’ the railway system allowed and forced States ‘to suddenly create and enlarge their capitalistic superstructure3, and later evokes ‘the financial, commercial, industrial superstructure, or rather the façades of the social edifice’257 in the France of Louis XIV and Louis XV. And it is in this same sense that in 1919 Lenin wrote: ‘If Marx said of manufacture that it was a superstructure on mass small production, imperialism and finance capitalism are a superstructure on the old capitalism. If its top is destroyed, the old capitalism is exposed’.258 It is clear for two reasons in particular that even in this broad sense the concrete individual is not a superstructure of the social relations. In the first place, while being radically functionally determined by the social base, social individuality does not occupy a superstructural position with regard to it, since it is an integral part of this base and its process of reproduction; the basic individual life-processes do not appear on the basis of social relations, they are a part of them. In the second place, social individuality itself develops within biological individuals who as such are not at all the product of the social base and its contradictions but of a quite distinct reality. Thus although they are functonally determined by the social base (and its superstructures) quite as much as the superstructures themselves, individuals do not arise on this base with superstructural characteristics but are as it were laterally meshed in with it and become wholly subordinated to it — although it is not their actual source. To designate this specific type of essential connection, which does not solely occur with individuals moreover, I suggest the concept juxtastructure. It is vital not to confuse the purely external connection of two structures which are independent in themselves, a connection which therefore tends towards an equalising reciprocity, with what I call here a juxtastructural relation in which,

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although its support has an independent existence and source one of the structures is entirely subordinated to the other, their necessarily reciprocal functional determination then having the form of an oriented circularity: one of the structures is always the determinant structure in the last instance. The reduction of the individual’s juxtastructural relation with the social base simply to a relation of external connection is the basic approach of speculative humanism and vulgar psychology. Conversely, the confusion of this relation with a superstructural type of relation is more or less covertly present in all antihumanism, in the one¬ sided interpretation of the phenomenon of the excentration of the human subject. This possibly helps in understanding why although the psychology of personality clearly depends on facts independent of historical materialism, particularly biological facts, it can nevertheless only become fully developed scientifically on the crucial condition of being articulated with the science of social relations: the psychology of personality is in a juxtastructural position with regard to historical materialism. Only historical materialism provides the general topography of the terrain on which it must be constructed and thereby enables it to expose the theoretical pitfalls concerning the concept of the individual into which it is otherwise very likely to fall from the word go. As a matter of fact, in so far as one wishes to express the specificity of psychology with regard to the social sciences as a whole, nothing is more natural than to put forward the concept of individuality, the distinction between the individual and society. In a sense this is a quite correct approach, which we will come back to. But it is only a step from this to defining psychology as a science of the isolated individual, to thinking of the individual-society dichotomy as having an absolute, natural significance, the individual-society contradiction as a basic contradiction, etc., from then on inevitably biologising historico-social individuality. If one takes this step one is decisively led astray from the very outset. If, on the contrary, one has understood that the developed human individual is not fundamentally a substance which is independent in relation to social relations, then one grasps at the same time that a psychology of personality which is not itself a science of social relations, in a sense to be made clear, would necessarily fail to capture the essence of its object and would be bound to be a false science. And it immediately becomes obvious that it is precisely the great abstractions with capital letters, the Ego, the World, the Other, philosophical entities of which a psychology nevertheless avid for ‘positive science’ significantly proves to be fond, which one must undertake to radically criticise and scientifically surpass if one wishes in

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the end to arrive at a scientific theory of personality. Regardless of any question of initial ‘ideological sympathy’ with Marxism, one can therefore say how little the psychologist will be wasting his time in giving up the laboratory for a moment in order to read the great texts of historical materialism and proceeding from that to reconsider the foundation of psychology on that basis. Once the principle of its articulation with the theory of the individual is made clear, everything in historical materialism must appear to him as extraordinarily fruitful heuristically. After all it is not stressed enough that, although always briefly, Marx and Engels themselves often and explicitly pointed the way from the standpoint of the social formation to the standpoint of the individual, i.e. presented historical materialism as a pilot-science in relation to the science of personality. In fact Marx points the way, in relation to a problem as vital as that of the infrastructure-superstructure dialectic, in the basic exposition of historical materialism provided by the Preface to the Contribution. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge ... a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.259

It seems that, in as much as attention has been paid to this at all, it has generally been seen until now as a sort of literary comparison, a stylistic flourish or, at least, a psychological commonplace, whereas after all the foregoing one will undoubtedly see more clearly a theoretical pointer of great importance in this ‘Just as ... ’, which leads one to reflect very seriously on the following problem: is the fact of having superstructures, conscious superstructures, incorporating elements such as ideological representations, cultures, languages, etc., into institutions, generators of corresponding problematics (problems of functionality and objectivity, of going from the unconscious to consciousness, of displacement, survivals and anticipations, etc.), solely a characteristic of social formations ? Is there not a need to reflect on a possible theory of superstructures of the personality in connection with social superstructures ? And is it not precisely such a possible research which Engels was still imagining when he remarked in Ludwig Feuerbach, As all the driving forces of the actions of any individual person must pass through his brain, and transform themselves into motives of his will in order to set him into action, so also all the needs of civil society — no matter which class happens to be the ruling one — must pass through the will the State in order to secure general validity in the form of laws.260

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Is it not similarly a spur to deep psychological reflection to read for example in the 1857 Introduction: ‘Whether production and consumption are viewed as the activity of one or of many individuals, they appear in any case as moments of one process, in which production is the real point of departure and hence also the predominant moment’,261 (which contains a decisive lesson on the relations between needs and activity); or, in the Grundrisse, this theme to which Marx returned so often : ‘The less time the society requires to produce wheat, cattle, etc., the more time it wins for other production, material or mental. Just as in the case of an individual, the multiplicity of its development, its enjoyment and its activity depends on economisation of time’,262 an observation which, as we will show in the final chapter, in a sense contains precisely the solution to the problem of the theory of personality ; or again, in Capital, this observation which shows to what extent Marx always remained concerned with anthropological problems : In a sort of way, it is with man as with commodities. Since he comes into the world neither with a looking-glass in his hand, nor as a Fichtian philosopher, to whom T am I’ is sufficient, man first sees and recognises himself in other men. Peter only establishes his own identity as a man by first concerning himself with Paul as being of like kind. And thereby Paul, just as he stands in his Pauline personality, becomes to Peter the type of the genus homo,263

a note into which it is difficult not to read implicitly the 1844 analyses on the relation between man and the ‘other man’264 and which provides an underlying clue to the source of substantialist illusions in the conception of the individual. In view of all these texts it surely must be agreed that one cannot indicate to psychology more clearly that it and its own bases are what are at stake in this alien guise of historical materialism. For all things considered one might say that the psychology of personality required by Marxism has existed right from the start, although it seldom appears in psychological form. This being so the articulation between the two domains, does not only imply, as any articulation would, theoretical constraints on psychology in relation to historical materialism, but also a theoretical support and inter-change : the life-blood flows from historical materialism to psychology. A remarkably promising new path therefore opens up for thought about the fundamentals of the theory of personality : that which lies in setting out from each essential aspect of historical materialism and in investigating what it teaches us, what it urges us to discover in the juxtastructure of the individual. One would start, of course, with what

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the whole of Marxism has established as primordial from the standpoint of the very production of social man : the economic analysis of labour.

(j) The central point: the Marxist analysis of labour Here, indeed, is the central area in the articulation, of which we have now taken stock, between the psychology of personality and Marxism. All things considered this is such an elementary truth that one might even be surprised that it is not the greatest commonplace today. Politzer already pointed it out forty years ago. No psychology whatsoever is possible unless it is set in political economy. And this is why it presupposes all knowledge obtained by dialectical materialism and must constantly be supported by it.265 There is no doubt whatever that when it is a question of the auxiliary sciences of psychology, psychologists consider medicine above all, whereas from the standpoint of psychology’s basic orientation and organisation it is the significance of political economy which is really basic.266

Certainly, modern psychology is no longer unaware of the existence of pulitical economy. On the contrary the relations between these two disciplines seem more in fashion then ever: is not 'economic psychology’ held out here or there as one of those pivotal-sciences which everyone knows characterise the current trend in knowledge? But in this perspective, in actual fact, it is merely a question of external relations and of the mutual service which two sciences conceived as independent and separate in their essence might do each other. The problem stated here is quite different: it is the problem of the internal connection of the essence of their objects. Psychology is a science of man. And in the most general sense of the question, what is man ? A being who produces his means of subsistence and thereby produces himself. Certainly, we saw earlier, this concept of production in general, labour in general, is still much too abstract to serve by itself as the conductor to scientific knowledge. None the less it is a 'rational abstraction in so far as it really brings out and fixes the common element and thus saves us repetition’.267 It is all that we need here, since it is merely a question of situating the central point of the articulation between psychology and Marxism, and not to undertake thereby a concrete scientific investigation. If man is a being who produces himself in social labour, it is at once obvious that the psychology of personality is founded on the analysis of social labour or it does not exist. In relation to this how are we to explain that in the by now protracted

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confrontation of principles between Marxism and psychoanalysis this crucial point has so infrequently been taken for a starting-point, thereby putting a full stop to a certain number of utopian hopes? That in a sense, under certain conditions, psychoanalysis can be assimilated by historical materialism, i.e. reworked (reprise) critically and within certain limits on the basis of its own concepts, is obvious — an obvious fact that it will have taken much time and effort on various parts to bring out clearly, but which today seems almost established, particularly in France. But it is impossible that psychoanalysis, while retaining its identity in substance, could become the theory of personality which is required by Marxism, or even its basis. And I will even say that this impossibility is an obvious fact too — or should be. For, in psychoanalysis the subject does practically everything that a real human being can do : he desires, consumes, enjoys and denies himself ; he feels, wishes, speaks, dreams; he moves in the sphere of corporeal, familial, political and even religious and artistic life. In short, there is just about only one thing which does not find its appointed, i.e. central, place in the psychoanalytic model: social labour. This is where psychoanalysis has been lacking from the very beginning as a potential — and no doubt, moreover, reluctant — candidate for a general theory of the human personality. In its most penetrating forms psychoanalysis is possible, is undoubtedly one of the more essential statements about the concrete individual, so long as one still neglects his most essential aspect. How could a science which in principle neglects labour and therefore the determinant role of the relations of production be the general science of that being who is defined in his very essence by his labour, who is produced in his very essence by these relations of production? All attempts to make psychoanalysis the basis of the scientific theory of personality articulated with Marxism, even the most ingenious and lyrical, come to grief on this radical impossibility. This alone is enough to show that all Freudo-Marxism is a falsification of Marxism and, for that matter, of psychoanalysis too. Psychoanalysis has been built up by considering the human being outside the sphere of labour, not for merely empirical reasons but in principle; and indeed this is why it strives so profoundly to interpret the individual’s life in the language of his childhood. A psychoanalyst very significantly writes: ‘The psychoanalysis of children is psychoanalysis’.268 On the other hand one has to record the constitutional poverty of everything offered to us by psychoanalysis when it is a matter of tackling the problems of adolescence and adulthood in themselves, with everything specific which they contribute to the development of the personality. While it might seem rash to speculate about the future of an existing discipline on the

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basis of a still purely conjectural science, one could even ask the question: as ‘human anatomy contains a key to the anatomy of the ape5,269 will not the scientific psychology of the working adult also contain a key to the psychology of the child who does not yet work, and is what psychoanalysis tells us about him destined to remain definitively autonomous in relation to such a psychology or is it rather in its turn to be articulated with it while enriching it at the same time ? Whatever the answer to this problem may be, and it is obviously impossible to go into it more deeply at this stage of this analysis, one can say that it is the basic attitude with regard to social labour which is the overriding criterion which makes it possible to determine whether a theory, or more simply a psychological view, throws light on the problem of the foundations of a psychology of personality which is truly scientific and which is correctly articulated with Marxism — which comes to the same thing. And if one confronts not only psychoanalysis but the whole of what today professes to be psychology with such a criterion, it must certainly be acknowledged that the result is very poor. After forty years we can unfortunately repeat Politzer’s profound observation with hardly any qualification: ‘We have still not seen a single textbook in general psychology which starts ... off with the precise analysis of the different aspects, factors, conditions of work, occupations, etc.’.270 How can one not see from this that the effective failure to recognise social labour as the basis of the developed human personality is precisely the major reason for which the only directions in which psychological theory has been successful up to now are those which deal with the human being who does not work or in so far as he does not work — child psychology, psychopathology, and the psychology of behaviour considered irrespective of its concrete integration in labour, not to mention animal psychology. Yet it is important to emphasise that even in these conditions the conclusion of all that is best in child psychology and in particular in psychiatry is that even where one does not encounter social labour directly, it is nevertheless, in the broadest sense and albeit precisely by its absence, an irreplaceable element in theoretical understanding and indeed in practical intervention. Nothing enables one to see more clearly either what start oldfashioned ‘popular5 psychology has, in a sense, over advanced, scientific psychology. For if there is one thing to which attention is paid in order to know a man in the best of this popular psychology and in particular in that which has been developed empirically by the workers5 movement, if there is one thing which is taken into account with the greatest care, for example when selecting a cadre, it is his work, the way

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he works, his attitude to work and to the social relations as a whole which are directly linked to this work. Any experienced person with responsibility in the workers’ movement knows that labour in the broadest sense is not only the best measure of what an individual is basically capable of but provides anyone who knows how to interpret it with an X-ray of the structure of his personality, its strengths and weaknesses. In the vast majority of cases modern psychological science does not really seem to understand this, even though it no less than a basic truth. Better still, if one may say so, apart from the works of a small number of researchers whose reflections are based on Marxism or at least inspired by it, the ‘psychology of work’ is conceived with bizarre blindness, as a small speciality on the margins of general psychology or at best is assumed to be one of its particular branches. One can even see the expansion of a ‘science of work’ — ergonomics — which seriously sets itself the problem of throwing light on human behaviour at work starting out language is to say social relation, which gets us much further into the actual essence of man. But why stop after such a good start ? Once it is recognised that the problem of the individual should be stated not in terms of instinct but in terms of social relations, why abstract the relation language from all the other social relations, if not to avoid arriving at the relations of production ? And if linguistics can contribute something to psychology, which is not disputed, why not look with all the more reason at what political economy can contribute to it ? But for psychology to be able to learn from political economy it must also be capable of reading political economy and recognising in it those things which concern it. It is precisely here that one comes up against a seemingly insurmountable difficulty which masks the articulation of the two disciplines and may even make it seem impossible. For in relation to its apparent interest for psychology, i.e. in relation to what Marx called concrete-labour, ‘the expenditure of human labour-power in a special form and with a definite aim’ producing ‘use-values’,271 political economy tells us very little about labour. Generally speaking this aspect of labour does not in itself happen to concern political economy but the natural and technological sciences. And if it does happen to refer to it, as it does in various passages in Capital, it does so only, we recalled earlier, in as much as concrete labour is among the consequences of its economic arguments, since these are not based on the consideration of concrete labour in itself. Marxist political economy begins when the concept of abstract labour, ‘expenditure of labourpower in general’,272 the measure of values, regulator of exchange and further the key to surplus value, is distinguished from and contrasted

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with the concept of concrete labour, the specific expression of a living person’s abilities — i.e. it seems, just at that moment when it simultaneously turns its back on psychology by introducing an aspect of labour as a central element among other things from what a psychology which knows nothing about work tells us about the personality : it really is the world turned upside down. Let us note in passing that it is not only in psychology but in all the human sciences, in the whole of anthropology and even in philosophy, that sympathetic understanding of Marx’s immense work, great as it now is, still often stops short of the main point, the determinant role of social labour and thus of the relations of production. We have thirty years of ideological disputes behind us to prove it: in spite of their merits, which are anyway very uneven, all attempts at an anthropological surpassing of Marxism — based on Sartrian existentialism, Teilhardian spiritualism, Lévi-Straussian structuralism -— rest in the last resort on the enduring pre-Marxist failure to recognise what can be called the reality of the human essence. For a theoretical surpassing obeys strict laws or it is merely a show. However ‘dialectical’, however ‘materialist’, how could Sartrian totalising praxis, Teilhardian neogenesis, Lévi-Straussian structuration succeed in surpassing Marxist anthropology and therefore in setting it on a more fundamental basis when in varying degrees they are determined to ignore the primordial role of the relations of labour in the genesis of social man ? Hence also, their always forced way of making scientific facts, which in themselves are perfectly valuable — psychoanalytic, biological, linguistic facts, for example — play a completely disproportionate role : one has to try hard to fill the huge theoretical void created at the heart of anthropology by the absence of political economy. Moreover if their meaning is not distorted these facts themselves lead back to the economy, to the relations of production. The fact that the unconscious is presented to us as structured like a language, for example, undoubtedly represents a considerable advance compared with the original Freudian conception in which it is structured like a biological organism, for to say which to all appearances has no concrete psychological reality. This is clearly what Marx seems to say when, for example, from the first pages of the Contribution, he emphasises that the labour-time which determines the exchange-value of commodities, ‘is the labour-time of an individual, his labour-time, but only as labour-time common to all; consequently it is quite immaterial whose individual labour-time this is’.273 In the same way, in the Grundrisse, Marx criticises Adam Smith who ‘considers labour psychologically, as to the fun or displeasure it holds

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for the individual5, explaining: Smith’s view of labour as a sacrifice, which incidently correctly expresses the subjective relation of the wage worker to his own activity, still does not lead to what he wants — namely, the determination of value by labour-time. An hour of sacrifice may always be an equal sacrifice for the worker. But the value of commodities in no way depends on his feelings.274

Here we have precisely the line of rupture between the ideological humanism of bourgeois economy and the Marxist conception which proceeds not from the concrete individual but from social relations. But this rupture is obviously the major reason why psychology, even the best disposed toward Marxism, did not see clearly exactly where the theoretical treasures were that — too rarely, moreover — it had been promised in the field of historical materialism and also why, less persevering than the farmer’s children, it has consequently usually given up digging for treasure so that, in M. Dufrenne’s turn of phrase, cthe psychology of work has still not found its Freud’.275 And this also explains why psychological theorising which claims to be Marxist nearly always relies in fact on those texts in which Marx shows the connection between human abilities and the development of the productive forces — such as the 1844 texts on cthe open book of man’s essential powers which constitutes industry’,276 On this path there is every likelihood of ending up with a historico-social conception of psychic functions which remain conceived in themselves in the ordinary psychological way, i.e. basically remaining prisoner to speculative naturalistic illusions about ‘man’, even while the attempt is made to give them the form of historical materialism : this is something, but it is quite clear that we are still a long way from the real solution to the problem. For this solution to become possible, for psychology actually to discover the huge wealth of what Marxist political economy can in fact contribute to it, it must be understood that far from being just beyond the boundaries of psychology, the distinction, the dialectical opposition between concrete and abstract labour is, on the contrary, the startingpoint from which all investigations into the personality can really begin. Indeed, how could abstract as opposed to concrete labour only concern the economist and not at all the psychologist if it is really true, as Marx very clearly points out in Capital for example, that ‘strictly speaking, there are not two sorts of labour in the commodity’277 — nor, it goes without saying, in the man who labours either — but that concrete and abstract labour are two sides of the same labour which is opposed to itself. How could the essential unity of these two

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contradictory aspects of labour exist in the commodity but not in the personality of the producer ? The concept of abstract labour as such also corresponds to a concrete psychological reality : this is the solution to the riddle. Abstract labour is not psychological in so far as it is supposed that psychology is identical with the science of the concrete aspects of individual behaviour and with them alone. But it is this identification which does not correspond to the reality of individual life, which abstracts from everything in it whereby it is engaged in its very essence with social relations. If one does not understand this, if one does not grasp that, far from concerning only political economy the contradiction between the two aspects of labour is at the very root of man living and working in the conditions of this economy and consequently is at the root of his personality — in short, if, to give an elementary example, one sees in a man’s occupational activities only the acts of which this labour concretely consists (which is obviously the only thing one can investigate in a psychology laboratory) but not at the same time and contradictorily this labour as corresponding with a wage (and with a profit for the capitalist), as if this second aspect ought to interest the economist but remain irrelevant to the study of the personality — then one has lost every chance from the very outset of founding a psychology which, in the words of the 1844 Manuscripts, is truly objective and ‘rich in content5, a psychology of personality articulated with Marxism. For anyone who has set out in this way in search of such a psychology ‘the open book of man’s essential powers’ and principal human contradictions seems very thin. The real meaning of the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach escapes : instead of being understood as the essence of man social relations assume the appearance of a mere external expression of individuality — its ‘interaction with the environment5 — and needs, abilities, activities, simply become natural functions open to external social conditioning: albeit between historicist banks, psychological naturalism comes flooding in. The fetishism of psychic faculties reigns supreme. The end result is that the ‘psychology of work5 ceases to appear as having a central importance and in the end evokes only ‘ one word — “need55 — vulgar need5.278 Where is the Marxism in all that ? If, on the contrary, one understands that in given economic conditions man’s concrete social labour is intrinsically a bearer of its opposite, abstract labour, which can obviously not be taken for a ‘natural faculty5 nor studied as such in any laboratory but overtly refers to social relations, the social division of labour, the structures and contradictions characteristic of the corresponding social formation, then the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach can become an effective psychological truth ; beyond their biological conditions, which there is no question of

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overlooking, all psychic activities are seen to be a product of social relations in their very essence and also therefore in the internal determinism of their development. The ideological illusion on which psychological naturalism rests, vanishes. At the same time one can see working hypotheses abounding on all points of the Marxist horizon, opening up research prospects in all quarters of real life. What Marx writes about commodity fetishism, for example, can be seen as the economic side of a general theory of objective social illusions, the psychological side of which must be constituted by the analysis of the fetishism of the personality and its functions. The whole dialectic of the objective contradictions of social labour in Capital, the fully-developed economic theory of that which was alluded to by the adolescent philosophy of alienation, can be seen to be the means of constructing the fully-developed psychological theory of the dialectic of contradictions within the personality. Like the categories of bourgeois political economy Expressing with social validity the conditions and relations of a definite, historically determined mode of production’ which, Marx says, are destined to vanish in Ether forms of production’,279 the categories of the bourgeois conception of the human personality — primacy of needs, innate inequality of abilities, opposition of mediocrity and genius, etc. — are divested of their speculative character of natural eternity and reveal their essential historical transitoriness. Psychological theory catches sight of its meeting point with the stirring human perspectives of communism. In a word, from this one brief example, it seems one can see beginning a real science of personality. Of course, at the same time as one can see working hypotheses and research prospects one can also see difficulties and objections abounding. It will be said right away, for example, that capitalist social relations are not the only thing in the vast human world and therefore in psychology — that labour assuming the abstract form is not the only thing even within capitalist social relations — and above all that while one may grant that labour is important in the life of individuals, it is absurd to want to reduce man to it — etc. These objections, and others as well, will be gone into in their turn, at least within the limits of what is possible in this book which is not at all an extensive treatise but simply an essay. Nevertheless, even at the level of what in this chapter are still only preliminary remarks, I wish to point out that these objections are similar to the ones to which historical materialism itself has never ceased to be exposed, coming from those who have not understood it or who challenge its basis. Historical materialism has been and still is accused of resting on an improper generalisation of characteristics peculiar to

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capitalism,280 of merely conveying a much too narrow view of social relations in capitalism itself, and above all of mechanically reducing all the complexity of social life simply to productive labour, simply to economic considerations. In actual fact, if one divests them of their often naive form, these objections do correspond to real problems, but these are problems which really only find their solution within historical materialism itself. And this is also true of the objections just alluded to against the principle that was outlined of a psychology of personality which is articulated with historical materialism. The fact that not all human personalities are developed within capitalist social relations does not constitute an objection to the views presented here but, quite on the contrary, the starting-point of an enquiry which promises to be exceptionally fruitful, and for which one finds invaluable suggestions precisely in Marx, from The German Ideology through the 1857-59 economic works to Capital : the enquiry into the historical transformations of the structures and laws of development of human personalities in conjunction with the transformations of social relations, an enquiry of theoretical and practical interest of the first order which obviously only a psychology thus conceived could launch in an essential way. The fact that there are activities even within capitalist social relations which do not — or not directly — take the abstract form analysed in Capital, on the other hand, does not constitute any more of an objection but, on the contrary, an inducement to reflect on the variety of forms which activities, and consequently the contradictions in human personalities, assume in relation to the diversity of social relations and aspects of the division of labour — including, for example, domestic labour, without the objective investigation of which every conception of the family and as a result every theory of personality, as far as the latter is constituted in familial relations, is fundamentally unsound. Here again, the predictable fruitfulness of this psychological theorising can be gauged by the breadth and variety of the new problems which it makes it possible to pose, and perhaps to solve.) Finally, it is obvious in a sense that one ought not to reduce the whole wealth of aspects of the human personality to the single dimension of social labour, therefore to social relations of production: one will see later on that such a reduction is no more implied in the act of grounding the psychology of personality on the analysis of relations of social labour than the reduction of the whole wealth of aspects of social life to the economic base alone is implied by the bases of historical materialism. But it is amusing to see psychology guarding itself against the fearful risks of an ‘over-estimate of the role of labour’ when the real state of

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affairs today consists of an extraordinary and almost universal failure to recognise anything of what only the scientific analysis of the relations of social labour can contribute it. This misrecognition is so much a part of what ends up by appearing to us at present as the defmitive and permanent psychology that, to give only one example, what Makarenko wrote on the subject of children, in which one often finds the simplicity of real depth, concerning the vital relations between their play and labour or the primary7 role of the parents’ practical attitude to social labour in the development of their relations with their children, and in the development of the children themselves — in short, everything which the central standpoint of labour can make visible as far as concerns the actual bases of the personality of an individual who does not yet work but who none the less lives in a world in which labour is the real basis in every respect, all this today remains more or less entirely hidden from view by psychoanalysis — when it is not, to a far less degree, by characterology or biotypology — to such an extent that the mere project of also throwing light on the infantile development of personality through the analysis of labour and its relations runs the risk of being accused straight away of ‘overestimating the role of labour’. It is a fact that history only truly became a science on the basis of the theoretical revolution carried out by Marx with the foundation of the science of the relations of production. Is it not necessary for the psychology of personality in search of its adulthood to reflect very seriously on this? Whatever one thinks of these replies to some of the immediately possible objections, it is quite clear that the idea of a psychology of personality articulated with historical materialism as it is outlined here is open to critical scrutiny like any other. But simple incomprehension can prove nothing against the consistency and importance of the research programme which it seems to indicate. Moreover, after all these introductory reflections on the site and form of the articulation between psychology and Marxism, it is time to proceed to proofs by now tackling the crucial problem head on : that of the definition of a fully-developed scientific psychology of personality.

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NOTES — CHAPTER II 1

K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Collected Works,

2

Vol. 3, p. 337F. Engels, ‘Ludwig Feuerbach’, Selected Works, Vol. 3, p. 360.

3 4

K. Marx, op. cit., pp. 302-3. The following pages are highly indebted to the contribution of all those who participated in the highly productive debates which developed around the problems of humanism, first in La Nouvelle Critique (No.’s 164—172, from March 1965 to February 1966) and then in the presence of the Political Bureau of the French Communist Party at the communist philosophers’ days of study at Choisy-le-Roi (January 1966) and the Central Committee’s Argenteuil session (cf. Cahiers du Communisme, May—June 1966).

5

F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, p. 336.

6

K. Marx, op. cit., p. 279.

7 8

Ibid, p. 281. The same point of view still appears in the autumn of 1844 in The Holy Family, for example : ‘ Once man is recognised as the essence, the basis of all human activity and situations ... ’, Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 93. Not recognising this precise point in numerous pages which he has devoted to the problem of the relations between Marxism and humanism for nearly ten

9

years, Roger Garaudy has not managed to provide a convincing solution to it. In his own words he has never really given up seeing in the 1844 Manuscripts the ‘starting-point’ of Marx’s thought (‘Recherches sur la paupérisation’. Cahiers du Communisme, Jan. 1961, p. 14), ‘the crucial stage’ in the development of Marxist theory (‘A propos des Manuscrits de 1844 de Marx’, Cahiers du Communisme, March 1963, p. 112) — an untenable position in the light of an objective investigation of the texts and facts as a whole. The 1844 Manuscripts mark an important moment in Marx’s thought and it is certain that more than one theme in this work of Marx’s youth is re-worked in the mature works, including the theme of alienation. But it is no less certain that if there is a crucial stage in the long genesis of Marxism it is, as Marx and Engels themselves pointed out, that of the Theses on Feuerbach and The German Ideology in 1845—6. For there is not only ‘an adaptation of speculative concepts’ in these texts and based on them, as Roger Garaudy maintains (Peut-on être communiste aujourd’hui?, p. 73), but a real reversal of perspectives, a theoretical revolution which for the first time directly prepares for the great work of Marx’s maturity. To emphasise this untenable aspect (among others) in the interpretation of Marxism which Roger Garaudy has developed since 1959, is not to degenerate into a minor dispute of Marxological erudition : it is the very meaning of mature Marxism which is involved here. For the theoretical revolution in 1845-6 systematically underestimated by Roger Garaudy turns on a decisive point : the conception of man. Until 1844 the human essence, the historico-social nature of which, linked with labour, Marx had already clearly seen, was still essentially conceived in the form of ‘species man’ i.e. as inherent in a still abstract individual, and therefore in a pre-scientific form. It is no accident if Marx had still not elucidated the most basic concepts and principles of political economy and scientific socialism at this stage in his thought, whereas after the Theses on Feuerbach and The German Ideology he is immediately ready to write The Poverty of Philosophy, Wage Labour and Capital and the Manifesto, ‘these first works of mature Marxism’ in Lenin’s unfaltering judgement in The State

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and Revolution. Of what does this theoretical revolution in the conception of man in 1845-6 therefore consist? Essentially, in the discovery of immense significance which The German Ideology develops at length and which is first registered in the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach, the real point at which the birth of the Marxist theory of man strictly speaking is registered : ‘The human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations’. (The German Ideology, p. 652). This means that men’s being, their historically concrete ‘humanity’, in no wise has its seat or its origin directly in human individuality considered in general but rather, in the unequivocal remark in The German Ideology, in ‘this sum of productive forces, capital funds and social forms of intercourse, which every individual and generation finds in existence as something given’ (The German Ideology, p. 50) — above all, in other words, in the economic development of society. The 6th Thesis therefore establishes a fundamental distinction between the objective human essence and the form of individuality, and asserts the basically subordinate character of individuality with regard to the objective social basis. This quite clearly entails huge theoretical consequences. All philosophicohumanist speculation about ‘man’ in general is invalidated for good : to speak of ‘man’ in the singular, save in concrete cases, is a mystification. Alienation, a philosophical term in which the most heterogeneous phenomena were confused in 1844, resolves itself into distinct, precise processes engendered by objective social relations, the science of which is to replace hollow phrases about the human essence. Human history appears like a process of natural history: its actors are most certainly men themselves, but men produced in and by social relations ‘whose creature he (the individual) socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them’ (Capital, Vol. 1, p. 10). This leads to an entirely new conception of freedom, which is no longer an abstract power of man in general but a concrete historico-social result, a determinate effect of the stage reached in the development of society. This grounds revolutionary theory and scientific socialism, in a materialist way, in class analysis. It is this whole, cast like a single block of steel, in Lenin’s image, which gradually breaks up in Roger Garaudy’s works. Rightly anxious to correct the dogmatic and scientistic distortion of Marxist philosophy which particularly marked his works before 1956, he thought he could succeed through a return to humanism. But while he is certainly not wrong to dispute vehemently that Marxism is ‘theoretical antihumanism’, in a sense which will be specified further on, his argument is no better because it is developed from an even less acceptable view of Marxist humanism which is reduced to certain of its pre-scientific aspects of 1844 and which is, moreover, spiritualistically distorted. It is highly noteworthy in this respect that in his work, together with his persistent underestimation of the theoretical revolution of 1845—6, we find that this key statement of Marxism, the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach has been regularly replaced for some years by a profoundly different imaginary text, although quoted off¬ handedly between inverted commas as if it were the real text. While the 6th Thesis says that ‘in its reality it [the human essence] is the ensemble of the social relations’, in Roger Garaudy this becomes ‘the individual is the sum total of his social relationships’ (Cf. Marxism in the Twentieth Century, p. 68 and pp. 96, 142, 148, 150). Although I have called this indefensible textual substitution to his notice, Roger Garaudy persists in attributing this text to Marx however foreign it is both to the letter and to the spirit of the 6th Thesis. (Cf. Peut-on être

i6o

Human personality and historical materialism communiste aujourd’hui ?, pp. 245 and 288. On p. 204, on the other hand, the real text is reinstated but followed by a commentary which still overtly relates to the imaginary text.) It ought to be obvious, however, that such lack of rigour leaves no chance of correctly solving the highly exacting problems which are involved here. For Marxism is a science or it does not exist. In itself Roger Garaudy’s pseudo-6th Thesis is certainly not without truth. The German Ideology, for example, develops the idea several times that ‘the real intellectual wealth of the individual depends entirely on the wealth of his real connections’ (p. 49), sketching a Marxist theory of individuality which it is the aim of the whole of present book to clarify and develop. But precisely because Marx himself thinks the problems of individuality on the basis of the real 6th Thesis, i.e. on the basis of historical materialism, his whole effort in The German Ideology and elsewhere aims to show that these ‘connections’ of individuals are themselves determined by objective social relations: ‘The individuals ... find their conditions of life predestined, and have their position in life and their personal development assigned to them by their class, become subsumed under it’ (p. 69). Roger Garaudy’s expression, on the other hand, which replaces the materialist definition of the human essence by a mere relational conception of the individual, brings us back from the science of history to a philosophy of‘intersubjectivity’ which, after all, is banal and which, detached from a materialist basis, is perfectly acceptable to a spiritualist and in fact is inevitably led into spiritualism. Indeed, misrecognising the crucial importance of the distinction between human essence and individuality, Roger Garaudy from now on continually revives the philosophico-humanist myth of ‘man’ in general, the ‘subject of history’ (Peut-on être communiste aujourd’hui?, p. 95); he again assigns to man essential human properties from now on inevitably conceived abstractly (‘the creative project’, ‘dialectical surpassing’, etc.) and above all, once again tummg the relations between man and social relations on their head, again setting up typically idealist views against historical materialism, he confers on ‘man’ a transcendental freedom: ‘man’ is ‘not reducible’ to the social relations which ‘condition’ him (pp. 46, 105, 397), he is ‘transcendant’ with regard ‘to society and his own history’ (p. 379); it is he who ‘produces’ the social relations (p. 105) and through him that ‘the meaning of history originates’ (p. 298). In a word, ‘specifically human activity [is] the act of creating values’ (p. 232); ‘man’ is ‘a creator in the image of God’ (p. 378). At the extreme, every difference between Marxism and spiritualism is obliterated. At the same time it is the class basis of communist politics which is directly at stake in this reconversion of scientific socialism into philosophical humanism. In the autobiography with which his book Peut-on être communiste aujourd’hui? begins, Roger Garaudy reveals certain personal motivations for this spiritualistic attraction to which he never stops subjecting Marxism. What he now feverishly strives after from book to book is the point where what he calls ‘the subjective moment’ ot the communists’ historical initiative and fight might link up with the Christian faith (p. 388) and the message of Jesus (p. 379), to which he remains deeply sympathetic. One may be moved by such a search. But one cannot help but see that it leads him constantly to slide from dialogue between men and from a confrontation of ‘values’ to the search for an impossible convergence of doctrines (Are there really ‘irreducible philosophical differences’ between Marxists and Christians? he asks, p. 386) which in actual fact, from the theoretical and practical point of view, beyond liberties with texts,

Notes

161

inexorably means a fundamental deformation of Marxism. For while it is a correct expression of Marxism to pursue a policy of making friendly overtures, Marxism is none the less unwilling to accept this spiritualistic ‘addition of soul’ with which one claims to enrich it. Anyone wishing ‘to save’ the soul of Marxism destroys it.

10

What, in my opinion, must indeed be called the impasse of Roger Garaudy’s enterprise, is one proof among many others that no genuine understanding of Marxism is possible if one remains or returns, to however small an extent, back beyond the theoretical revolution which it brought about. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 10.

11

K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 22.

12

Ibid, p. 20. Cf. The German Ideology, where this work of 1843 is regarded as indicating the way towards the materialist conception of the world, albeit using a traditional philosophical conceptualisation.

13 14 15

K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence (1934), p. 217. If the word may be allowed.

l6 17 l8 19 20

21 22

23

24 25 26

27

V. I. Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, Collected Works. Vol. 38, p. 30. Manuscrits de 1844, Paris, 1968, E. Bottigelli’s Foreword, p. lxix. Economic and philosophic manuscripts, p. 323 ; The German Ideology, p. 248 ; Contribution à la Critique (1968), p. 203; Capital, Vol. 1, p. 132. Capital, Vol. 1, p. 592; Economic and philosophic manuscripts, p. 310E Capital, Vol. 1, pp. 72, 640 ; Economic and philosophic manuscripts, p. 270L K. Marx, Selected Correspondence (1965), p. 35. K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 515. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 714. Ibid, pp. 487-8. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, p. 820. F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 2, p. 152. K. Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Part 2, p. 118. This is why in spite of its merits the solution to the problem of the relations between Marxism and humanism put forward by Louis Althusser does not seem acceptable. Louis Althusser’s thesis is that from 1845 onwards Marx ‘broke radically’ (For Marx, p. 227) with the problematic of ‘man’, ‘the human essence’, and therefore with humanism, irrevocably identified from that time onwards as ideology. ‘A knowledge of the ensemble of social relations is only possible on condition that we do completely without the theoretical services of the concept of man .... In fact, this concept seems to me to be useless from a scientific viewpoint’ (For Marx, p. 243). The problematic of mature Marxism emigrated to quite a different place marked out by quite different concepts, those of historical materialism. This is why in Louis Althusser’s opinion ‘one can and must speak openly of Marx’s theoretical anti-humanism’ (For Marx, p. 229). ‘Theoretical anti-humanism is the precondition for Marxist philosophy’ (Cf. For Marx, p. 231). The work done by Louis Althusser and his comrades in this direction has contributed a great deal to elucidating two essential points which one can consider to be definitely established and without which there can be no serious Marxist research: the fact that in 1845-6 a crucial revolution took place in Marx’s conception of man and social relations, and the fact that this revolution invalidates philosophical humanism for good. At the same time, Louis Althusser has demonstrated the mechanism of philosophico-humamst distortions of Marxism :

162

Human personality and historical materialism Once this human nature has been endowed with the qualities of ‘concrete’ historicity, it becomes possible to avoid the abstraction and fixity of theological or ethical anthropologies ... History then becomes the transformation of a human nature, which remains the real subject of the history which transforms it. As a result, history has been introduced into human nature, making men the contemporaries of the historical effects whose subjects they are, but — and this is absolutely decisive — the relations of production, political and ideological social relations, have been reduced to historicised ‘human relations’, i.e. to inter-human, intersubjective relations. This is the favourite terrain of historicist humanism. And what is its great advantage? The fact that Marx is restored to the stream of an ideology born in the eighteenth century; credit for the originality of a revolutionary theoretical rupture is taken from him, he is often even made acceptable to “modern” forms of cultural anthropology and so on. Is there anyone today who does not invoke this historicist humanism, in the genuine belief that he is appealing to Marx, whereas such an ideology takes us away from Marx? (Reading Capital, p. 140).

These analyses are incontrovertible. Are the works of Louis Althusser and his comrades still so convincing when they regard all humanism as necessarily philosophical and all use of the concept of man as ideological and assert that this rupture leads Marx to theoretical antihumanism, as when they describe the birth of Marxism itself by the rupture with philosophical humanism ? It is here that more than one Marxist declares his disagreement. And not without reason. For to be able to uphold that Marx, a humanist in 1844, absolutely stopped being one from the turning point of 1845-6, this theoretical revolution has to be described by the one-sided and therefore non-dialectical concept of the break which, contrary to well-established facts, assumes that nothing of the previous formulations was conserved in this surpassing. This assumption immediately clashes with the striking presence of the concept of man and the theory of the historical flowering of individuals in The German Ideology. Brushing aside the idea in principle and without careful investigation that it might be a question here of a totally new sort of anthropology and humanism, not philosophical in the speculative sense of the term, but scientific, Louis Althusser therefore maintains that only temporary ideological survivals are to be seen there (‘It is impossible to break with a theoretical past at one blow’, For Marx, p. 36) and that The German Ideology as well as the Theses on Feuerbach must be classed as equivocal, ambiguous ‘works of the break’, raising ‘delicate problems of interpretation’ (For Marx, p. 36); i.e. strictly speaking the ‘break’ is not a break but rather — quite a strange concept — a ‘transition-break’ (For Marx, p. 244).Even if one accepts these hypotheses as far as The German Ideology is concerned, what is their value in relation to those works of Marx which unquestionably belong to the mature period and which all, without exception, most clearly and invariably contain elements of what Engels in Ludwig Feuerbach calls ‘the science of real men and their historical development’? This is the case, for example, with the large economic manuscript of 1857-58 translated into English in 1973 under the title Grundrisse — Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft) which on its own, in my opinion, constitutes a decisive objection against the antihumanist interpretation of mature Marxism. Of course one can explain Louis Althusser’s total silence concerning the Grundnsse by the fact that it was translated into French (in 1967) after his works on the problem of humanism. But the other economic texts of 1857-59, the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, the original version of the Contribution and the

Notes

163

1857 Introduction have been translated for a long time. To give only one example, the Introduction, which Louis Althusser unhesitatingly classes among the mature works and rightly regards as fundamental theoretically (‘The third chapter of the 1857 Introduction can rightly be regarded as the Discourse on Method of the new philosophy founded by Marx’, (Reading Capital, p. 86), opens with an elucidation of the concept of the individual and, unthinkably from the point of view of antihumanism, even puts forward a quite remarkable definition of man: ‘The human being is in the most literal sense açùoY ttoAitiicoy [a political animal], not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society’ (Grundnsse, p. 84). Moreover the whole of the Introduction contains materials of primary importance for elaborating a scientific theory of human individuality and its development in history. But there is still more : as we have already seen through a few quotations, and as I will show in detail further on, there is to be found once more in a central position and clearly outlined in Capital a perfectly coherent conception of man in the non-speculative, historical-materialist sense of the term which founds a scientific anthropology — a scientific humanism. It is therefore obviously impossible to maintain that any concept of man and any humanist concern are only temporary survivals of pre-Marxism which one occasionally comes across for the last time in the ‘works of the break’ in 1845-6 : on the contrary, there is a permanent and essential component of mature Marxism here. This being so, in order to maintain against all-comers that this none the less depends on speculative illusion, one is compelled to make one more step along the path of arbitrariness and to assume, in short, that the Young Marx never stopped haunting the mature Marx — in other words that the theoretical revolution from which scientific socialism emerged was never totally clearly and coherently thought in Marx’s work itself. In short Marx never succeeded in fully understanding Marxism. And this is why there should be no hesitation in practicising on Capital itself what Louis Althusser calls a ‘symptomatic reading’, i.e. a reading which seeks to ‘divulge the undivulged event in the text it reads’ (.Reading Capital, p. 28). Now even though one can in fact accept in principle that a man who accomplishes a brilliant theoretical discovery remains prisoner on secondary points or in method to the very ideological limits which he more than anyone has been instrumental in surpassing, how can one fail to see just how far this critical principle is from the unacceptable arbitrariness which consists in asserting that Marx did not understand himself in what was quite simply the most central and crucial aspect of his major discovery, historical materialism ? In other words, one passes surrepticiously from the break which was initially presented to us as a real historical turning point in Marx’s thought, separating a still philosophical ‘before’ and a fully scientific ‘after’, to a demarcation among the texts of mature Marxism itself, which the antihumanist interpreter authorises himself to effect, between those texts which he agrees with and those which he rejects as being humanist. Thus in the writing of Jacques Rancière the antihumanist division of Marxism forcefully preaches to Marx the empiricist who ‘never rigorously thought the differences between his discourse and the anthropological discourse of the Young Marx’ and ‘never really grasped and conceptualised this difference’ (Lire Le Capital, I, p. 198). In a word, ‘anthropology has no place in Capital except the one kept for it by relapses in Marx’s discourse’ (ibid, p. 196). But the problem of knowing whether what Rancière tells us are Marx’s mistakes are not in actual fact mistakes in Rancière’s reading of Marx remains entirely open. This is the extreme ambiguity of a ‘symptomatic’ reading : does it not run the risk in the last resort of being much more symptomatic of the misreadings of the reader than of those of the writer ?

164

Human personality and historical materialism

Furthermore, this very arbitrariness does not get us out of the difficulty but on the contrary irretrievably drives us back into an ultimate impasse. In fact, if, in contrast to the historically heterogeneous Marxism of Marx, symptomatically refined Marxism rules out any use of the concept of man and therefore any theoretical connection between social relations and real men, it is the class struggle and therefore Marxism in its entirety which becomes well and truly incomprehensible. This is the crucial point in this question of theoretical antihumanism. The whole of Marx’s scientific socialism rests on the demonstration of the historically necessary nature of the revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism. Why is this transition historically necessary — in other words, why is it historically necessary for men, proletarians, to make the revolution ? As we know, Marx’s reply is given precisely in the most famous pages of the Manifesto : this necessity is due to the fact that ‘the bourgoisie ... produces ... its own grave¬ diggers’; ‘not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians’ (Selected Works, Vol. 1, pp. 119 and 114). Capitalist exploitation literally increasingly makes the existence of the proletariat impossible: this is why the latter which, ‘with its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie’, ‘cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air’ (ibid, pp. 115 and 118). Thus the collapse of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat are ‘equally inevitable’ (ibid, p. 119). One can see right away that this fundamental demonstration is the direct outgrowth of analyses in The German Ideology establishing that ‘in order to assert themselves as individuals, the proletarians must abolish their own former condition of existence’ and ‘abolish the State’ (p. 95. Cf. also pp. 82, 313 and 413 — ‘At the present time individuals must abolish private property’, p. 483). This thesis which indissolubly links the concept of man to concepts of historical materialism never stopped being the backbone of Marxism up to the famous Chapter XXXII of Capital, Vol. I. on ‘The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation’, which plunges the antihumanist interpretation into a deeply revealing disarray because in it Marx shows that the necessity for the expropriation of the expropriators results from the ‘action of the immanent laws of capitalist production itself’, the effect of which is to increase ‘the misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplines.’ (Capital, Vol. 1, p. 763.) The existence of a basic theoretical correspondence between the science of social relations and the science of real men, between historical materialism and scientific anthropology, is therefore necessarily inscribed at the heart of Marxism and the imperative task for us is to interpret and develop it correctly. The arbitrary antihumanist demarcation, on the contrary', logically aims to bring into questionalready discernable, for example, in Etienne Balibar (cf. ‘On the Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism’, Reading Capital, Part 3): having established first that in Marx ‘the concept of “men” thus constitutes a real point where the utterance slips away towards the regions of philosophical or commonplace ideology’ (Reading Capital, p. 208) and having, with extracts cut out of Capital, constructed a discourse which ‘does away with the problem of the theory of men as the common support of all social relations and the problem of their individuality’ (Lire Le Capital, II, p. 251 ; omitted from the English edition), he is compelled of course to state that the internal necessity of historical development and the transition to socialism becomes highly problematical. ‘It is impassible to propose solutions without further and deeper investigation’ (Reading Capital, p. 308) — even when it is precisely the solution of this problem by Marx which is the basis of Marxism.

Notes

165

Based on an attempt at structuralist and antihumanist reinterpretation of Capital, a closely related logic led Maurice Godelier (Cf. ‘System, Structure and Contradiction in Capital’, Socialist Register, 1967) to a deep-seated deformation of historical and dialectical materialism (cf. L. Sève, ‘Méthode structurale et méthode dialectique’, La Pensée, 1967. One is therefore entitled to assert that far from producing a final rigorous reading of Marx beyond Marx himself as it claims, the theoretical antihumanist interpretation in the sense that has just been understood, actually constitutes a contamination of Marxism by currents of thought which are foreign to it, in particular, in the work of Maurice Godelier, by structuralism, such as one finds especially in LéviStrauss. It is known that the essential feature of Lévi-Strauss’ work is the idea that the ultimate secret of human affairs lies not at all in social infrastructures in the Marxist sense, i.e. in necessary relations into which men enter in the production of material goods, but in impersonal and unconscious structures of the mind. Basically it is therefore a case of idealism, even if here or there Lévi-Strauss tries to give it a materialist appearance by suggesting that the structures of the mind may themselves have their foundation in structures of the brain, indeed of matter itself. Antihumanism is the logical corollary of this structuralism because, these ultimate structures normally remaining unconscious and having no ‘human form’, the meaning which men give their history is necessarily illusory and the task of the science which one constructs is not to constitute man but to dissolve him. One can see very clearly in such work how theoretical antihumanism is inseparable from an anthropological idealism and historical scepticism. But this being so, the belief that one could put forward a more authentic reading of Marxism based on structuralism belongs to those epistemological chimeras which the pressure of the dominant ideology never stops creating around Marxism. Besides, looking at it more closely, Louis Althusser for his part proves cautious in handling theoretical antihumanism. While he also ‘does away with’ the concept of man, he notes however that what he calls the ‘false problem’ of the ‘role of the individual in history’ is nevertheless an ‘index to a true problem ... the problem of the concept of the historical forms of existence of individuality’ (Reading Capital, pp. 111-12), which can be understood in several ways and in fact, dealing with consumption and needs, he writes that this ‘leads on to the distribution of men into social classes, which then become the “real” subjects (in so far as that term is applicable) of the production process’ and that ‘the idea of an anthropology, if it is possible at all, must first take into consideration the economic (non-anthropological) definition of those “needs” ’ (Reading Capital, p. 167). Thus, for Louis Althusser, all Marxist anthropology is not impossible. I think this means that as far as he is concerned in Reading Capital, he did not absolutely clearly and irrevocably choose between two quite different interpretations of theoretical antihumanism formulated in his earlier works and taken up again in For Marx-, a positive interpretation in which Marxism is a theoretical antihumanism, theoretical antihumanism constituting the answer of Marxism to the problem of ‘man’ — an interpretation the logic of which I have shown leads inexorably out of Marxism — and a merely negative interpretation in which Marxism is not a theoretical antihumanism, which presupposes the radical critique of theoretical humanism but without this yet constituting the Marxist solution to the problem of ‘man’. One can interpret certain passages in For Marx in this sense, for example the one in which theoretical ^antihumanism is merely described as a ‘precondition’ (For Marx, p. 231) for Marxist philosophy.-This latter interpretation is far from giving rise to such radical objections as the former one and it might even be accepted entirely on condition of a strict and univocal inventory of what is rejected under the name of theoretical humanism; for we

166

Human personality and historical materialism

have seen that it is absolutely true and of the utmost importance that mature Marxism rests on an irrevocable rupture with speculative, abstract, philosophical humanism, i.e. in the perfectly clear formulations from The German Ideology, with the substitution of ‘abstract man’ for ‘really existing active men’ in ‘their given social connection ... their existing conditions of life, which have made them what they are’ {The German Ideology, p. 58. Cf. also pp. 84, 196, 250, etc.). Unfortunately this inventory, the accuracy of which decides everything, is not drawn up by Louis Althusser strictly enough. The 6th Thesis on Feuerbach is still the touchstone here. Indeed we read in the only passage in For Marx in which it is dealt with directly : ‘The Sixth Thesis on Feuerbach goes so far as to say that the non¬ abstract “man” is the ensemble of the social relations’ {For Marx, pp. 242-3). No. If one really wants to take this text as it is, the 6th Thesis absolutely does not say that nonabstract ‘man’ but that ‘the human essence ... in its reality’ is the ensemble of social relations. The difference is fundamentally important. In fact the statement ‘nonabstract man (therefore the concrete individual?) is the ensemble of social relations’ is strictly speaking without any meaning. Contrary to Marx, this is indeed what Louis Althusser concluded from the text of his pseudo-6th Thesis: ‘Now if we take this phrase literally as an adequate definition it means nothing at all’ — from which he deduces ‘the inadequacy of the concept of man to its definition’ {For Marx, p. 243) and denies the concept any scientific character. After this distortion of the 6th Thesis which is turned into a sort of nonsense and contrary to its spirit and letter, and compelled to corroborate a non-correspondence between anthropological concepts and the concepts of historical materialism even though, on the contrary, it proves their scientific connection, the slide into positive theoretical antihumanism, with all the consequences which this involves, becomes difficult to avoid. Let us now take the 6th Thesis as we find it. What does it say ? Very clearly this : as in Feuerbach’s case, philosophical humanism only conceives the human essence abstractly, i.e. as an ensemble of universal characteristics which it abstracts without historical criticism from real individuals in bourgeois society. Concrete men therefore ought necessarily to be conceived as specimens of a hypostatised ‘genus’, a metaphysical entity ‘which merely naturally unites the many individuals’. This is the whole mistake. For ‘the human essence [and not “man” !] is no abstraction inherent in each single individual ... in its reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations’ {The German Ideology, p. 652). Thus, according to the 6th Thesis and contrary to what Louis Althusser writes, the human essence is quite real-, what is rejected at this crucial stage of the birth of mature Marxism is not at all the concept of human essence but abstract understanding of this concept, replaced at the same time by further, historical, scientific, concrete understanding of the human essence : the ensemble of social relations. The German Ideology repeats it without any ambiguity: ‘This sum of productive forces, capital funds and social forms of intercourse, which every individual and generation finds in existence as something given, is the real basis of what the philosophers have conceived as “substance” and “essence of man” ’ (p. 50 ; emphasis added). Once this actual basis is identified, in other words once the human essence is put back on its feet, transformed in the historical materialist manner, it finally becomes possible to conceive scientifically the existence of individuals. Until now the concept of real man always more or less referred to the abstract human essence; hence the insu-mountable incompatibility between historical materialism and this conception of man: in this sense Marxism is indeed the indomitable theoretical adversary of speculative humanism (which is different

from ‘theoretical antihumanism’,

an

Notes

167

intrinsically ambiguous formulation which in my opinion it is advisable to abandon). Now the concept of real man, on the contrary, refers immediately to the science of social relations which is its true basis, and this opens the way on this basis to the construction of a theory of individuality, a science of personality articulated with historical materialism : a huge task for which Marx’s work offers us materials of primary importance but which none the less is still before us. It is this which the distortion of the 6th Thesis criticised above both misrecognises and masks : rejecting the problematic of man and of humanism even when Marx raises it to a scientific level for the first time, it permits an antihumanist reduction of Marxism which misrecognises it and which decrees for ever ideological an exceptionally rich area of investigation the prospecting of which Marxism precisely make makes possible. At the same time, since it is unable to satisfy all those who, although unable to identify its status, nevertheless indeed see in Marx the elements of a non-speculative humanism, it throws them back to the impasse of the philosophico-humanist interpretation. The converse is also true. We must get out of this vicious circle. And it must be pointed out that we have no chance of getting out of it through the search for a ‘third road’, i.e. an eclectic compromise between speculative humanism and theoretical antihumanism. After the foregoing it is sufficiently clear that such a ‘search’ would fail straight away to measure up to criticism. At all events, it has nothing to do with the solution which will be put forward here. One must first convince oneself that even if it often happens to border on the truth — which may create illusions — speculative humanism still has no chance of ever arriving at it, because it is separated from it by the gulf of complete lack of understanding: nothing can relieve the necessity of breaking with it as Marx, the first to do so, did in 1845-46, thereby founding a new conception of the world. But this rupture demands the utmost theoretical vigilance, for all the following literally depends on it. The great service rendered by Louis Althusser to contemporary Marxist thought is to have thrown this demand into totally new relief; but he himself has still not sufficiently put it into practice. It is therefore a question of taking up again from the very beginning an effort which is correct in principle in order to carry it through to the end. This obviously presupposes the patience to pay to what may appear to be minutiae all the attention that is required by the most vital problems. Marx forewarned us in the Preface to the first German edition of Capital-, while warning the reader that ‘every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences’, he was determined that his work should be ‘as much as it was possible popularised’; in connection with the value-form of the commodity he says, ‘To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy’ (Capital, Vol. 1, p. 8). 28 K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 93. Analyses of a similar orientation are literally to be found throughout the work, in particular pp. 58-59, 69, 84,195-6, 252-56, 265, 317, 473-76, 482, 483-

29 30

Ibid, pp. 58—59 Ibid, pp. 38, 84, 256.

31

Ibid, p. 38.

32

Ibid, p. 255.

33 34 35

Ibid, p. 54Ibid, p. 91. Ibid, p. 30.

36

Ibid, p. 110.

37 38

Ibid, p. 254. Ibid, p. 652.

168

Human personality and historical materialism

39 40 41

Ibid, p. 88. K. Marx, Selected Correspondence, p. 35. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, pp. 80—95.

42 43 44

Ibid, pp. 83, 82. Ibid, pp. 83-84. Ibid, p. 95.

45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Ibid, p. 414. Ibid, p. 418. Ibid, p. 312. Ibid, p. 483. Ibid, p. 50. Ibid, p. 37. K. Marx, Economic and philosophic manuscripts, p. 299. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 46.

53 54 55 56

Ibid, pp. 54—55Ibid, p. 476. Ibid, p. 473. K. Marx, Grundnsse, pp. 84-85.

57 58 59 60

Ibid, p. 101. Ibid, p. 164. Ibid, p. 612. L. Althusser, Reading Capital, p. 86.

61

The complete and systematic analysis of the critique and inversion of the Hegelian dialectic in Marx’s and Engels’ work, an analysis the significance of which is of primary importance, has still only been dealt with in an exceedingly partial way in Marxist works in French. I intend to provide a contribution to this

62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

70 71

necessary task in forthcoming publications devoted to the dialectic. K. Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law, K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 91. Ibid, p. 23. Ibid, p. 87. Ibid, Ibid, Ibid, Ibid,

p. p. p. p.

P- 9 7-

10. 18.

In Hegel there is a ‘necessary transforming of empirical fact into speculation and of speculation into empirical fact’ (p. 39), a descent from ‘political spiritualism into the crassest rpateriahsm’ (p. 105). Ibid, p. 63. Ibid, p. 48.

72

K. Marx and F. Engels, The Holy Family, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 193.

73

Cf. on this point, L. Sève, ‘Henri Lefebvre et la dialectique chez Marx’, La Nouvelle Critique, no. 94, March 1958.

74 75 76 77

K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 267; (emphasis added). K. Marx, Grundnsse, p. 85. Ibid, p. 85. Ibid, p. 86.

78

Ibid, p. 101.

79 80

Hid, p. 87. Ibid, p. 88.

Notes 81 82 83

84 85

86 87

88 89 90 9i

169

Ibid, p. 103. Ibid, p. 104. Ibid, p. 104. Ibid, p. 105. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 653. K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 84. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, pp. 563-4. Ibid, p. 38. K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 19. K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law, p. 89. Especially the i8yy Introduction, (Grundnsse, pp. 81—ill); Grundrisse, pp. 156-64, 221-6, 459-71, 471-515, 540-42, 649-52, 704-12, 831-33; Contribution (1971), pp. 31—34.

92 93 94 95

96 97

98 99

100 101

102 103

K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 265. Ibid, p. 472 Ibid, Ibid, Ibid, Ibid,

p. p. p. p.

422 160 687 512

Ibid, p. 303 Ibid, p. 676 K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 652. K. Marx, Grundrisse, pp. 705—6. Ibid, p. 712. Ibid, p. 496.

104

Ibid, p. 222. Cf. pp. 527-8.

105 106

Ibid, p. 157. Cf. pp. 159-60, 164, 225, 308, 453, 462. K. Marx, Contribution (1968), p. 236.

107 108 109

K. Marx, Grundnsse, p. 503. Ibid, p. 5-15. Cf. also pp. 674 and 832. Ibid, pp. 541-2.

110

Ibid, p. 409.

hi 112

Ibid, pp. 705-6. Ibid, p. 488.

113

K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 304. K. Marx, Grundnsse, p. 159. Ibid, p. 158.

114 115

116

x 17 118

Ibid, p. 515. Cf. p. 325, p. 401, pp. 459-50, 831-3K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 178.

119 120

Ibid, p. 178. Ibid, p. 179 (emphasis added). This standard method is utilised, for example, by A. Cuvillier in his Nouveau

121

précis de philosophie and in his Textes choisis des auteurs philosophiques, and also unfortunately in other authors who appeal to Marxism as their authority. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, pp. 183-4 (emphasis added) Cf. also Vol. 3, p.

122

816. K. Marx, ‘Marginal Notes on Adolph Wagner’s Lehrbuch der pohtischen

123

Okonomie’. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 609, fn.2. ‘Human nature’ is the translation of the German ‘Die Menschliche Natur’. The quotation is made use of by Roger

170

Human personality and historical materialism Garaudy (Cahiers du Communisme, July-August 1967, p. 128; and Peut-on être communiste aujourd’hui ?, p. 291). It had already been made use of by Adam Schaff, and given the same sense, in his book Le Marxisme et l’individu, in which one also finds the pseudo-6f/z Thesis on Feuerbach

‘the individual is

the ensemble of social relations’ (pp. 74, 119, 157 etc.) together with developments similar to Roger Garaudy’s even though the author’s sympathies in the matter go not to Christian spiritualism but to Fromm’s psychoanalysis. 124

125

126 127

128 129

130

131 132

133 134 135 136

137 138

139 140 141 142

M3 144

145 146

K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, pp. 448—54. Ibid, p. 448-9. Ibid, p. 450. Ibid, p. 454. Ibid, p. 452. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 609, Fn. 2. To all those who still have a taste for this sort of argument, we would like to point out another ‘crucial quote’: in The Poverty of Philosophy we read that ‘all history is nothing but a continuous transformation of human nature’ (p. 147). Let them clearly note the context though if they wish to avoid the absurdity of this time attributing Proudhon’s terminology and concepts to Marx. Cf. for example, Capital, Vol. 3, p. 820. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 31. Ibid, p. 313. K. Marx, Grundnsse, p. 488. Cf. also p. 528. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 171. Ibid, p. 265. K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, p. 337. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 39. Ibid, p. 277, fn. K. Marx, Grundnsse, p. 228, fn. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, p. 859. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 480. Ibid, p. 528. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 146. K. Marx, Grundnsse, p. 83. Ibid, p. 606.

148 149

K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, pp. 296, 298, 335. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 363. Ibid, p. 256.

150

K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, p. 88.

151

K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 645.

152

K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, p. 85. (‘Entfremdung worin es den Arbeiter versetzt gegeniiber den Bedingungen der Verwicklichung seiner eignen Arbeit’.) K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscnpts of 1844, p. 337.

147

153 154

155 156 157 158

159

Cf. particularly J. Rancière, ‘The Concept of “Critique” and the Critique of Political Economy’, Theoretical Practice, 6, May 1972, pp. 37-41, and Reading Capital, pp. 247-53. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 10. Ibid, p. 233. Ibid, p. 235. Ibid, p. 592. Ibid, p. 595.

Notes i6o 161

162

K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, p. 819. Ibid, p. 880.

163 164

K. Marx, Contribution (1968), pp. 181, 203. Cf. also p. 223. K. Marx and F. Engels, The Holy Family, p. 7. Ibid, p. 93.

165 166

Ibid, p. 119. Ibid, p. 113.

167 168 169

K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 646. Ibid, pp. 252-3. Ibid, p. 646. Ibid, p. 50.

170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178

179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188

F. Engels’ letter to Bloch, 21 September 1890, Selected Correspondence, pp. 417-18. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 10. Ibid, p. 243. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 92. Ibid, p. 357. Ibid, p. 483. K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 164. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, p. 820. K. Marx, letter to Kugelmann, 11 July 1868, Selected Correspondence, p. 209. F. Engels, Anti-Dühnng, p. 310. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 93. K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 634. Ibid, pp. 634-5. Ibid, p. 634. Ibid, p. 758. Ibid, p. 712. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 170 fn. 1 (emphasis added). I analysed this point in detail in ‘Analyses marxistes de l’aliénation: réligion et économie politique’, m Philosophie et réligion.

189

K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 235.

190 191 192

Ibid, pp. 264-5.

193 194

171

Ibid, p. 265. Ibid, p. 360. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, pp. 243-4.

197

Ibid, p. 256. Ibid, p. 259. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 19. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, p. 259.

198 199

K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 488. K. Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Part Two, p. 118. Cf. also Capital, Vol.

200

K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, p. 299.

195 196

3, p. 820; Engels, Anti-Dührmg, Part III, Chapter II. 201 202

K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 37.

203 204

Ibid, p. 37. K. Marx, Contribution, p. 20. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 73.

205

K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, p. 830.

206

K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 72.

Human personality and historical materialism

172 207 208

Ibid, p. 77. K. Marx, Contribution (1968), p. 214 (emphasis added).

209 210 211

The word is Marx’s — Preface to the Contribution, p. 19.

212

213 214 215 216 217 218 219

220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228

K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 255. Ibid, p. 612. Ibid, p. 690. F. Engels, Preface to Capital, Vol. 3, p. 7. K. Marx, Selected Correspondence, p. 208. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 653. K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 313. F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of Classical German Philosophy, Selected Works, Vol. 3, p. 360. K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 712. K. Marx, Selected Correspondence, p. 35. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 79. Ibid, p. 488. ‘Tout ce qui monte converge’. F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, pp. 60—61. K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 101. Ibid, p. 101. Ibid, p. 101. K. Marx, letter to Kugelmann, 11 July 1868, Selected Correspondence, p. 209. F. Engels, ‘From the Preface to the German Edition’, Selected Works, Vol. 1, p. 103.

229 230 231 232

K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 67. Ibid, p. 180. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 83. Ibid, p. 69.

233

K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 95.

234

K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 42.

235

Cf. K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Selected Works, Vol. 1, pp. 421-2.

236

K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, p. 95. K. Marx, Contribution, p. 21. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 593.

237

238 239

240 241

242

K. Marx, Contribution (1968), p. 219. Cf. the whole analysis on pp. 211—227. Ibid, p. 219. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, pp. 467—87. Cf. equally The Poverty of Philosophy, Chapter II, Part 2, on ‘Division of Labour and Machinery’.

243

G. G. Granger, Pensée formelle et science de l’homme, p. 192. M. Dufrenne, Pour l’homme, p. 204.

244

G. Politzer, La crise de la psychologie contemporaine, p. 120.

245

248

Cf. on this point H. Piéron’s synthesis: De l’actinie à l’homme, Vol. II, Part IV, ‘De l’enfant à l’homme et de son “humanisation” ’, pp. 211-62. J. Nuttin, La structure de la personnalité, p. 207. Ibid, p. 246. Ibid, p. 207.

249

Ibid, p. 255.

246 247

Notes 250 252

Ibid, D. 2 10. Ibid, p. 232. Ibid, p. 237.

253

Ibid, p. 244.

254

Ibid, pp. 207-8, 232, etc. K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 92.

251

255

256 257

258 259 2Ô0

2ÔI

262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277

K. K. V. K. F.

173

Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, p. 296. Marx, Selected Correspondence, pp. 217, 219. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 168. Marx, Contribution, p. 21. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, p. 369.

K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 94. Ibid, pp. 172-3. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p.

52 fn.

1. The whole modern scientific

development of‘mirror-psychology’, from Wallon to Lacan, is prefigured here. K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, p. 277. G. Politzer, op. cit., p. 116. Ibid, p. 121. K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 85. M. Mannoni, The Child, his ‘Illness’ and the Others, p. 3. K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 105. G. Politzer, op. cit., p. 64. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 46. Ibid, p. 44K. Marx, Contribution, p. 32. K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 614. M. Dufrenne, La personnalité de base, p. 285, note 2. K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 302.

278

K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 47. K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 303.

279 280

Ibid, p. 81, fn. 2.

K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 76.

CHAPTER III.

THE OBJECT OF THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONALITY

177 ‘ He [the individual] himself is not only the organic body ... ’. (K. Marx.)1

‘ In the face of all these creations [art and science, nations and states, law, politics and religion], which appeared in the first place to be products of the mind, and which seemed to dominate human societies, the more modest productions of the working hand retreated into the background ... All merit for the swift advance of civilisation was ascribed to the mind, to the development and activity of the brain’. (F. Engels.)2

So what is this science to be built of, this proposed psychology of personality ? We have seen that the question is not only unsolved, but seems insoluble. And the first aspect of this insoluble difficulty is the problem of tracing the boundary of what belongs in principle to the sciences that we can broadly describe as psychobiological and what belongs specifically to an independent psychology, the problem of the real difference between these two domains within their unity. And it is this problem to which we must first of all pay particular attention if we want to move forward to a rational demarcation of the field of the sciences in the area of human psychism. I. Psychology of personality and psychobiological sciences whole question appears to come down to this and to be soluble straight away as follows : there is nothing in psychic activity which is not neural and which consequently does not fall or will not one day fall within the field of the physiological type of sciences. For anyone who holds firmly to a scientific position in these matters and all the more for anyone who is consciously materialist, any attempt to separate off a part of psychism which by its nature would escape the physiological approach — whether it be a question of ‘consciousness’, the ‘subjective dimension of activity’ or ‘inwardness’ — is intrinsically unacceptable: one acknowledges unreservedly that psychic life is material through and through or one forgoes all scientific rigour. In other words, to reach an acceptable solution to the problem it is necessary first of all to take an unequivocal position on this now old but still basic statement of Pavlov : The

I am convinced that an important stage of human thought will have been reached when the physiological and the psychological, the objective and

17 8

The object of the psychology of personality the subjective, are actually united, when the tormenting conflicts or contradictions between my consiousness and my body will have been factually resolved or discarded. Actually when the objective study of the higher animal, i.e. the dog, reaches that stage and this is being accomplished — in which the physiologists have an exact foreknowledge under all conditions of the behaviour of the animal, then what will remain of the independent separate existence of the subjective state, which of course is to the animal as ours is to us. Is not the activity of every living being, including the human, transformed for our thought into one indivisible whole?3

(i) Natural relations and social relations between acts In a sense — and the whole problem lies in stating exactly what this sense is — this statement of Pavlov’s is entirely uncontestable. It constitutes the necessary premise of every conception of the human personality which claims unreservedly to belong on the terrain of positive science, which excludes, in Engels’ words, every ‘alien addition’,4 i.e. every ‘idealist crotchet which could not be brought into harmony with the facts’.5 And from this point of view disdain for ‘absurd Pavlovian psychology’, in Sartre’s turn of phrase quoted above, is almost without exception the sign of a lack of scientific and materialist resolution — at best. The whole modern development of the physiological sciences, on the contrary, provides striking confirmation of the great principle laid down by Pavlov. But it is particularly the consequences of this principle which must hold the attention here and form the object of a deeper investigation. Indeed, if every conception of psychology as science of a non-physiological part of psychism, of an activity which is essentially separate from nervous activity — or, at least, which definitely ought to be treated methodologically as if it were, which amounts to the same thing — is fundamentally idealist and must be absolutely eliminated from science, not only at the level of armchair theoretical pronouncements but in everyday concrete research and ideological activity, then this means that a large part of what is still presented today as within the jurisdiction of an intrinsically independent psychology is bound to be re-absorbed sooner or later into a ‘neurophysiopsychology’, a huge complex of psychobiological sciences, the scope of which will extend to the totality of human behaviour — from the simple reflex to the most intricate mental operations — considered in all their depth — from their conscious and socialised aspect to their neurological infrastructures. The actual re-absorption of all pseudo-psychology into this materialist scientific complex may take a long time yet, even though the rate at which things are advancing in this

Psychology of psychobiological sciences

179

direction is very fast today ; a technical division of labour, particularly between the behavioural and neurophysiological approaches to psychic activity, may be destined to last for a long time even though their tendency to merge appears to be becoming much more marked; but from the theoretical point of view, one can and must from now on consider this re-absorption and this merging as sure to happen. To anyone who might regard this prediction as risky we will simply point out that, far from being speculation about the future, this inexorable change from ‘psychology’ -—in the sense (still current today in France) of ‘science’ of a psychism regarded as substantially distinct from nervous activity, i.e. in the idealist sense — to physiology in the broad Pavlovian sense, is being brought about before our eyes and increasingly rapidly, particularly in the form of the striking development of psychophysiology. Taken as a whole, what indeed is psychophysiology? Accoding to some it is one of those young and appealing pivotal-sciences which everyone knows to be the site of the present rapid advance in knowledge and its impulsive transformations. At first sight this name of pivotal-science, which in itself rests on altogether well-founded epistemological and historical views, appears to correspond to the reality of the concrete situation which we are dealing with here. It seems to imply the genuine recognition of the increasing role of the materialist approach to psychological problems and to rest on a dialectical conception of their connection with physiological problems. Actually, in this particular case, it is a case of an illusion — and sometimes possibly a trick — typical of idealism. To define psychophysiology as a pivotal science is in effect to implicitly restrict it in advance to studying borderline problems which confront physiology with a psychology the status of which it does not have the power to transform or all the more the object of which it does not have the power to appropriate. It is even subtly to get it to agree that since it is pivotal then psychology, like physiology, is itself a door actually opening on to a specific and inalienable domain and accordingly onto a psychism regarded as non-physiological; in short it is to define it a restrictive and statical way under a dialectical and modem cloak and consequently to conceal the revolutionary epistemological significance of its rapid advances. In actual fact the growth of psychophysiology is not at all the static enlargement of the investigation of mere zones of contact between an immutable physiology and an immutable psychology : on the contrary it is the process of transformation of formerly ‘psychological’ problems — i.e. problems of psychism approached idealistically in the last analysis — into physiological problems — i.e. into problems of psychism approached, or, at all events, open to being approached,

x 8o

The object of the psychology of personality

materialistically. It is not the strengthening but on the contrary the liquidation of the old status quo between the positivist prudence of a phsyiology not venturing to deal with ‘consciousness’ and the spiritualistic arrogance of a psychology not condescending to take nervous realities into account. At the beginning of the century behavioural psychology had already dealt a very hard blow to this status quo, this scientifically retrograde dichotomy rooted in the state of the relation of ideological forces in the last century, by showing that although conscious, psychic activity can be studied from a purely objective point of view. Pavlovism dealt it a still harder and indeed mortal blow by proving that this is true of psychic activity not merely although it is conscious but in so far as it is conscious. The rapid advance in research and discovery on the vast neurophysiopsychological terrain at the present time, a rapid advance which, beyond the ideological forms and individual incomprehensions by which it is sometimes brought about, has the characteristic of a powerful objective movement towards materialism in the recent history of knowledge, is the conclusive proof. The very form of the term psychophysiology, in which only half of the word psychology still emerges from the mouth of physiology, attests that in the broad sense materialist physiology has already in large part consumed outmoded psychology. One may be sure the rest will follow. All terminological caprice aside, a basic reclassification is therefore essential with respect to present day usage of the words physiology and psychology which is still so frequent and even continues to look obvious to many people, and in relation to the dividing-up of subjects and the demarcation of domains which this usage implies. At the present stage of the analysis the precise nature of a truly scientific demarcation is not yet defined; but what the term ‘psychology’ can no longer continue to cover over without intolerable equivocation comes out clearly. To take a simple but in fact extremely important example, open any philosophy textbook intended for secondary education at the chapters which deal with ‘psychology’: what does one actually find on nearly all the questions which are tackled ? A remarkably incongruous medley which in varying proportions according to subjects and writers can be reduced to two sorts of constituents with nothing in common : on the one hand physiological or psychophysiological facts which, in spite of their more or less pronounced quantitative and qualitative inadequacy, constitute instalments on what a real treatment of the question ought to be like in the light of a general neurophysiopsychology of behaviour — and on the other hand, a kind of sweetening of the pill ; when it is not introspective banalities guided by a pre-established metaphysics, it is a concoction of

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more or less outmoded philosophical theses, more or less relevant literary references and moral considerations, i.e. however ‘modern’ the presentation and whatever interest they may moreover sometimes present, quite simply remnants of the outmoded speculative way of regarding ‘psychology’.6 This ideological monstrosity is the result of the partial materialist mutation, irresistibly induced but secondarily counteracted at the same time by the contradictory movement of ideas, of a psychology the whole function of which initially, in the scheme of secondary school studies conceived by the bourgeoisie in the last century, was to have it believed that the main theses of spiritualistic metaphysics were immediate given facts of consciousness.7 The progress which remains to be accomplished therefore consists in the first place in developing on all sides the clear awareness that as a nonscientific complement of the materialist science of psychic activity, ‘psychology’ is at an end, and that all ideological delaying-actions to save this ‘psychology’ from extinction are lost in advance. It is important to emphasise that in this campaign Marxist philosophy whole-heartedly supports scientific psychology. The problem, which has been restated so many times in approximate forms for more than a century, is therefore whether between this boundary of embryonic neurophysiopsychology and the boundary of the science of social relations, including the theory of the general forms of individuality — whether, between ‘physiology’ and ‘sociology’ as one says in a too vague but suggestive, traditional vocabulary — there exists the subject-matter of a different psychological science as well, a psychological science of personality, irreducible to the materialist science of human behaviour, or whether, on the contrary, the totality of knowledge of this subject is itself appropriately re-absorbed into neurophysiopsychology. Here we are at the core of the problem of the definition of a truly scientific psychology of personality 5 at the core of the problem of the general division of the field of the sciences in the area of human psychism. This means that it is now a question of making it quite clear in what sense Paviov’s statement on the merging of psychology and physiology is entirely incontestable, or, what comes to the same thing, whether there is not a different sense in which it is quite unacceptable. On the basis of everything which has been recalled concerning the Marxist conception of man, this second sense is not very difficult to work out. When Pavlov, speaking as a physiologist, declares that if the merging of the psychological and the physiological is realisable for the dog it is for ‘every living being, including man’, he is absolutely right from the point of view of the natural sciences and philosophical materialism : man is nothing other than a natural being.

182

The object of the psychology of personality

But if, applying this statement to the problem of a psychology of personality, rash exponents of Pavlovism imagined that one can solve it — as far as fundamentals are concerned — in the same way as that of animal psychology, by the pure and simple reduction of every investigation to the neurophysiopsychology of behaviour, consequently implicitly erasing every qualitative difference in essence between man and animals, they would be absolutely wrong from the point of view of the social sciences and historical materialism : man is a natural being but he is a ‘natural human being’, a being whose essence consists of the ensemble of social relations. To imagine that it is possible to exhaust the knowledge of such a being, truly to reach his essence, to grasp his soul, in a way which is basically identical to that which is suitable for animals, is an extraordinary aberration — a physiologistic aberration. We will come back to it. This, then, is how the problem is posed : on the one hand, anything regarded as substantially distinct from nervous activity can absolutely no longer exist in psychology as science, for such a thing does not exist, and yet, if it is quite true that the human essence is quite different from animal essence, once allowance has been made for everything which neurophysiopsychology can tell us of man’s behaviour, one is still far from having exhausted the study of his own essence -, in a sense one has still not even touched on it. Now what is an essence which is not in any degree a thing ? It is a relation. In this simple statement lies the whole secret of a psychology of personality actually distinct from the psychobiological sciences and able to reach adulthood, i.e. above all, able to become truly conscious of the nature of its object : the science of personality is concerned with being a science not of any thing by itself but a science of relations. This is what one might have suspected moreover by seriously reflecting on the lessons for all the human sciences which emerge from Marxist political economy, this pilotscience. For Marxist political economy, the birth of which marked the completion of the transition of economic science to adulthood, is founded in large part on the solution to a similar problem. As Engels says emphatically, one can understand nothing in political economy if one does not grasp that its object of analysis is not the production of things themselves — what would then distinguish it from the natural and technological sciences ? — but the social relations which become established in the production of these things and which are concealed by them : Here at once we have the example of a peculiar fact, which runs through the whole of economics and which has caused utter confusion in the minds of the bourgeois economists : economics deals not with things but with

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183

relations between persons and, in the last resort, between classes; these relations are, however, always attached to things and appear as things.8

Although in a different sense, should not the same hold true in psychology of personality if the latter is to be a genuine science ? Such, at least, is the preliminary thesis upheld here : being the science of the individual whose essence is the ensemble of social relations, the psychology of personality is not concerned with dealing with psychic acts — the concern of neurophysiology — but with the relations which underly them in the concrete life of the personality, relations which are soaal in the last instance but which are always cattached to’ acts and which fappear as’ acts. What must be understood by this exactly? If it is a question of proving that human psychism bears the stamp of social relations through and through, is this not an already accepted idea in present-day psychology ? Was it not introduced long ago in nervous physiology itself by Pavlovism ? Thus, did not the theory of the second set of conditioned stimuli (language) in Pavlov bring social relations into the heart of the sciences of higher nervous activity ? Is not his theory of neuroses — another significant example — founded on the idea of hypertension, overwork, imposed on the nervous system, particularly by contradictory characteristics of certain social relations? If, therefore, our study has resulted in proving that acts cannot be understood in abstraction from the relations that constitute the social environment within which they take place, it would amount to pushing at a wide-open door. But also, merely to come up with this puny result, one would have to have forgotten on the way the basic lessons of historical materialism in the theory of personality. Indeed it is quite true that in their most scientific part recent physiology and psychology do pay great attention to the effects which the social environment produces on the acts of human individuals — and thereby in a sense do take social relations into account to the extent that acts regarded as an object in themselves allow and require it. But it so happens, in this way of regarding thing — quite legitimate if one takes up one’s position on the terrain of behavioural science — that social relations are merely thought of as the environment by which these acts, bearing their essence of nervous activity in themselves, are conditioned. In this individual/environment opposition one can recognise a standard element in the conceptualisation of the biological sciences, which should not be surprising since in its broadest sense, behavioural science treats man like an essentially biological being. The best proof of this is that although it does not at all fail to recognise the qualitative differences which appear on its own

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The object of the psychology of personality

terrain between human and animal behaviour, it regards the theoretical transition from one to the other as still possible in principle and it constantly makes this transition in practice if nothing happens to prevent it. From this point of view too, Pavlov’s statement recalled above is true of the behavioural sciences as a whole. But how is it not seen at the same time that by treating acts like a biological reality and social relations like a specific form of the environment, one has still in no way taken into account what historical materialism tells us of the very essence of man as a developed social being? If one takes the fundamental discovery registered in the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach really seriously, it must follow that beyond the boundary of behavioural science, a space opens up for a science of human personality, connected with behavioural science of course, but for which social relations are not the environment externally conditioning nervous relations between acts but the basis of a different sort of relations between acts, those non-physiological relations that constitute the bases of the personality in its histonco-social sense. And the precondition for changing over to this new standpoint, without which it is impossible truly to understand the effect produced by society on individuals in all its depth, is the previous investigation of what individuals produce in society. In other words the science of personality must right from the outset set up camp on the terrain of social production where historical materialism teaches us that men themselves are produced. If one develops psychological thought on this basis one comes to see a type of relations between human acts quite foreign to the viewpoint of behavioural science. For example, take activities like wood-work or metal-work, mowing a meadow, driving a car, doing the cooking, looking after an injured person, seeking the solution to a technical problem, bringing up a child, giving someone orders, etc. On the one hand these are complex ensembles of acts producing results determined by their concrete nature. Seen in this way their relations with each other and with other acts as a whole belong purely and simply to behavioural science which divides them up according to its methods and concepts, and at first it may even seem that such an approach exhausts their content. But in actual fact this first viewpoint is still thoroughly abstract, for in it one disregards the status of these activities — not as nervous activities — but as the individual’s social activities-, what position do they occupy in the real life of the personality, i.e. in its relations with the existing social world and with itself? In order to make this point clear, let us assume that instead of being the acts of individuals attending to personal or domestic pursuits — do-it-yourself wood-work or metal-

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work, driving a car for tourist purposes, bringing up one’s own children, etc. — these acts are carried out in the occupational setting of a wage-earning job in capitalist society — that of factory worker, taxidriver, teacher, etc. At first sight it might seem that not only their nature as acts but even their role in the overall economy of the personality is not substantially altered : in one case as in the other they aim at and achieve useful results desired by the individual. It might seem that the wages which correspond to them are their result for the subject just as was their concrete result on the assumption that they were non-occupational acts. Actually this would be to make a decisive economic and therefore psychological mistake, irrevocably barring the way to a true understanding of the structure of development of the personality. In order to grasp this one must reflect on Marx’s crucial discovery of the true nature of the relations between wages and labour in capitalist relations — a discovery from which the whole of Marxist political economy has come. This discovery is undoubtedly nowhere better set out, from our present point of view, than in the short section of Part Six of Volume One of Capital entitled cThe transformation of the Value (and Respectively the Price) of Labour-Power into Wages’.9 cOn the surface of bourgeois society’, Marx notes first of all, cthe wage of the labourer appears as the price of labour, a certain quantity of money that is paid for a certain quantity of labour.’10 If this appearance coincided with the reality there would therefore be no basic difference, from the psychological point of view, between an ensemble of acts functioning as personal activity and the same ensemble of acts functioning as wagelabour: the relation of wages to labour would be analogous to the general relation of the result of an act to this act itself, and from the psychological point of view this relation would remain entirely within the framework of behavioural science. But as a matter of fact this is merely a case of an illusion peculiar to bourgeois society. What is the value of a commodity ? The objective form of the social labour expended in its production. And how do we measure the quantity of this value ? By the quantity of the labour contained in it. How then is the value, e.g. of a 12 hours’ working-day to be determined? By the 12 workinghours contained in a working-day of 12 hours, which is an absurd tautology.11

It is from this impasse that Marx rescues political economy by establishing that what the labourer actually sells to the capitalist is not at all his labour but his labour-power.

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The object of the psychology of personality That which comes directly face to face with the possessor of money on the market, is in fact not labour, but the labourer. What the latter sells is his labour-power. As soon as his labour actually begins, it has already ceased to belong to him ; it can therefore no longer be sold by him. Labour is the substance, and the immanent measure of value, but has itself no value.'2

Despite the appearance, wages are not therefore the price of labour for the good reason that, having no value, labour cannot have a price. Of what, therefore, are wages the price? Of labour-power. ‘By labourpower ... is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description5.13 Like every commodity, labour-power is sold at its value, determined by the labour-time socially necessary for its production. How is this time determined? Given the individual, the production of labour-power consists in his reproduction of himself or his maintenance. For his maintenance he requires a given quantity of the means of subsistence. Therefore the labour-time requisite for the production of labour-power reduces itself to that necessary for the production of those means of subsistence ; in other words, the value of labour-power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the labourer.14

Thus, having paid for the labour-power at its value, it is possible in these conditions for the capitalist to make use of it in such a way that it creates a greater quantity of value than that which he pays to the labourer in the form of wages, and it is this basic difference which makes it possible to understand the whole mechanism of capitalist exploitation, the appropriation of surplus-value from labour behind the immediate appearance of the wage appearing to pay for all the labour provided. Marx comments: Hence we may understand the decisive importance of the transformation of value and price of labour-power into the form of wages, or into the value and price of labour itself. This phenomenal form, which makes the actual relation invisible, and, indeed, shows the direct opposite of that relation, forms the basis of all the juridical notions of both labourer and capitalist of all mystifications of the capitalist mode of production, of all its illusions as to liberty, of all the apologetic shifts of the vulgar economists.... For the rest, in respect to the phenomenal form, ‘value and price of labour5, or ‘wages’, as contrasted with the essential relation manifested therein, viz., the value and price of labour-power, the same difference holds in respect to all phenomena and their hidden substratum. The former appear directly and spontaneously as current modes of thought;

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the latter must first be discovered by science. Classical Political Economy nearly touches the true relation of things, without, however, consciously formulating it. This it cannot do as long as it sticks to its bourgeois skin.15

One can say of such an analysis that it is crucial not only for political economy but also at the same time for the psychology of personality. For it is also from this ‘change of form5 that derive all the illusions inherent in the idea which, as far as it forms one, ordinary psychology develops of labour. And one can say of this psychology, no less truly than of political economy, that it will not succeed in consciously formulating the true state of things ‘as long as it sticks to its bourgeois skin5. Indeed, being interested in acts only as behavioural realities and biologically defined activities — the only thing that outwardly exists in human psychological life — and not suspecting the quite different problem of social relations between acts, ordinary psychology inevitably sticks to the appearance which human activity assumes ‘on the surface of bourgeois society5. One can clearly see here how those people are mistaken who accredit the abstraction of objective psychology to research in the laboratory compared with real life, when actually this abstraction is already effected at the level of the immediate conception of real life, of which in this respect the psychology of the laboratory is merely an extension. For such a psychology everything takes place as if wages, which at the level of appearance correspond to a determinate concrete job, i.e. to carrying an ensemble of acts into effect, could fall without ado into something which goes without saying, the category of concrete results which an act has in view and achieves, as it analyses them, for example, in the investigation of learning. And consequently, without generally asking itself questions about this matter through any theory of personality whatsoever, it acts as if one could purely and simply put the relations between labour and wages in the same category as direct relations between concrete acts of work and concrete acts of satisfying corresponding needs, i.e. regarding them as identical with the only relations which it encounters on its terrain: in the last analysis psychological relations in the everyday sense of the term — natural, immediate, concrete relations — with regard to which the social environment plays only a conditioning role. When one broaches the theory of personality in this perspective, albeit through conceptions of behaviour and motivations which are most heedful of ‘social factors5, one inevitably drifts towards the idea of a human nature governed in the last resort by psychological laws which are independent, no doubt not in their form but in their essence, of the social formation in which these

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individuals work. In other words if one argues like this, the essential fact for the life of a real individual, that a concrete activity is carried out by him as wage-labour rather than as a private pursuit, clearly ceases to have any scientific significance for psychology, which can disregard it as a purely fortuitous event irrelevant to its object. Moreover, much as they might be mutually opposed, methodological approaches to the concrete individual, from the laboratory of the biotypologist to the couch of the psychoanalyst, are in this respect nothing other than different uses of this implicit abstraction of labour and consequently of social relations. But in doing this psychological science remains enclosed in the surface phenomena of human life in bourgeois society : even when it wishes to be a depth psychology it remains the victim of idelogical mystifications which spontaneously obtrude on individuals because ‘these are the forms of illusion in which they move about and find their daily occupation’.16 On such a basis, the summoning up of a theory to constitute ‘Ego-World relations’ remains a barren utopia and the problem of the histonco-social structure of the personality remains insoluble. The point from which it is necessary to start if one wishes to understand it clearly is that the apparent correspondence between concrete acts of labour and acts satisfying needs made possible by wages has no economic truth and therefore can only be a psychological illusion. Depending on social conditions, highly variable wages and, all the more, totally different ways of spending them, may correspond to identical concrete labour: conversely, an identical wage, indeed an identical way of spending it, may correspond to the most varied concrete labour. This is already enough to prove that the correspondence between labour and wages is not a natural, immediate, ‘psychological’ relation in the everday sense and that consequently there is no hope of accounting for it in the terms and on the terrain of behavioural science. It is here that Marx’s analysis is positively irreplaceable in throwing light on the most essential problems of the personality. Indeed it makes it possible to understand that this apparent, direct correspondence of labour and wages is in fact wholly mediated by objective social relations, i.e. that a ‘correspondence’ only exists in so far as it is the bearer of a real relation quite different from the apparent relation. This real relation is what connects wages, not at all with the concrete labour which has been carried out but with the value-form of the labour-power which is expended, i.e. with a form in which human labour takes place as abstract-labour, which is no more reducible to the concrete acts which are its other side than the value of gold considered as money, for example, is reducible to its natural chemical substance,

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even though one is the support of the other. Here, therefore, at the very core of real psychological life, we are confronted with a ‘psychological5 relation which in point of fact is not a psychological relation but a social relation. Here, as Marx says in the 1857 Introduction, ‘the producer’s relation to the product, once the latter is finished, is an external one, and its return to the subject depends on his relations to other individuals5.17 And as this social relation is not at all simply a conditioning element of the ‘external environment5 but rather the most internal of all the relations that constitute concrete personal life, we must realise the fact that it is a fundamentally new type of psychological relations, a world of quite specific structures of the living personality -, in short, it is the terrain of a scientific theory of the historico-social personality which comes into view. In other words if one is considering concrete acts (woodwork or metal-work, driving a car, teaching a child, etc.) behavioural science is perfectly right to treat them, as concrete acts, as remaining identical regardless of the social conditions in which they are carried out, for these conditions change nothing in their nature as concrete acts. On the other hand, from the standpoint of the real economy of the personality, there is a gulf between them according to whether they function as wage-labour or private activity; everyone knows this perfectly well without needing to study psychology and what is surprising as a matter of fact is that psychology does not seem to be aware of it. The scientific psychology of personality begins from the time one has understood that it is a question first of all of studying social relations between acts as basic structures of individual life. An elementary comparison may help us grasp the nature of the articulation between behavioural psychology and the psychology of personality which is oultined here. Let us consider a puzzle. From one point of view it is nothing other than a number of cut-out pieces which must be put together into a completed whole. There is nothing in the whole puzzle which is not a piece, just as there is nothing in the personality which is not an act. And there is no piece of the puzzle which does not have connections with others in the order of division which constitutes it as a puzzle, just as there is no concrete act which is not related to others in the sense which behavioural science gives this notion of relation. But when one fits in a new piece of the puzzle, and considers not merely its shape in its interlocking relations with other pieces already fitted together, but the part of the picture which it bears in its interlocking relations with the picture already started, one appeals to an order of division and type of structure — the picture — totally different from those which would be involved if one undertook to do the

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puzzle on its back. And one can see to what extent it would be absurd to attempt to account for the structure of the picture in terms of the way in which the pieces are cut out. This cut-out is the support of the other but the other is in no way its reflection. Quite on the contrary, it is the picture which is primary in all respects and its configuration, which in itself, has no logical connection with the cut-out of the puzzle into pieces, in practice is the master-form as far as an essential part of putting the pieces together is concerned. In a similar, although much more complex, way one can see to what extent there is little chance of accounting for the historico-social structures of the personality — i.e. precisely what is specific in the human personality — on the basis of relations between acts as they appear on the neurophysiopsychological terrain. Or rather, the new type of personality sturctures, which the analysis of an example as central as the relations between labour and wages brings out, is not only fitted to provide the foundation of the scientific theory of personality; although in a sense it is supported by behavioural science this theory of personality itself does not at all come to be added to it as its natural conclusion : its origin is elsewhere and it is highly likely itself to constitute the pilot-science in the solution of numerous problems difficult to understand in behavioural psychology — the problem of motivations, for example, the complexity of which obviously goes beyond the theoretical capacity of behavioural science alone. How can one not see that the real life of the personality is inwardly deeply haunted by abstract things like money, labour-time or wages; now these abstract things are nothing else than the reified forms of social relations, i.e. human relations, of which biological facts are the individual support but are as little their cause as the cut-out of the puzzle into pieces is the cause of the configuration of the picture. The relation between labour and wages, with all its immense consequences for the life of the individual, does not depend on the nervous system but on the social system. This is why the theory of personality considered as constituted by social relations cannot be constructed by mistaking for a basis psychological facts elaborated by behavioural science which are not the real basis of the personality. It is necessary to invert the relations assumed until now : it is social relations which, by way of the real life of the historico-social personality, constitute the basis of all sorts of relations, the projection of which, enigmatic in itself, behavioural science merely encounters on its terrain. At its most lucid, as a matter of fact, contemporary psychology of personality has undoubtedly recognised that division into acts, permissible on its own level, is not relevant as a division of the personality ; but the divisions

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which it tries to substitute for it, the division into roles, for example, in spite of their interest remain prisoner to most of the usual psychological illusions because it has still not become clearly aware of the prerequisite necessity to radically invert the primacy of psychological concepts : thus the concept of role is already a psychological concept (albeit from ‘social’ psychology) whereas the real basis is at the level of social relations which in themselves do not have a psychological form. This necessary inversion, the precondition for a scientific psychology of personality, is basically nothing else than the psychological corrollary of the Marxist inversion of the speculative conception of the human essence. And the inversion of the speculative conception of the human essence in the last resort is itself the reflection by science of the objective inversion constituted by the transition from animality to humanity, i.e. the transition from living beings bearing their essence in themselves as a biological heritage to others bearing their essence outside themselves as a social heritage.18 In a sense the views put forward here on the theory of personality are nothing else than the necessary consequence of everything which the modern trend of the sciences has taught us concerning the essence of man and which has strikingly confirmed the teaching of the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach. If one takes these experimentally confirmed lessons wholly seriously, it is impossible not to see that in a sense human psychology must be the reverse of animal psychology. We still look in vain for any trace of this reversal in a science which in essentials considers itself as a cousin of biology at the same time as it knows nothing about political economy and which, without too much disquiet, is satisfied with the same name as animal psychology. If ‘human psychology’ refers to the human branch of a science a different branch of which is concerned with animals, it is clear that it can only understand in man that which is not radically different from what one observes in animals. And if this defines the perfectly conceivable field of a behavioural, or more broadly, a human behavioural science, this unpassable limit has been precisely the stumbling-block up till now to the undiscoverable scientific theory of human personality. At this point it is not a comparison with a puzzle, for example, which is necessary but, better than any comparison, it is the lesson of historical materialism as the articulation-support for the psychology of personality which is most illuminating. Historical materialism was born precisely of the discovery by Marx of the fundamental part played in the development of human society by a category of relations which had not up till then been clearly separated from concrete relations between the conditions of social life: the category of the relations of production.

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Indeed if one studies the world of production of material wealth itself, it seems that one first merely encounters concrete labour-processes between which a multiplicity of relations exist, as well as relations between production and its natural conditions (for example, between agricultural production and climatic conditions, industry and mineral wealth, etc) and technical relations within production itself (for example, between production of consumption goods and production of means of production, between the level of the productive forces and the technical division of labour, etc.). From this point of view the investigation of the production of material wealth constitutes a vast domain which takes its materials from the natural and technological sciences. But it is only a step from that to imagining that all relations of production and more broadly of social life are relations of this nature, a step taken by all pre-Marxist conceptions which, as the case may be, deviate towards geographical, racial and technological theories of historical development. Without even mentioning their irrepressibly fragmentary nature in opposition to one another, these theories, just like current theories of personality, absolutely fail to give an account of the essential in concrete historical development because they do not understand that one has no more exhausted the analysis of basic relations with natural or technical relations of production than one has accounted for the picture which the puzzle bears with the cut-out of the puzzle into its pieces. On the other hand, from the time when Marx defined in all its rigour the concept of relations of production — i.e. not additional natural or technical relations but relations which men enter into in production, consequently, although belonging to the same social formation and connected with the former (which the comparison with the puzzle does not express), relations of a quite different category — the basic dialectic of social development becomes comprehensible, and comprehensible for the same reason that before the discovery it remained incomprehensible. Natural and technical facts are by no means rejected but rather situated as facts in relation to which the social labour-process — accordingly, the relations of production — while being conditioned by them, plays the role of regulator, and on which it increasingly produces its own effect. Thus not only does the science of social relations alone make it possible to understand relations which absolutely cannot be clarified on the natural or technical terrain — like the relation between labour and wages, capital and profit, land and ground-rent — but it equally becomes the pilot-science for grasping all the other relations and their general laws of development as a whole. To confuse behavioural science and the science of social relations between acts behind the fallacious unity of the word ‘psychology5 is the

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same kind of mistake as the one which consists in confusing technology and political economy under the ambiguous expression ‘science of production’. And it is in a position which is homologous to that of political economy that the science of personality, articulated with historical materialism, must be constructed beyond behavioural psychology.

(2) The personality as a living system of social relations between acts. But perhaps it will be considered that, from the rapid analysis of the relations between labour and wages alone, which is certainly important but still very limited, this is to come prematurely to most ambitious conclusions. Is it really possible to generalise the lessons which seem to emerge from such an analysis? Is the concept of social relations between acts considered as basic structures of individual life relevant on the scale of the whole personality ? Can it reasonably be hoped that it will make it possible to grasp its overall economy and laws of development, and this as far as the most varied personalities in the most varied societies are concerned ? It is clear that the theoretical consistency of the definition of this new psychological science, the science of the personality, as a living system of social relations between acts, and with greater reason its pretension to the role of pilot-science on the vast terrain of the analysis of human psychism, depends on the proof that it is actually possible to generalise the result acquired in the analysis of the relations between labour and wages. And the only decisive response to this legitimate demand will be the detailed elaboration of all the contents of such a science of personality, respecting which we will try in the following chapter to submit a set of concrete hypotheses. But within the limits of the present chapter, i.e. still at the level of the articulation of psychology with historical materialism and what it implies for the science of personality, it is possible to show that the example of the relations between labour and wages is by no means a special case doomed to being theoretically exceptional and sterile but is rather, on the contrary, a typical case, making possible right away the extension and generalisation of research. In the first place it is easy to prove that the analysis of the social essence which connects wages to labour and consequently a whole aspect of the satisfaction of needs to a whole aspect of concrete activity in individuals who are to be found in large numbers in a great number of societies (the wage-earners of a capitalist type of society) that this analysis makes it possible to pursue much further the theoretical investigation of the general economy of this form of personality and no

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doubt its laws of development. Indeed., if it is vital to understand that wages are not at all the ‘price of labour5, the natural and immediate result of the concrete productive activity to which they correspond in appearance in capitalist society, it is even more vital to understand that all this concrete activity is consequently without a natural immediate result for the individual who carnes it out, or more exactly, that a separation, an opposition, appears between its natural immediate result from the point of view of the social process of production and its purely mediate result for the individual. Whereas labour and the result of labour, productive activity and satisfaction of needs, constitute a cycle immediately closed on itself in private activity, the cycle in wage-labour in a capitalist economy is open, or rather there is no real cycle behind the appearances-, the needs to which productive activity ‘corresponds5 are no more those of the individual producer than the wages he receives, a social means of having access to the satisfaction of his needs, ‘correspond5 to the labour provided. Through the alienation of labour, in the scientific sense which this concept takes on in Capital, it is the personality in its very foundation which is haunted by objective social contradictions. There is no point to which Marx comes back more constantly in the course of forty years. Analysing the division of labour characteristic of capitalist production in The German Ideology, he writes: Never, in any earlier period, have the productive forces taken on a form so indifferent to the intercourse of individuals as individuals. On the other hand, standing over against these productive forces, we have the majority of the individuals from whom these forces have been wrested away, and who, robbed thus of all real life-content, have become abstract individuals, but who are, however, only by this fact put into a position to enter into relations with one another as individuals. The only connection which still links them with the productive forces and with their own existence — labour — has lost all semblance of self¬ activity and only sustains their life by stunting it. While in the earlier periods self-activity, and the production of material life were separated, in that they devolved on different persons, and while, on account of the narrowness of the individuals themselves, the production of material life was considered as a subordinate mode of self-activity, they now diverge to such an extent that altogether material life appears as the end, and what produces this material life, labour (which is now the only possible but, as we see, negative form of self-activity), as the means.19

Ten years later, in the Grundrisse, Marx takes up the analysis again in the more rigorous economic conceptualisation that he had worked out in the meantime:

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It [the exchange-value of labour] has a use-value for the worker himself only is so far as it IS exchange-value, not in so far as it produces exchange-values. It has exchange-value for capital only in so far as it has use-value. It has a use-value, as distinct from exchange-value, not for the worker himself, but only for capital. The worker therefore sells labour as a simple, pre-determined exchange-value, determined by a previous process — he sells labour itself as objectified labour-, i.e. he sells labour only in so far as it already objectifies a definite amount of labour, hence in so far as its equivalent is already measured, given ; capital buys it as living labour, as the general productive force of wealth; activity which inreases wealth. It is clear, therefore, that the worker cannot become rich in this exchange, since, in exchange for his labour capacity as a fixed, available magnitude, he surrenders its creative power, like Esau his birthright for a mess of pottage. Rather, he necessarily impoverishes himself, as we shall see further on, because the creative power of his labour establishes itself as the power of capital, as an alien power confronting him. He divests himself [entâussert sich] of labour as the force productive of wealth; capital appropriates it, as such. The separation between labour and wealth, is thus posited in this act of exchange itself. What appears paradoxical as result is already contained in the presupposition. The economists have expressed this more or less empirically. Thus the productivity of his labour, his labour in general, in so far as it is not a capacity but a motion, real labour, comes to confront the worker as an alien power-, capital, inversely, realizes itself through the appropriation of alien labour.20

And ten years later still, in Volume One of Capital, he takes up this basic question again in a particularly suggestive way from the very point of view of scientific humanism : On the one hand, the process of production incessantly converts material wealth into capital, into means of creating more wealth and means of enjoyment for the capitalist. On the other hand, the labourer, on quitting the process, is what he was on entering it, a source of wealth, but devoid of all means of making that wealth his own. Since, before entering on the process, his own labour has already been alienated from himself by the sale of his labour-power, has been appropriated by the capitalist and incorporated with capital, it must, during the process, be realised in a product that does not belong to him.... The labourer consumes in a two-fold way. While producing he consumes by his labour the means of production, and converts them into products with a higher value that that of the capital advanced. This is his productive consumption. It is at the same time consumption of his labour-power by the capitalist who bought it. On the other hand, the labourer turns the money paid to him for his labour-power, into means of subsistence : this is his individual consumption. The labourer’s productive consumption, and his individual consumption, are therefore totally distinct. In the former, he

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The object of the psychology of personality acts as the motive power of capital, and belongs to the capitalist. In the latter, he belongs to himself, and performs his necessary vital functions outside the process of production. The result of the one is, that the capitalist lives; of the other, that the labourer lives.

But this life is completely dominated by capitalist relations : The labourer is often compelled to make his individual consumption a mere incident of production. In such a case, he supplies himself with necessities in order to maintain his labour-power, just as coal and water are supplied to the steam-engine and oil to the wheel. His means of consumption, in that case, are the means of consumption required by the means of production; his individual consumption is directly productive consumption.... The individual consumption of the labourer, whether it proceed within the workshop or outside of it, whether it be part of the process of production or not, forms therefore a factor of the production and reproduction of capital; just as cleaning machinery does, whether it be done while the machinery is working or when it is standing. The fact that the labourer consumes his means of subsistence for his own purposes, and not to please the capitalist, has no bearing on the matter. The consumption of food by a beast of burden is none the less a necessary factor in the process of production, because the beast enjoys what it eats.21

These are very long quotations: but it was necessary to give them because, while they were written a century ago, pages like these, taken from so many others, seem still to have never been read, not by psychologists, of course, but by psychology. Precisely because they are not confined to ‘psychology’, these texts, which for us in the twentieth century are still vitally true, utterly essential for understanding our real life, contain indications of incalculable importance for a real psychological science of personality which have still never yet been perceived as such and at all events have never been made to function theoretically as such. Let us therefore show how much they can be. The characteristic of the wage-labourer in capitalist society is that under no circumstances does he possess the means of pursuing his productive activity — except one : his labour-power. And as the ‘appropriation’ of the means of production, in other words, the working knowledge and activities by which individuals make these means of production their own ‘is itself nothing more than the development of the individual capacities corresponding to the material instruments of production’,22 it follows from this that labourers are not able to develop their individual capacities, their growth as personalities, at least as far as their activity is practiced as wage-labour. Their labour-power, therefore their ‘human being’,23 consequently cannot be manifested as a function of their

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abilities, aspirations and needs : it cannot be free self-expression but must be sold to the capitalist. This sale does not mean only that the labourer is deprived of the capacity to use it in his own way but that it descends from being the expression of the living personality to the position of a commodity — that it loses its concrete existence as a force creative of use-values in order to take on the abstract form of an exchange-value, the magnitude of which is determined before the concrete labour-process, independently of it, except in the phenomenal forms in which it is calculated. At the same time it is also personal consumption which is disconnected with concrete activity and real needs, which itself becomes simply the means of preserving the usevalue of labour-power for the capitalist, i.e. its exchange-value for the labourer. Thus the living personality is alienated in all aspects: it is dominated by its exchange-value which is the negation of concrete individuality, haunted through and through by social relations of dependence, split by a fundamental opposition between personal life, which is only able to lodge itself in the pores of the working day, and social life which is nothing other than the strictly determined, abstract means of securing this personal life. To be sure all production is an objectification [Vergegenstandlichung] of the individual. In money (exchange-value), however, the individual is not objectified in his natural quality, but is a social quality (relation) which is, at the same time, external to him.24 The worker’s own life activity, the manifestation of his own life ... is for him only a means to enable him to exist.25

Let us consider things even more closely. In his personal life the individual is undoubtedly quite able to determine his activity freely and to relate it concretely to his real needs, but as he does not own the forces of production generating the universal development of the individual, as the limits of this personal life are fixed in all respects by the social relations and in the strictest way, as even with this personal activity the reproduction of labour-power necessarily takes priority since it is a condition for the very possibility of living, this real life of the individual is itself transformed into a minor fact, a mere distraction, an appendage of the abstract form of labour-power. In social labour, on the contrary, the individual is confronted with advanced productive forces : in principle, it is here that he could broadly develop his individual capacities. But here everything is reversed: not only is this development not the aim of the activity but it can only even be brought about so far as this contributes to the creation of exchange-value for the capitalist, a condition with which it is continually in contradiction. Concrete labour,

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the manifestation of the living personality, the condition of its very development, can therefore never freely flower : where it could it does not have the means and where it has the means this is forbidden to it. It is precisely because concrete activity is thus wholly subjected to the requirements of abstract activity that, in so far as it coincides with the reproduction of labour-power, the satisfaction of needs appears as the natural basis and motor element of the personality. Everyday psychology for which all psychic activity, human as well as animal, aims in the last resort simply ‘to satisfy needs’, is basically nothing else than the naive, ideological expression of the fundamental alienation induced in the personality of the labourers within a capitalist society by the very nature of the social relations. It is very true that here man works in order to live to the same extent that he lives in order to work — instead of being able to work for the job itself as free self-expression, instead of life being the ‘development of all human powers as such the end in itself, not as measured on a pre-determined yardstick’.26 This is why the general schema of behaviour appears in the form of the cycle need-activity-need, N-A-N, consequently implying a homeostatic view (simple reproduction) of the personality — an illusion which constitutes the foundation of nearly all theories of motivation which have been formulated until now — whereas in fact such a shema in no way reflects a naturally given fact in man but on the contrary is the clearest effect, on personalities, of social relations, themselves characterised by an internal tendency to fetter the rapid growth of the productive forces. Consequently, one can also see that from an analysis like that of the real relations between labour and wages not only does a new sort of relations between acts appear but also that this type of relations provide access to scientific analysis of the basic contradictions of personal life — contradictions between social activity and private activity, abstract personality and concrete personality, personal consumption and reproduction of the labour-power, etc. — and open up immense perspectives for reflection on the laws of development of personalities. It is this which no conventional theory of learning is able to bring us. In the best cases theories of learning which belong on the terrain of behavioural science can explain to us how the development of activities is brought about in abstraction from social relations between acts, in abstraction from the social structure of the personality, i.e. without taking into account what determines the general course of development of the personality. They are to the laws of development of the personality, the elaboration of which appears possible on the basis of analysis of social relations between acts, what the technological analyses

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of the development of the productive forces are to economic analyses based on the analysis of the relations of production. This is why they encounter a number of aberrant facts on their terrain which they cannot theorise correctly. And only psychologists who are aware of the limits of behavioural science and who also reflect on what is beyond these limits, particularly if they work on the basis of Marxism, can see in these aberrant facts something which brings the old psychological concepts deeply into question. This is how, in his comprehensive study of learning, J.F. Le Ny, although he confines himself in all his work on this side of the threshold ‘where psychological activities cease to be common to man and animals’,27 correctly points out: What laboratory psychology, particularly interested in the analytic aspect of behaviour, has hardly dwelt on, if at all, is the fact that a whole dialectical structure of reinforcement exists within the environment in concrete psychological life.... ‘In man the importance of the past and of the environment is such in this respect that it is as if beneath the variablity and diversity of ends one can hardly recognise the common foundation of earliest motivations, transformed by personal history. It is to this extent that social conditions assume all their importance. Man does not cease to be biologically determined but his way of being so is to determine himself socially; the individual becomes a person by intergrating in himself everything which the society in which he lives enriches and impoverishes.28

But the vast programme of new research which these observations outline cannot be carried through if one does not first of all undertake the scientific analysis, which is not in itself psychological, of ‘the structure of the social environment’.29 The same problem can be approached from another angle as well. A crucial question for any psychology which intends to contribute practically to the maximum flowering of all human personalities is obviously that of the limits of psychic growth, of their nature and origin, and of appropriate ways to make them recede. Such an enquiry may certainly rely on neurophysiological, biological and medical facts: a psychological gerontology must be articulated with biological gerontology. But the least reflection on obvious facts from everyday observation should show that the limits of development of personalities absolutely cannot be understood in some of their essential aspects on the basis of the notion of biological limits. ‘Discordances’, in both senses — early fixation of personality or, on the contrary, belated periods of growth — are eloquent proofs by themselves that, beyond all biological determinisms, we are dealing with a phenomenon the essence of which is social. Here again historical materialism plays its role of pilot-science.

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In Capital Marx points out the at first sight extremely odd characteristic of the limit of growth of the productive forces which goes against the tendency of capitalism constantly to drive them forwards and which appears particularly in the form of the tendency of the falling rate of profit. Now, this limit is not at all inherent in the productive forces themselves which are perfectly able to grow beyond it, as the replacement of capitalist relations by socialist relations proves concretely. ‘This particular barrier testifies to the limitations and to the merely historical, transitory character of the capitalist mode of production’.30 It is due to the fact that in capitalism the expansion or contraction of production are determined by ... profit and the proportion of this profit to the employed capital, thus by a definite rate of profit, rather than the relation of production to social requirements, i.e. to the requirements of socially developed human beings. It is for this reason that the capitalist mode of production meets with barriers at a certain expanded stage of production which, if viewed from the other premise, would reversely have been altogether inadequate. It comes to a standstill at a point fixed by the production and realisation of profit, and not the satisfaction of requirements.31

In short, this merely historical limit results from the inversion of relations between the ends and means of the development of production, between concrete and abstract activity. Capital and its self-expansion appear as the starting and the closing point, the motive and the purpose of production ; ... production is only production for capital and not vice-versa, the means of production are not mere means for a constant expansion of the living process of the society of producers.32

It is obviously not a question of mechanically transposing the conclusions drawn by Marx from the tendency of the falling rate of profit in the capitalist economy to the theory of personality. But consider the underlying reason in Marx’s analysis why capitalism comes up against a limit in the development of the productive forces : this limit results from the fact that production is subordinated to the pursuit of profit, concrete activity to its abstract form. This inversion is at the root not only of the capitalist economy but, we have seen, of the personality of the wage-earner in this economy. This is why there is something quite different from a mere analogy between the phenomenon of the non-natural tendency of the productive forces to stagnate and the phenomenon of the non-natural tendency of the human being’s capacities to stagnate in the conditions of these social relations. Should one be surprised if, in a personality in which the development of

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concrete activity is completely subordinated to the value of labourpower, the corresponding capacities of the individual tend to stagnate to the same extent that the value of his labour stagnates and even depreciates according to the law of impoverishment? Behind the biological and neurophysiological phenomenon of ageing, the effect of which on the personality is certainly not deniable, one can therefore see here an essential social law which appears in the stagnation of countless personalities, often from earliest youth, and at a very much lower level than that which some exceptional personalities prove is attainable in a given society. Ought one not therefore to re-examine in a radically critical way, at the same time as the bourgeois ideology of 'natural aptitudes’, the deep-rooted and yet so obviously ill-supported idea according to which the few great men of a period are the biological exceptions which chromosomal combinations produce with the forseeable parsimony of a genetic calculus ? Is it not time to have done with the glaring theoretical vacuity of a certain biological mythology of genius by asking whether the existence of great men, accomplished personalities, is not proof that the stage of development reached by the society makes this accomplishment possible in general, and consequently whether the fact that the majority of individuals remain stunted is not the result of the fact that they are prevented from developing, as others are allowed to, by inhuman social relations in the concrete historical sense of the term, which negate for them the possibilities* of flowering implied by the general level of the productive forces and civilisation? Precisely in so far as the vast majority of other men are stunted by the social conditions, are not the great men, the exceptions in a period, in a sense the normal men of this period, and is not the norm of stuntedness precisely the exception which ought to be explained ? The following chapter will return to these questions which today are irrepressible.33 At all events, starting from the analysis of the social relations between labour and wages, one can see how reflection gradually and logically identifies the main possible lines of a general theory of the basic structure of the personality and the laws of development which govern it. But so far it has still only been a question of the wage-labourer in capitalist society, considered only from the point of view of his activity of wage-labour. In order to go further in the proof that it is possible to generalise fully the analysis of the personality regarded as a living system of social relations between acts, we must now go into different aspects of personal life, different personalities from that of the wageearner, different societies than capitalist society — in the light of the theorisation already outlined.

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A. The preceding analyses concern the individual’s social activity, his labour as the object of political economy. Can we conceive of an indentical approach to very different psychological problems like those of personal life within marriage and, more broadly, within familial relations ? The questions is all the more important because as a whole, ‘humanist’ psychology, in the speculative sense, which knows almost nothing whatever about relations of production, on the other hand places exceptional emphasis on ‘marriage problems’ and love. Moreover one explains the other as Marx clearly observed in connection with Feuerbach in The German Ideology : not having grasped ‘[men] under their existing conditions of life, which have made them what they are ... [he] stops at the abstraction ‘man’, and gets no further than recognising ‘the true, individual, corporeal man’ emotionally, i.e. he knows no other ‘human relationships’ ‘of man to man’ than love and friendship, and even then idealised’.34

Seen like this the ‘dialectic of the married couple’ is the pseudoconcrete of an essentially abstract psychology for which real social relations come down to the speculative relation of the ‘Ego’ and the ‘Other’. But even when these problems are tackled in a much more concrete and scientific way, the tendency to treat them as problems of ajfectivity in the broadest sense of the term, and to valorize them at the expense of problems of social labour and relations of production is nearly always the sign of a philosophic-humanist distortion: this is a veritable theoretical law.35 This does not mean that the idea upheld here of the psychology of personality as a living system of social relations between acts implies such a slight attitude towards the problems of love, the married couple and the family that it is depreciatory. No more than the principle of historical materialism, with which it is directly articulated, the principle of such a theory of personality is not reductive : in the first place, because, as the psychology of personality cannot of course be regarded as simply homologous with the theory of society, the basis of personal activity cannot be reduced simply to the individual’s participation in basic activities of the corresponding society. If, as we shall put forward in the following chapter, the infrastructure of a personality is constituted by the set of activities which produce and reproduce it, then not only social labour figures in it but personal activities and interpersonal relations which, each in their own way, develop capacities, satisfy needs and yield a psychological product. Love, for example, meets these criteria and in this sense belongs to the infrastructure of the personality. After all if social labour appears to us in general to play the most

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decisive infrastructural part in the overall economy of the personality this by no means depends on a ‘Marxist’ mysticism or fetishism of labour but merely on the unchallengeable fact that social labour is generally the activity in which the individual is in contact with the productive forces and the most decisive social relations in the last analysis. But precisely because of their median position, as it were, between properly social activities and purely individual activities in personal life, inter-personal relations can play a specific role of the highest importance. And contrary to a widespread notion, the most valuable contribution of Marxism in this matter is undoubtedly not to strive after a forced assimilation of love to social relations strictly speaking but, on the contrary, to emphasize its extremely profound specificity and at the same time its ambiguity, the source of an unfailing capacity for taking on the most varied secondary functions and meanings : in many ways it may even occupy the place of social labour. Moreover, this is why its position in the infrastructure of the personality is not at all an unchanging natural fact but a feature which is both historically relative and concretely individual. We will come back to it. In the second place, if inter-personal relations, the life of the married couple and the family, love and friendship, may be thought of as belonging to the base of the personality, it must not be forgotten that the base is naturally no more the whole of the personality than of society ; it is the ultimately determining element in the turn of phrase of Engels who, in a letter to Joseph Bloch, adds : ‘More than this neither Marx or I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase5.36 It is obvious that in the life of a personality just as in that of a society, there are a great number of acts which do not belong to the base but which, for example, play a superstructural role. We will return to this very important problem of the superstructures of the personality in the next chapter. But we can already note that in the profound view of Janet, who was the first to reveal their nature as secondary acts, regulators of primary activities, the emotions in general, including those of love, are undoubtedly very largely superstructural : in spite of the second-rate philosophical idelogy through which he thought, he thereby outlined the theory of personality as a system of activities structured in time, i.e. he came as close to the solution as is possible for anyone who knows nothing whatever about Marxism.37 From this point of view one certainly does not move forward much if one says that in its remarkable multiplicity of aspects, love, in a complex way, takes on a great number of superstructural functions the network of which, of

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course, is not easy to sort out. In the life of a personality there are also undoubtedly many acts which one cannot relate directly either to the base or the superstructure. To try to work out a true theory of personality by imagining at the outset that every act will necessarily be classifiable under very clear scientific headings would be childishness: we are very fortunate if it becomes possible at last rationally to grasp the principal structures and their general trend. As in all other relations, there is definitely a great deal of this ‘connective tissue' of activity in married-couple and family relations. But while these relations may be highly autonomous with regard to what was identified above as the base of the personality, the fact remains that they are relations. And if one takes this notion of relation really seriously, one cannot conceive of it as a purely external and contingent relating of individuals who are themselves defined in a purely antecendent and independent way ; every relation itself has an essential reality through which those who are intermeshed in it are determined : this is also the whole meaning of the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach and the dialectic. It is therefore a question of studying married-couple and family relations in their essential reality. And what is it to investigate this essential reality scientifically if not to begin investigating the material exchanges which it consists of, or at least, which support it ? A materialist, scientific psychology of married-couple and family relations depends on the careful investigation of domestic economy or it does not exist. Such is clearly the approach of the founders of Marxism and all genuine socialist theoreticians. Thus, analysing the conditions of the social emancipation of women — which in its turn conditions their psychological emancipation and that of relations in the married-couple — Lenin wrote in 1919 in A Great Beginning that, Notwithstanding all the laws emancipating woman, she continues to be a domestic slave, because petty housezvork crushes, strangles, stultifies and degrades her, chains her to the kitchen and the nursery, and she wastes her labour on barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-racking, stultifying and crushing drudgery.38

Tliis petty domestic economy is not only characterised by the low level of means of labour, as is believed by the technicist ideology for which the generalising of the vacuum-cleaner and the washingmachine, because they are advances in themselves, ought to be enough to free woman : the development of the productive forces of industry, which is also positive in itself, does not emancipate the proletariat in capitalism by itself however — on the contrary. Even more than the level of the productive forces, it is a system of division of labour,

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relations of domestic activity, dependent on the relations of social production, which is directly concerned, and it is on its scientific analysis that the change to a scientific psychology of personality in the married-couple and the family depends. This is a huge theoretical task to perform, for it is clear that while, thanks to Marx, we have a remarkably rich and profound theory in political economy, many questions (even if they were asked), are left unanswered on the terrain of domestic economy where, in contrast to what happens for social labour studied by political economy, the extreme diversity of conditions objectively makes generalisation very difficult. And yet is not this backwardness in the theory of domestic economy precisely the most direct source of the persistence of idealism in a whole ‘married-couple5 psychology ? What must be closely gone into in particular is the exact nature of the exchanges involved in familial relations and their effect on the activities which they govern. In this domain one must of course beware of simple-mindedly putting the domestic labour (of the housewife) and wage-labour, provision of services and selling of commodities, domestic servitude and capitalist exploition, all on the same footing: even the bourgeois family is not a scaled-down model of a capitalist society. But that said, problems arise. What is the relation between the concrete domestic labour of the housewife within the family and the abstract social labour bringing in income in the form of the husband’s occupational activity, for example ? It is constantly liable to be directly replaced itself by wage-labour, and doubly replaced: the same time can be used for paid social labour if the housewife begins to do a job, for example, and the same tasks can be carried out as paid domestic labour if she employs a daily-help. To what extent does domestic labour-time therefore emerge from the concrete forms in which it is caught up in a domestic economy which by itself does not induce this ? To what extent can it begin to play a regulating role in married-couple relations? Although in a specific way, does not a separation also tend to be brought about here between concrete activity as self-expression and immediate relation with others, and a pseudo-abstract form of this activity burdened by the constitutive handicap that as such it is incapable of being exchanged for an income within domestic relations? One can immediately see the perspectives that such an investigation would open up on the forms of individuality which the relations of domestic activity involve, the contradictions in the personality which they induce and which are grafted onto the basic contradictions recalled above, and the source of all sorts of ideological representations that one continually encounters as soon as one looks at the psychology of the sexes and their

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The object of the psychology of personality

relations, e.g. the social root of the whole ideology of the essential inferiority of woman. In actual fact it is impossible to deal with this question seriously other than on the basis of an analysis of the practical relations of the married-couple, and more broadly of the family, for in the deep logic of the relation between the man and woman there is the child, the most important element of the analysis, albeit at times by its absence : so, as one says that the woman is the the future of the man, the child is the future of the married-couple. If one is moved by the spirit of materialist science, it is without forcing things that one is referred back from interpersonal relations to material exchanges and from material exchanges to social relations — from psychology to the economics on which it is based, in this domain as in others. After all, in Capital particularly, Marx laid the foundations for the scientific theory of the family articulated with political economy : However terrible and disgusting the dissolution, under the capitalist system, of the old family ties may appear, nevertheless, modern industry, by assigning as it does an important part in the process of production, outside the domestic sphere, to women, to young persons, and to children of both sexes, creates a new economic foundation for a higher form of the family and of the relations between the sexes.39

This short analysis, which naturally does not claim to solve the problems taken as examples, is undoubtedly enough to show that the concept of the personality as a system of social relations between acts is not an illegitimate and fruitless extrapolation from what the analysis of social labour teaches us. On the contrary, it is the richest general basis for reflection on the various basic aspects of personal life. Psychoanalysis today, in its most modem form, tells us that the unconscious is structured like a language : better, it is language. At the point we have arrived at, does it not appear even more well-founded to say that the personality is structured like an exchange-, better, that it is basically a complex system of exchanges ? B. The analyses from which we set out concern the relation between wages and labour. Is it possible to analyse the basic structures of personality according to the same principle if we consider the case not of a wage-labourer but of a man occupying quite a different position in capitalist society, whose income is of a different sort for an activity carried out in very different conditions? Without any doubt. Thus, all things being equal, what is true of the relations between labour and wages is equally true of the relations between capitalist activity and profit : the profit of the capitalist is no more the immediate natural result

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of the capitalist’s concrete activity, whatever it is, than wages are the natural immediate result of the wage-earner’s concrete labour.40 And to imagine the opposite in both cases restores the same ideological illusion. Profit is not the price of the responsibilities of control any more than wages are the price of labour: it is the deduction from the wealth created by hving-labour, authorised by the legal status of the capitalist. Although in a different sense, the relation between profit and capitalist activity is therefore no less mediated by social relations than that of labour and wages. In fact it is necessary to go further: the pursuit of profit cannot even be considered as the concrete personal activity of the capitalist with a view to satisfaction of his personal needs : It must never be forgotten that the production of this surplus-value ... is the immediate purpose and compelling motive of capitalist production. It will never do, therefore, to represent capitalist production as something which it is not, namely as production whose immediate purpose is enjoyment or the manufacture of the means of enjoyment for the capitalist. This would be overlooking its specific character, which is revealed in all its inner essence.41

Here, precisely, is the source of a contradiction characteristic of the form of individuality of the capitalist, not a ‘psychological’ contradiction in the everyday sense of the word, but an objective social contradiction and to this extent determinant as far as the personality is concerned. It is the ‘Faustian conflict’ which Marx analyses throughout his work from the 1844 Manuscripts to Capital, the conflict which develops in the breast of the capitalist between ‘the passion for accumulation’ and ‘the desire for enjoyment’:42 to accumulate is to conform to the demand of ‘constantly extending his capital’ which competition compels as ‘external coercive laws ... felt by each individual capitalist’,43 but on the other hand, the capitalist, who is not only capital but also a concrete individual, ‘has a fellow-feeling for his own Adam’,44 all the more so as prodigality being an important source of credit, ‘luxury ... becomes a business necessity to the “unfortunate” capitalist [and] enters into capital’s expenses of representation’.45 But this is tantamount to saying that even the satisfaction of the personal passion for enjoyment in the capitalist tends to become an aspect of the process of expanded reproduction of capital. Marx concludes: ‘If to classical economy, the proletarian is but a machine for the production of surplus-value j on the other hand, the capitalist is in its eyes only a machine for the conversion of this surplus-value into additional capital’.46 This example clearly shows that the relations between social activity

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and satisfaction of needs, and more broadly the basic relations of the personality with itself, are just as social in the capitalist as in the proletarian, which means that the concept of the personality defined above is true of the one as well as of the other. In this respect it is perfectly correct to think of the capitalist’s life-process as no less alienated than the proletarian’s, although in a different way: like the proletarian, the capitalist (exists in) ‘relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them’,47 and for both, these capitalist relations bring the relations between the social and the personal aspect of individuality, and the concrete and abstract form of exchanges into contradiction; more generally they subordinate the whole of individual life to society as an estranged inhuman power. In general, in class society, ‘this restricted character of development consists not only in the exclusion of one class from development, but also in the narrow-mindedness of the excluding class, and the “inhuman” is to be found also within the ruling class’.48 Moreover this clearly confirms the falsity of the speculative-humanist equation of the 1844 theory of alienation with the theory of impoverishment in Capital. In actual fact the still partially speculative character of the notion of alienation in Marx in 1844 appears precisely in this, that very different phenomena are mixed up: the impoverishment of the working-class (is it necessary to emphasise that the capitalist economy does not allow of a law of impoverishment of the capitalist class?) and the general alienation of the relations of individuals in capitalist society as far as their conditions of life and they themselves are concerned, alienation conceived of in a fundamentally new way in 1857 or 1867 compared with 1844, the specific forms of alienation of each class not preventing the identification of an essence common to both. One can therefore see that here too the idea of social relations between acts as the base of the personality is perfectly generalisable. In order to tackle the investigation of a personality scientifically, it is necessary to start from the theory of the corresponding historical forms of individuality. This theory itself always rests on the science of social relations, whatever class the individuality with which one is concerned belongs. Of course it may come about that the concrete materials for such an investigation are still inadequately worked out : it is clear for example that the detailed analysis of the forms and functions of intellectuals’ labour in contemporary France is far from being as advanced as that of the labour of the industrial proletariat so that in these two cases the theory of forms of individuality and consequently the psychology of personality are in a very different state of objective

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progress. But this clearly does not mean at all that the psychology of the personality of an intellectual worker could not be developed according to the same general principles as that of a proletarian ; quite on the contrary, this proves that obscurely, the psychology of personality as it is outlined here shows, and in a way that is not at all vague the vast extent of the positive research which must be developed. C. And we must come to just the same conclusion if we consider the problem of generalising these principles to the investigation of personalities developing in societies different from capitalist society : not only can this generalisation be seen straight away to be possible, but it is the basis on which the fundamentally important problems of the historical transformation of structures of human personalities can finally be approached. In this domain one can fmd particularly valuable indications in Marx which have nevertheless, it seems, still not been turned to scientific account on the psychological terrain. In analyses which were certainly rapid and sometimes abstract but always wonderfully penetrating and evocative, from The German Ideology to Capital, Marx regularly came back to this problem which he was the first to have clearly seen and stated, the problem of the development of forms of individuality in the primitive commune, the asiatic mode of production, slave societies, the feudal world — with perspectives here and there on socialist society and the communist future. Thus he already tries in The German Ideology to compare modes of relations and types of individuals who correspond to the still ‘natural’ instruments of production such as the cultivated field, and to instruments of production which are ‘created by civilisation’, [like] improved tools and machines. In the first case, that of the natural instruments of production, individuals are subservient to nature; in the second, to a product of labour. In the first case, therefore, property (landed property) appears as direct natural domination, in the second, as domination of labour, particularly of accumulated labour, capital. The first case presupposes that the individuals are united by some bond : family, tribe, the land itself, etc ; the second, that they are independent of one another and are only held together by exchange. In the first case, what is involved is chiefly an exchange between men and nature in which the labour of the former is exchanged for the products of the latter ; in the second, it is predominantly an exchange of men among themselves. In the first case, average, human common sense is adequate — physical activity is as yet not separated from mental activity ; in the second, the division between physical and mental labour must already be practically completed. In the first case, the domination of the proprietor over the propertyless may be based on a personal relationship,

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The object of the psychology of personality on a kind of community ; in the second, it must have taken on a material shape in a third party — money. In the first case, small industry exists, but determined by the utilisation of the natural instrument of production and therefore without the distribution of labour among various individuals ; in the second, industry exists only in and through the division of labour.49

Even if one must only accept it with reservations, such a text opens up exciting perspectives on a psychological paleontology yet to be created, and the theoretical importance of which in many repsects appears fundamental. After all Marx did not stop at that point. In particular the long section in the Grundrisse with the title Forms which precede capitalist production,50 contains analyses of the greatest psychological as well as historical and economic interest around the central thesis that the human being becomes an individual only through the process of history : He appears originally as a species-being (Gattungswesen), clan being, herd animal — although in no way whatever as a £', the science of social relations founded by Marx and Engels, i.e. precisely at the time when psychology can at last fmd in ‘philosophy5 — in a fundamentally new sense of the term — not an obstacle but a decisive support. It is as if having gained its independence at the cost of a bitter struggle, a long-colonised people no longer wished to hear of any connection with its former capitalist metropolis even when the latter, liberated from capitalism through revolution, is finally able to bring it disinterested aid without any ulterior colonialist motives. In this connection may we point out that to stir up groundless anticolonialism against some people is one of the main neo-colonialist ruses of certain others ? By way of a corrollary to our third thesis, let us recall these still current words of Engels: ‘those who abuse philosophy most are slaves to precisely the worst vulgarised relics of the worst philosophies5.4 (B) It seems to me that it follows clearly from all the foregoing that contrary to what is asserted in the passage from Experimental Psychology cited above, that nothing is more necessary than to start by clearing up the problems of ‘conceptualisation5 of the personality instead of relegating them to the hazy realm of‘theoretical differences5 between psychologists. To think that it is enough for a science to ‘see5 its object (‘to see [it] in the street5) to know what it is and thereby to know about what we are to set out to gather empirical ‘knowledge5, is really to ignore the whole history of the sciences which teaches us how

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often they spent their time ‘seeing’ non-existent things like phlogiston, the ether or race, so long as they did not know what they should have seen beyond these initial illusions, i.e. so long as they did not ‘conceptualise’ their object. And conceptualisation of the psychological personality is all the more indispensable because what the word ‘personality’ directly evokes in most languages, as in French, belongs on a quite different terrain, that of social celebrity (‘personalities here today ... ’) and self-assertion (‘to have a strong personality’) or both at one and the same time — while at the level of psychological terminology the greatest confusion reigns between personality, individuality, character and temperament. Of what exactly does one wish to have the science when one proposes to construct a psychology of personality ? So long as this fundamental question does not get a clear answer consistent with everything which has been noted in point (A), we venture to predict that the psychology of personality will remain in the sorry state in which one still finds it today. To understand how scientific psychology, or more precisely experimental psychology, implicitly conceptualises what it calls the personality, it is clearly necessary to understand in what way it approaches it. It says itself that its particular object is behaviour 0comportements). Sensation, learning, emotions, intelligence, language, etc., these are the subjects which make up the content of a treatise in experimental psychology. By considering the moment of behaviour as the object of investigation, from the total cycle of activity of concrete individuals, one has in advance — possibly without realising it — effected a theoretical division with hugh implications. To show this, let us assume a psychology which decided, for example, to concern itself not with human behaviour but with the life of each individual, i.e. with the particular relations which are formed and transformed between his knowledge, job, income, familial ties, connections with politics, ideas about life, etc. Its object would therefore be the concrete cycles of activity which certainly necessarily pass through the moment of psychic behaviour but the essential content of which is determined on quite a different basis: that of social relations. That an individual’s knowledge may be devalued by the scientific and technological revolution, his job abolished by economic restructuring, his income threatened by inflation, his familial ties destroyed by the moral crisis of decaying capitalism, and his ideas about life mystified by the dominant ideology, etc., all this, which fundamentally affects his life, his personality, will certainly assume in him the form of so many types of behaviour — sensations, experiences, emotions, etc. —but quite obviously cannot be explained by the laws of this form; the latter will appear merely as a

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general condition of possibility, a formal substratum without determinant significance as far as the essential, concrete content of these activities and this life are concerned. In deciding to concern itself with behaviour, experimental psychology pursues an opposite approach. What it raises to the rank of the essential object is the psychological form itself which activity assumes in most individuals, the concrete life of which it is the form thus being reduced to the rank of contingent content and the social relations which govern it simply to that of a set of conditioning factors. If I study emotion or intelligence as psychic functions, general forms of behaviour, it is obviously of little importance to know what contradictory situations, or what singular opportunities for coming to understand things, take the form of an emotion or an intelligent act in the life of this or that individual ; the only thing which interests me is to know of what these forms of behaviour considered in themselves consists, taking into account the formal characteristics of situations generally provided by experiment. What is an essential object in one of the perspectives adopted becomes an inessential form in the other and vice-versa. It is the same in the relations between history, in the Marxist sense, and a very widespread conception of sociology : in the development of particular societies the latter in principle only considers the general structures functions which, for the former, are simply more or less abstract forms through which the historical development of mankind, its sole essential reality, passes. But this psychology of behaviour and functions cannot avoid the reappearance at one time or another of the man who fulfils all these functions and adheres to all these forms of behaviour. Obviously the man to whom general functions and forms of behaviour refer can himself only be man in general, an abstract individual — and thereby this psychology, which imagines itself at the opposite pole to all philosophy, on the terrain of pure experimental science, is not far from readopting on its own account the main element in all speculative humanism, in all naturalistic conceptions of the human essence. At the same time the concrete individual no longer holds the attention in himself but only through his differences — in himself he evokes nothing other than the typical individual of general psychology who perceives colours, pin-points memories or mentally grasps contingent relations — which amounts to saying that what one calls psychology of personality here is not a science in itself but simply the differential corollary of general psychology. This is what the introductory paragraph quoted earlier plainly says: the psychology of personality rests on individual differences, ‘its task is to define them more accurately and explain them’. The conceptual frame of reference of differential psychology is

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therefore necessarily the same as that of general psychology : the traits or factors which underlie its typological classifications refer to functions and forms of behaviour. Here we are on the terrain of solid truths of the type : man in general always has emotionality, but it is more or less great according to individuals. On the other hand, there can be no question of this psychology being concerned with things like wages or political practice, for the good reason that general psychology has never encountered anything like this on its terrain, the terrain of the behavioural forms of activity. The whole content of individuals’ concrete existence therefore falls outside the field of this so-called science of personality. The connection between the individual and the content of his life appears like a connection between an autonomous structure and a stream of contingent activities which pass through it and which, it is not denied, may determine and even alter this structure, but which remain unconnected with it in themselves. Conceived like this, such a structure inevitably refers back to a nature — particular innate or acquired somatic and temperamental characteristics, the formation early in life of a more or less unchangeable character, etc. — and to everything which can be assimilated to it in a social world reduced to the proportions of a ‘more complex’ natural environment, i.e. to cinvariants’ like language or the relations between the sexes, to the exclusion of real history. The twofold consequence of this whole, more or less implicit, conceptualisation is that a psychology of this sort really fails to explain the personality and disclaims any prospects of changing it. The fact that it fails to explain it is shown fairly clearly by the theoretical state in which it stagnates which, even if we assumed that its scattered (and moreover frequently mutually contradictory) materials were valuable a prion, is dominated by the absence of an overall theory and of general laws — a situation which we very significantly find again on the terrain of what it calls motivation, i.e. in a word, the question of the motor of personal activity. Indeed how could a psychology which from the very outset cuts human activity off from its excentric social essence, and therefore from its essential motor contradictions, and merely retains the psychic forms through which it passes, account for change in its object ? For example, is it not clear that the specific way in which a given type of social organisation biographically brings individuals into contact with the immense social heritage on the basis of which they develop, the way in which it facilitates and stimulates or, on the contrary, hinders and discourages the activités of many-sided appropriation of this heritage by these individuals, is absolutely central in determining the dynamism of their personalities? And if one has started by putting these objective

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structures of the biography between parentheses as ‘nonpsychological5, ought one then to be surprised that a general theory of motivation remains un discoverable ? Unable to find the essential materials of such a theory on its own terrain and entirely disregarding the terrain of historical materialism where it could profitably seek them, the formal typology to which this psychology of personality is in fact reduced has as its necessary complement theories which all sooner or later refer back to ‘nature5 — from the biologism of instincts to superficial interactionism with its generalised ‘social environment5 — and which our experimental psychology, so very strict with regard to philosophical speculation, can only take seriously scientifically by shutting its eyes to the disconcerting weakness of their foundations. In a very similar way a sociology which right away puts the concrete content of history, the dialectic of the class struggle, between parentheses and merely considers certain more or less general forms of organisation and functioning in the life of societies, inevitably has as its complement a whole mythology of ‘social dynamism5, whether it seeks its materials from geopolitics, racial considerations or some sort of psychoanalytic culturalism. Therefore one can indeed talk about the explanatory failure of this psychological formalism in relation to the personality, a failure which is merely the other side of a conservative attitude, which is often quite unconscious. For to divest the human personality of its fundamentally historical dimension, and therefore of its immense prospects for transformation and flowering in historical conditions which are themselves altered, is fraudulently to represent it as captive by nature to ‘eternal5 structures which are actually in one aspect merely structures induced in it by a completely transitory alienating society. Description and classification of‘types5 can then only have one concrete meaning: to further the adaptation of individuals to these structures which are presented as sacrosanct, instead of contributing to their transformation. All things considered the logic of differential psychology is to fall into the traps of psycho-technology against which a recent book, which is not based on Marxism however, draws up an instructive indictment.5 Hence a second group of theses which, in developing the philosophical theses summarised above, constitute the basis of the theory of personality for which this book militates. And first of all one thesis in a negative form: nothing deserving the name science of personality will ever exist if one starts by arbitrarily reducing the human personality to certain of its psychic forms or to the infantile formations which precede it. What we are offered under this name today are really merely more or less questionable formal typologies, or

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on another level, theories of structurations which are brought about in the initial stages of biography, i.e. at a time when the logic of a socially excentered activity still only intervenes in an indirect or limited way and when explanatory schemas depending on interpersonal, particularly familial, relations, may suffice. In this book, therefore, it is a matter of something quite different from trying to add a fifty-first meaning to the fifty meanings mentioned by Allport and in which one can propose a concept of personality which in essentials is actually confused with that of individuality. On the contrary, it is a question of constituting a new science corresponding to a specific object not yet recognised by existing psychology, one which Politzer gropingly aimed at when he devoted himself to a science of 'drama5, i.e. of concrete human activity. I call this object personality and by this I mean the total system of activity of a given individual, a system which forms and develops throughout his life and the evolution of which constitutes the essential content of his biography. The personality is not at all to be reduced to individuality, or to the ensemble of the particular formal characteristics of an individual’s psychism whether these particular characteristics refer back to biological conditions in themselves independent of personal activity and to the infantile structurations which precede it, or on the contrary, are only explained by the particular logic of this activity. The personality is the scientific concept which corresponds to the fundamental unity of these two simple formulae : what a man makes of his fife, what his life has made of him. This concept is directly in line with the repeated use which Marx made of the term (Personlichkeit) over and over again on the economic and historical terrain when he defined labour-power as ‘the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being5,6 or when he characterised bourgeois society as a society in which ‘capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality5,7 so that ‘in order to assert themselves as individuals5 the proletarians must ‘overthrow the State5.8 In other words, it is a matter of constructing a science of biography which is homologous in depth to the science of history founded by Marx and Engels and which is its basis, biography being to personality what history is to society. It is hardly necessary to emphasise that if one did not take these concepts in the precise sense which has just been pointed out, one would completely misconstrue this book, beginning with its title. But if the personality, thus distinguished from the individuality which is found in the animal as well as in man, refers back to the individual5s activity and from that to the social relations which underlie it, what does it have to do with psychology ? This is not only a legitimate but an

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inevitable question for anyone who is used to identifying all possible psychology with existing psychology and therefore to accepting the idea, which is actually remarkably arbitrary, that the most essential content of our lives ought to remain immaterial to a science the object of which, according to them, is ‘concrete man’. In actual fact, on the prerequisite condition of starting from the philosophical theses set out above in connection with the human essence, i.e. having in mind the scientific conception which shows the coincidence in the last analysis of the logic of relations of individual activity with those of social relations, it is not very dilficult to understand how the essential events of biography come under psychological investigation. Certainly behavioural psychology itself studies relations between the individual’s acts, but it is then a case of natural relations, i.e. relations which result from their nature as acts; for example, those which become established in the course of learning, between a repeated activity and its immediate results for the individual — hence the declaration of laws of learning. The aim of the science of personality with which we are concerned here is to deal with the relations between activities themselves — and not between acts, i.e. merely the psychic forms of these activities — and these relations are not natural but social, for they arise from the fact that the individual’s acts are constantly mediated by processes of the social world which impress their laws on them ; for example, relations which the capitalist economy establishes between remuneration for labour and the valueform of labour power, which take the appearance of wages, relations totally unknown to psychological experiential laws and which, while they produce their effects in the personality through these laws, impress on it a logic of growth (or stagnation) of quite a different nature. Social relations between the individual’s activities are clearly psychological in the sense that they constitute the basis of the deepest dynamic of his personality, but far from being naturally inherent in ‘human psychism’, this dynamic in the last analysis reflects the relations characteristic of a given society. This is why if behavioural psychology in the last resort rests on the facts of neurophysiology, the psychology of personality finds its ultimate bases in the science of social relations and in particular in the investigation, to be developed, of the histonco-social forms of individuality, the objective matrices of individuals’ activity — from money relations to class relations — on the basis of which it will have to construct the representation of the processes of activity that constitute personal life. Doing which, will the psychology of personality be a general psychology or a differential psychology? If one has understood the foregoing, one will also understand that this dilemma loses its meaning in

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relation to a science of this type, i.e. a science of the singular. Certainly experimental psychology, and more generally the experimental sciences which developed for more than three centuries on the basis of the model of classical physics, founded wholly on the reduction of the real to abstract generalities, constitutes a sphere of thought so far removed from the dialectical concept of science of the singular that the latter is often considered in their eyes to be an epistemological monstrosity ; this is yet another indication that every science implies philosophical views — or blinkers — the characteristic of the science which denies this being to imply them without knowing it, i.e. in the worst way. In actual fact, if one considers realities by disregarding their essential differences, and if one’s aim is merely to know their characteristics in order to make use of them as they are, and not to change them, then it is enough, in order to have a science, to refer to a simplified cgeneral object’, the singular realities of which will merely be more examples which are more complicated in some way. Here the scientific concept refers back to an abstract generality, i.e. a type, and by that very fact the singular object as such falls outside science. This is how experimental psychology basically proceeds : as far as it is concerned the activity of individuals is essentially reducible to behaviour; everything takes place as if the human essence were inherent in the isolated individual — hence the naturalism which is at least implicit in this psychology. As for the singular individual, he can only be apprehended by science in so far as he is reduced to certain generality in the perspective of a typological classification. But if the science of the abstract generality corresponds to a limited aspect of reality, by that very fact it fails to explain this abstract essence which appears to dwell in the concrete, and all the more to grasp its internal differentiations, its qualitative transformations and its development. In order to grasp all this scientifically one must go beyond the restricted point of view of the general object which, in as much as it exists, is itself merely an effect of more fundamental relations, deeper generative processes. This is precisely the major lesson which emerges from the science of history founded by Marx and Engels, and about which we definitely do not see why psychology should refrain from reflecting: to grasp the necessary7 development of social formations is not to reduce them to the abstraction of a Society in general — quite on the contrary, Marxism puts an end to the myth of this ideological mystification which amounts to eternalising the conditions of presentday society — but to reveal the fundamental relations and processes through which each singular society becomes what it is. This is not to erect a substantial model of Society but to identify the topology of the

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production, reproduction and transformation of concrete social formations, a topology which is not itself a universal generality but which alters in the course of history. In such a science, in which the concept refers not to a thing but to a productive relation, the individual can be grasped scientifically, i.e. entirely though concepts but in his singularity, since this conceptualisation does not amount to identifying him with a general object but provides the rational elements of his concrete logic. This is obviously the scientific approach which is appropriate for a psychology of personality, i.e., as the very words themselves say, for a science of the individual: to construct not the substantial model of man in general, merely negatively and superficially picking out individual differences’ with respect to it or referring the ‘singular case’ to a more or less intuitive interpretation, but the topology of the production, reproduction and transformation of the personality in given socio-historical conditions and thereby to make it possible to grasp the concrete logic of a concrete personality. Such a science of being really explanatory, (i.e. effectively accounting for the essence of its object) and at the same time being transforming and revolutionary, i.e. equipped by its very conception to show the way to a higher flowering of personalities in revolutionised social conditions. The fact that this psychology would be an obviously original science — although once its project is conceived in its whole extent it will be seen more clearly just how many elements exist here or there ready to be used — does not entail, however, the rejection of any of the genuinely scientific facts which have been or will be acquired elsewhere, but at the same time it calls attention to problems of articulation between distinct realities. Far from being a sort of ideological compromise between different theoretical perspectives, the recognition of this articulation reflects a fundamental historical and psychological fact, i.e., the transition from animality to humanity, which is unceasingly reproduced in some way in the psychic humanisation of each human child. For while it is quite true that the human personality is altogether different from mere individuality, it is in its very form none the less an effect of this, the logic of social relations being transformed into the logic of biography. An historically and ontologically later product generated by the social excentration of the circuits of human activity, the personality therefore comes to invest a pre-existing individuality, and though it more or less completely and contradictorily subsumes it, individuality none the less remains the necessary support of personal activity. It is this relation which I designated by the new concept of juxtastructure, the personality being interlocked laterally, as it were, in the social relations which play the role of basis in its regard,

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and in which nevertheless it does not find the actual support of its existence, which lies in biological individuality. In order not to make a mistake about the dialectic of such an articulation, it is essentially important not to confuse the support of a reality — i.e. the former reality from which it has emanated and which remains its condition of possibility — and its basis, i.e. the specific relations which functionally determine it in its essence. This is how geographical conditions are the support of all social life while its real basis lies in the mode of production. The basic error of what today professes to be psychology of personality is more or less systematically to confuse the support of individuality with the (excentered) basis of the personality. But to dispel this confusion and to emphasise the determinant role of the basis does not at all force one to lose sight of the secondary reactions of the support on the basis, and thus of the possible contribution of a formal typology. The problem is even more complex when it is a matter of thinking the interactions between the basis of the developed personality and the earlier structurations of an activity, particularly infantile activity, which is still incompletely shaped in its essence by social excentration. But regardless of the way in which these infantile structurations may have repercussions on the developed personality, one can be certain that its essential movement remains determined by the objective logic of its current activity, just as regardless of the reverberation in it of modes of production which it has passed through, the essential movement of a social formation remains determined by its present mode of production. And this is why the theory of the developed personality can clearly be seen to constitute the centre of the field of the psychological sciences. (C) The theses summarised so far all converge towards the constitution, which we regard as necessary, of a new science genuinely corresponding to the name psychology of personality. But they only construct the concept of such a science from the outside, specifying its position in the field of the human sciences. They do, therefore, have psychology in view, but solely by way of the terrain and according to the approach of the philosopher, in the Marxist sense, i.e. in particular on the basis of the gnoseological teachings of the materialist dialectic and the anthropological teachings of historical materialism. To these theses in the philosophy of the sciences this book adds a number of hypotheses, in the form of suggestions, about the concepts that might constitute the content of this science as well as other aspects. These indicative hypotheses, which by definition are not the result of an experimental practice which in a sense is yet to be initiated, have been produced both on an empirical basis and from theoretical conjectures. To those who

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might adopt all or part of the theses stated above, they may suggest more concretely what sort of knowledge this psychology is likely to provide and in what direction it is possible to look for it. Thanks to the initiative of various research workers this is the part which they are in fact beginning to play. It is perfectly clear that it is only on the bases of experimental research and validation that they can be turned into real working hypotheses or, on the contrary, abandoned and replaced by others. In every science a decisive theoretical function is performed by basic concepts. One can easily understand by virtue of all the foregoing that the basic concepts of the psychology of personality cannot be the same as those of behavioural psychology — beginning with the concept of behaviour itself. Behaviour, one might say, is what activity is reduced to when one abstracts from its whole socially excentred aspect. Thus if one abstracts from the relations mediated by the structures of the capitalist economy, like those between his labour and his wages, structures which induce in his personality the contradictions characteristic of exploitative societies, a worker’s activity is reduced to a set of sensory-motor behaviour, experiences, emotional reactions, etc. Personal activity, therefore, consists not of behaviour but of acts considered in relation to their complete circuit and to the sum of their effects both within the social world as well as within the personality itself. Acts are the pertinent elements — and the only pertinent ones it seems — of the theoretical delineation of biography. And to know a personality is first of all to know the ensemble of acts of which its biography consists. The concept of act introduces us right away to the elementary contradictions of the personality and first of all to this one : on the one hand it is an act of an individual, and expression of this individual ; on the other, it is an act of a determinate social world, an expression of objective historical conditions. This duality contains the formal possibility of all sorts of oppositions within activity, and the psychology of personality has as its fundamental task the analysis of these. On the one hand the act uses a capacity, whatever it may be and whatever its origin 5 but on the other, it may itself be productive of new capacities or alterations of existing capacities. A, the opposite pole of the circuit of activity, the concept of capacity therefore constitutes another basic concept, and it refers us to the sum of innate or acquired potentialities to carry out any act. The dialectical relations between acts and capacities suggest that an individual’s total activity can be divided theoretically into two sectors, that of acts which produce or differentiate capacities and that of acts which merely use existing capacities ; in their turn the relations of these sectors may constitute a domain of research which is all the more

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important because the most important progressive function of the personality clearly appears to be the development of capacities, and because the hypothesis of a correspondence between the nature of capacities and the structure of activity immediately suggests itself. Even summarised so schematically, these considerations clearly lead to stating the problem of the motor of activity. If everything which has been shown earlier is true, i.e. if it is necessary to give up fallaciously depicting general structures of the personality naturally inherent in the individual as such, and to adopt the perspective of these structures being induced in individuality by way of the social relations in which the biography unfolds, can we be satisfied with a concept of need — or some other term by which one means to express all or part of the dynamism of personal activity — as a given of a biological type and originally internal, i.e. basically homeostatic (tending to restore the original state), even though, of course, we stress its plasticity, its tendency to take on unconscious meanings and to be socialised in its forms and norms etc. ? 'Hiis seems thoroughly doubtful. Even though the beginnings of individual life may clearly be thought in such terms as these, since the human child always begins from biological ontogenesis, does not the unfolding of the personality require that we look for the motor of developed activity in an opposite direction ? For with respect to humanisation, the basic instigations emanate and the materials abound outside the individual, in the social world, and consequently it is also these which determine and transform the objective structures of Motivation5 of acts. For example, as Marx showed admirably, the generalisation of money relations overturned human needs in their very essence. If one’s thought moves in this direction, then far from appearing as an enigmatic characteristic of the species (and a stumbling block for present-day psychology) the expanded reproduction of the personality and of human needs is elucidated as an unmistakable structural characteristic of history: the increasing immensity of the social heritage potentially made available for personal assimilation, which in its turn encounters as its main obstacle the contradictions and limitations which are inherent in determinate social forms — and this fact reveals the essentially historical nature and relativity of the ideologically rooted oppositions between cgenius5 and Mediocrity5 and between the flowered and the stunted personality. It goes without saying that such an excentered conception of the motor of personal activity does not in any way contradict its obvious intériorisation, which requires that one studies it as a particular psychic reality, relatively autonomous and moved by contradictions which have become internal and which in their turn express themselves externally in the social

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activity of the personality. But what it does not allow is the c short-cut’ consisting in directly relating activity to needs understood as the primary motor, when in reality the needs of a developed personality are essentially results which express a dynamic supported by its structures as a whole, where these themselves reflect the ensemble of social structures which the biography has encountered. Thus to found a real science of personality — as the preceding remarks clearly show — the crucial task is to construct a rational representation of the basic structures of personal activity, to evolve the theory of its infrastructure. And it is because it has failed in this task until now that the psychology of personality today is still not fully constituted as a science. But psychology has no chance of finding this infrastructure which it is seeking so long as it continues to picture it to itself in advance in the form of a static structure of the natural type, as a Temperament3, for example, or even, in Freud’s school, in the form of some kind of system of spatialised instances, a topography which precedes the activity which it is supposed to structure. If one does not make the radical mistake of confusing the developed personality with everything which supports or precedes it, if one can conceive it rather as the total system of an individual’s activity, its infrastructure can clearly be nothing else than the basic structure of this activity itself, in other words its own organisation in time, its temporal structure. The main hypothesis put forward in the last part of this book is therefore this one : the infrastructure of the developed personality is constituted by its use¬ time. The problem is then to identify real use-time beyond its empirical appearances and all the more beyond the subjective or optative representations which the individual himself has of it. And the analysis of real use-time, i.e. of the effective temporal relations between various sorts of activity, in its turn presupposes the theory of this diversification. A huge field is thus opened up to research. I have put forward the hypothesis that some important aspects of this diversification could be constituted on the one hand by the duality between activities which form new capacities (sector I) and activities using already existing capacities (sector II) and on the other, in conditions of capitalist society (on this point the infrastructure of personalities is different in a socialist society), by the opposition between concrete activity, which relates immediately to itself, and abstract activity, i.e. activity subject directly or indirectly to the reduction of labour-time to abstract time on which the whole process of capitalist exploitation rests. It seems to me the development of thought based on these hypotheses alone is sufficient to make evident the fruitfulness of the concept of use-time and the possibility, in research oriented in such a direction, of elucidating a true basic logic of

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personal activity, and then, in connection with this and its contradictions, and starting with the controls of use-time and the corresponding ideological representations, elucidating an ensemble of superstructural activities — and finally of beginning to glimpse the laws of development of the personality, in the dialectical sense of the word law which we specified above, i.e. as the expression of the logic of development of the specific concrete contradictions of a given personality. But it is important throughout such an inquiry — never to lose sight of the juxtastructural position of the personality vis-à-vis social relations. Failing which, one would inevitably deviate towards a conception of its laws of development which would be vitiated from the word go. Let us suppose, for example, that observation comes to validate the hypothesis of a law of‘necessary’ correspondence between the level of development of given capacities and the corresponding structure of use-time. Such a hypothesis seems to be completely plausible from the twofold point of view of historical and dialectical materialism. But take care: the fact that alterations of use-time appear as necessary from the point of view of the development of capacities absolutely does not mean that they are necessarily going to prevail over objective social conditions, for these do not necessarily offer the possibility of such alterations; on the contrary, the reduction of labourpower to the status of a commodity in capitalist society generally means that it is rather the impossibility of this necessary correspondence which is the rule : hence a large-scale social phenomenon of limitation to the growth of personalities. The psychology of personality therefore deals with a specific type of contradictions: the contradictions between internal necessities of development and the social conditions of possibility of the corresponding alterations of the biography — contradictions which in their turn determine a whole logic of individuals’ concrete responses. In contrast to the response of satisfied acceptance or narrow withdrawal into ‘private’ life, a particularly interesting and important form of this logic is the militant life, which implies that the individual becomes aware of the social excentration of the bases of his personality, and involves a form of activity which makes the fundamental link between the solution to his personal contradictions and the transformation of objective social conditions, the ‘real essence’ of all men — thus thereby heralding the higher forms of the disalienated personality in the very midst of a class society. What is it, therefore, to study a personality scientifically in the conception suggested ? In the first place it is as far as possible to locate the particular biological characteristics and infantile structurations

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through which individuation in its initial stages is brought about, and from which more or less lasting forms of activity result. Above all it is to grasp the dialectic of personal life in which the developed personality is formed and transformed : the development of a fixed capital of capacities, structures of use-time, superstructures and forms of consciousness, internal necessities of development and contradictions with the objective bases of personal life resulting from these contradictions at each stage, crises in use-time and the subsequent transformations of the general logic of development — all this, taking into account the articulation between the particular dialectic of developed activity and forms born of its organic support as of its biological past, episodes of progressive inversion of primitive activity into developed activity, and the more or less total completion of this inversion. Quite obviously this is a matter of a theoretical programme of work which presupposes a background of untold general knowledge and information connected with the singular case. Moreover the firm belief which inspires the present book from beginning to end is that the scientific theory of personality still essentially belongs to the future. Articulated with historical materialism and scientific socialism, with the practices transforming the personality and revolutionary struggles, a real science of biography at least seems possible on such a path. *

*

*

We have just seen that the book’s overall approach therefore consists in proving that as a scientific object the human personality is not immediately accessible, as abstract humanism and its inseparable enemy, psychological positivism, both assume ; it is so only if one takes an essential detour via the science of social relations and its theoretical base, historical materialism. This being so the discussions to which the book has given rise can be classed schematically into two groups : those which bear on the question of whether historical materialism, and more broadly Marxism, in themselves really do have the meaning which we attribute to them here 5 and those which bear on the question of whether the theoretical approach which draws lessons from them on the terrain of the psychology of personality is itself convincing. Although the latter have become more important than the former in the recent period, the former, which we may describe as philosophical provided that we give this term its Marxist meaning, in addition to their own interest, retain the value of an essential condition of the latter and it is with them that I shall begin. Leaving aside those objections which have been made from theoretical positions other than Marxism,9 and which are not very

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numerous moreover, I fmd that during these last two years this book has been essentially criticised on the two fronts of philosophical humanism and theoretical antihumanism. Concerning the first I had already been led, some time before drafting the postscript to the second edition, to reply to the objections of Adam Schaff,10 according to whom the main phrase in the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach, das menschliche Wesen, could not have meant ‘the human essence’ but had really referred to the concrete human being, the individual, an attitude which amounts to replacing the founding thesis of historical materialism — the human essence is the ensemble of social relations — by a psyc.hologicohumanist thesis : the individual is the ensemble of social relations — which at one and the same time is contrary to Marx’s actual statement is much less profound and inevitably gives rise to historical idealism. Adam Schaff has since responded to my replies with another article of more than twenty pages,11 which does not seem to me to contain any really new argument relating to the specific problem at issue but in which he called, in conclusion, for ca concrete reply and argument’12 on my part. I provided this ‘concrete reply’13 in the form of numerous texts in Marx dated from 1843 to 1848 in which the expression das menschliche Wesen not only admits of the translation ‘the human essence’ but does not allow of any other. Let one try, for example, to translate it by ‘the human individual’ in this passage in the 1844 Manuscripts in which Marx speaks of das menschliche Wesen des Menschen (man’s human essence14), or in this phrase that one finds in several texts from the summer of 1844 : das menschliche Wesen ist das wahre Gemeinwesen der Menschen (‘the human essence is the true community of men’15), or again in this passage from The Holy Family in which Proudhon is ridiculed for his idealist conception of equality, die ihm das menschliche Wesen reprasentiert (which for him represents the human essence16). But there is even more convincing evidence, for in a passage in The German Ideology Marx himself tells us what he meant in a'l his previous writings by das menschliche Wesen. Here is the passage: This path (towards a materialist conception of the world — L.S.) was already indicated in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher — in the Einleitung zur Kritik der Hegelschen Echtsphilosophie and Zur Judenfrage. But since at that time this was done in philosophical phraseology, the traditionally occurring philosophical expressions such as ‘human essence’, ‘genus’, etc. gave the German theoreticians the desired excuse for misunderstanding the real trend of thought17 ...

Without any possible doubt it is clearly a matter here of the human

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essence and not of the human individual, since Marx expressly describes this notion as philosophical or speculative in the traditional sense, and this is certainly in keeping with the notion of human essence understood abstractly but would be meaningless if it was simply just a question of the human individual. What, therefore, is the expression which Marx uses in this passage ? It is menschhch.es Wesen ! From all these texts I concluded : It seems to me that for all that one ought to yield to the facts : in Marx’s writings before 1848 (and until 1848, for we fmd another example in The Manifesto18), and in particular when the problems tackled in the 6th Thesis appear, we generally (I do not say always) come across the expression das menschliche Wesen used in such a way that the translation by the human essence is not only correct but the only one possible. At the end of his article Adam Schaff asks me for a concrete reply and argument. Leaving aside the general semantic considerations and quotations unconnected with the question, may I in my turn ask Adam Schaff to explain how he can uphold his thesis in view of these examples (and scores of others which he will easily be able to fmd, for example in the 1844 Manuscripts) ?

This request has remained unanswered to this day.19 But what, it will certainly be asked, is really at stake theoretically in this problem of translation ? On this point let me repeat the conclusions of my second reply to Adam Schaff. Contrary to speculative humanism, I assert (as does the negative [argument] of the 6th Thesis') that the individual is absolutely not primary with regard to social relations and that he cannot therefore scientifically be the starting-point-, but contrary to the reduction of Marxism to a theoretical antihumanism, I assert (as does the positive [argument] of the 6th Thesis) that on the basis of the science of social relations it is quite possible to return to the understanding of concrete individuals precisely because, far from being foreign to them, social relations constitute the reality of their essence. Where, therefore, is the deep conflict between Adam SchafF’s conception and the one I uphold? Not at all in the question of the legitimacy and importance of a Marxist theory of the concrete individual — for I do not believe it any less legitimate and important than he does — but in the question of what the Marxist starting-point is for such a theory. In my opinion this starting-point is necessarily the science of social relations, then the historico-social forms of individuality, every attempt at direct access to the concrete individual automatically reviving the illusion according to which the human essence is inherent in the isolated individual. Adam Schaff, on the contrary, does not hesitate to write: ‘Marx was not afraid of the concept of “human individual” and

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he did not regard it as a pre-Marxist term but on the contrary he thinks — and he emphasises this — that the starting-point of his analysis is concrete social individuals'',20 A little later, completely contradictorily moreover, at least as far as I am concerned (and remembering the muddle of the two contrasting translations of the 6th Thesis in Le marxisme et Lindividu), he repeats.- ‘A Marxist [has] a right to take the individual as the starting-point (Marx himself justifies this right) provided that he regards the individual as the product of social relations, as “the ensemble of social relations” as Marx defines him metaphorically’.21 A contradictory text, for if, as I think, the individual is the product of social relations, he is therefore certainly not the starting-point but a secondary development; if, on the contrary (which I regard as a basic misinterpretation of the 6th Thesis), the individual is the ensemble of social relations, he is at least logically contemporaneous with them and can therefore be treated logically as a starting-point. The fact that in the same sentence one can present these two fundamentally opposed formulations as interchangeable is beyond me. But let’s leave it. Is it true in any case that Marx himself ‘justifies the right to take the individual as the starting-point’? In my opinion this is a typical error which makes us regress towards pre-Marxism. In my opinion Adam Schaff has fallen into the trap which waits for those who have not understood in the light of the 6th Thesis some particularly interesting passages in The German Ideology. ‘Individuals have always built on themselves, but naturally on themselves within their given historical conditions and relationships’, we read several times.22 An evident biographical truth that Marx always uses (if one goes back to the context) in a materialist way against the idealism for which men are ‘built on’ abstract representations or philosophical conceptions. But this biographical truth is so little a principle of scientific analysis as far as Marx is concerned that every time he sets over against this subjective starting-point the fact that individuals’ conditions of life, their powers and relations, become alienated from them, become autonomous and entirely subsume them: ‘the transformation of the individual relationship into its opposite, a merely material relationship’,23 the consequence of which is that in order to understand individuals theoretically, as to liberate them practically, we must in the last analysis start not from individuals themselves but from objective social relations. ‘The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, but those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity’.24

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Not only does this text not say, as Adam Schaff thinks, that one 'must take the individual as a starting-point’ but it says the opposite, in the first place because it refers not to the individual (which would inevitably lead us to deal in abstractions of psychological form) but to real individuals, which lead us right away into history; next and still more because individuals are not considered here in themselves but, on the contrary, as products of social relations : 'the nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production’.25 Indeed this is why in The German Ideology and ail the more in the great mature Marxist works one never comes across analysis of psychological form ('man is ... the individual is ... ’) but rather analyses of social form which secondarily have psychological significance that is often enormous. In contrast, when Adam Schaff fancies he can write in Le Marxisme et T individu that 'man ... is the autonomous maker of his destiny, the creator of his own world and creator of himself’ or, again, that 'the starting-point of socialism — of all socialism — is love of man’,26 he has already relapsed back beyond the revolution achieved in the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach, i.e. in spite of his scientific socialism he deviates towards Feuerbachian, utopian, 'ethical’ socialism — with all that this implies. Adam Schaff emphasises that our debate does not concern only two individuals: 'the matter is international’, he writes.27 I agree with this. And as a matter of fact ought not Adam Schaff the Communist look closely into what French and international company this 'reading’ of Marxism, based on a primacy of the individual, puts him ? Is it simply an accident if his translation of the 6th Thesis has had Roger Garaudy for a leading adherent in our country? Is it to display dogmatic narrowness in one’s views to wonder about certain recognised convergences of these interpretations with those of a de Man, a Gabriel Marcel and a Marcuse?28 And when, after having criticised the narrowness of a whole interpretation of Marxism in Stalin’s time, which was real moreover, the author of the introduction to Schaff’s book comes to dispute that ‘the authentic Marx is the mature Marx, the theoretician of the economy and the revolution’ (as if it were not precisely this Marx who was also the authentic humanist) and adds: 'if in the past Adam Schaff upheld similar positions and preferred the mature works, at present he takes up the position of the western marxologists to whom he credits the merit of having been the first to understand and reinstate Marx in his entirety’,29 is it not permissible to think that there are poisonous eulogies and 'friends’ from whom it would be better to be rescued? These remarks are not dictated by a polemical concern, which Adam Schaff fancied he discerned in my

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previous reply but, I can state positively, by an opposite concern. We French communist philosophers have also thought a great deal about the deep nature arid origin of the dogmatic impoverishment and deformations of Marxism which for a time had common currency. Our firm belief, acquired collectively and soundly and much verified in practice, is that what is involved and what must therefore be revised is not at all the scientific Marxism of Marx’s and Engels’ mature works but, on the contrary, its comprehension which is wanting in rigour and vitality. This is why the passion with which we fight the belief that it is by deviating from the scientific Marxism of Marx’s maturity that one will find its substantial core, is quite other than polemical : it is militant and therefore fraternal to those who are moved by the same spirit. This stated, and it seems to me of prime importance, I would like to avert a misunderstanding : the fact that far from being the real startingpoint for explanation of human facts in general, beginning with historical facts, the individual is produced by social relations in the last analysis, and that he cannot significantly reciprocally alter them as an individual but only as a member of a class, participating in action of a social nature, etc. — and looking at it closely the ‘outstanding’ individual himself is by no means an exception to this rule — this fact has nothing to do with a conception of the personality as a passive and static reality. On the contrary, this book is founded entirely on the firm belief that historical materialism — and it alone — makes it possible, to think the personality fully beyond all petrified naturalism, as a dynamic system of activities moved by a particular logic. Nevertheless, taking into account the extreme emphasis which, in the present state of the psychology of personality in France, I had to put on returning to this idea of the production of individuality by social relations, some critics have reacted like the Soviet philosopher, G. Mialo, who at the end of a long, essentially favourable, analysis of the book,30 adds this: As a matter of fact, certain aspects of the catégorial apparatus suggested by the author as an instrument for such an investigation may give rise to objections, a fact which in our opinion is linked to the emphasis put by Sève on the identity of the human essence with the ensemble of socialeconomic relations. It seems that the polemical stressing of this thesis and inadequate attention to the dialectical nature of the relation which exists here hide from the author the danger that lies hidden in such a categorisation : the danger of a sort of essentialist interpretation in which the social individual appears as excentered essence which fills out the form of the individual psychism, which is neutral and passive with regard to it. In addition it is doubtful whether the term ‘juxtastructure’, suggested by Sève to describe the specificity of the personality, meets the requirements

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I have reproduced G. Mialo’s critical argument in its entirety because it seems to me of great interest, on the one hand to clear up misunderstandings and on the other to locate precisely where there are certain theoretical disagreements. The fact that the psychic-individual, or the personality, are quite different from a sort of transfer of the social collective, or social relations, is quite obvious, and I think I myself have shown why at length : in the first place the singularity of every biography makes every individual a specific being ; next, individuation is brought about in psychic forms which do not exist at all as such within social relations; finally, and even more, the temporal system of activities which consitutes the real basis of the personality, in my opinion, as well as the set of psychological superstructures which correspond to it, form an organic whole clearly endowed with a particular dynamism and a particular logic of development. I sought precisely to throw light on this dynamism and this logic by suggesting, by way of an indicative hypothesis, the analysis of a number of forms of personal life — for example those which I called dichotomy, or its contrary, the militant life — which constitute dynamic responses to the fundamental contradictions concealed in a certain type of biography. The concept of the personality suggested in this book does not therefore appear to me

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less opposed to a sociological determinism than to an idealism of the person and at all events, leaving aside any misunderstanding which the book possibly bears the responsibility for, I can assure G. Mialo that on this point I feel I am in agreement with him. On the other hand, when he presents the relations between the personality and social relations as the ‘dialectical’ interaction of two apparently homogeneous realities, ‘the individual and the social’, there is clearly a fundamental disagreement between us. The formulation of the problem in the passage cited, which seems to me to be as follows : Sève = determination of the individual by social relations- Sartre = determination of social relations by the individual ; genuine Marxism = dialectical reciprocity of these two determinations — seems to me to be fundamentally specious, liable to take us back to that philosophical humanism which Marx had to criticise and surpass absolutely in order to conceive Marxism. While it is indeed quite true that social relations determine the individual, nothing is more falsely ‘dialectical’ than to add, ‘and vice-versa’, because from the theoretical point of view the two terms are by no means homogeneous. The first statement means that history is the key to psychology : this is the corner-stone of historical materialism. ‘Reciprocity’ is not only not its legitimate dialectical complement but constitutes the corner-stone of anthropological idealism, for which psychology is the real basis of history. To me, G. Mialo in actual fact appears to confuse two apparently close but really opposed ideas: the historical-materiahst idea according to which, while social relations determine men, the latter, as producers, citizens, trade-union members, party-members, etc., react on these relations and transform them in determinate conditions, this being the class struggle; and the idea which is characteristic of all mystifying forms of humanism according to which, albeit within certain limits, the psychic individual is the ‘maker of history’. This is to fail to grasp the fundamental distinction between the historical and the psychological, which is dangerously masked by the unity of the word man, and the absolute priority of the former over the latter. On this point, I think, Althusser is entirely correct31 — even if in my opinion he did not see that, for all that, this by no means abolished the problem of the real unity between the psychological individual and the historically active man as a member of his class, his party, etc. At the same time, and this is very remarkable, G. Mialo takes up again on his own account the idea that history is the ‘realisation of the human essence’, an idea which takes us back to before the great turning-point accomplished by Marx in 1845-46 and after which for him the human essence has definitely ceased to refer back to a psychic

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potentiality — man as he ought to be in conformity with his essence — which it is the meaning of history cto realise’: this is precisely humanism in the speculative sense. From the Theses on Feuerbach onwards the human essence refers not to a psychic potentiality but to a historical reality, the ensemble of social relations, and the flowering of individuals which classless society makes possible is not at all conceived as the realisation of a former human potentiality — it is precisely thus that one would have a ‘fixed and completed’ representation of human history — but as the removal of obstacles to the appropriation by individuals of the objective social heritage on the basis of which they develop in each period. In the same way, G. Mialo’s idea according to which history realises cthe realm of freedom’ as he puts it, seems to me dangerously ambiguous. For v/hen Marx uses this expression32 it is precisely to say that the fundamental condition of this ‘realm of freedom’ for individuals consists in a social determination: ‘the shortening of the working-day’. To confuse to any degree the idea of Marx, for whom the freedom of individuals absolutely depends on social transformations creating the objective structures of this freedom, with the idea of a freedom consisting of an increasing independence of individuals from their social relations, would amount to suggesting that though it is true for class society, historical materialism ought to give way to historical idealism as mankind approaches communism. In my opinion this is an absolutely incorrect view, the incorrectness of which is no less serious for politics than for theory, under socialism as under capitalism. Of course I am altogether in agreement with G, Mialo in considering that a whole mode of determination of the personality in capitalism (beginning with the reduction of social labour-time to abstract-time) is altered in depth in socialism — and the book lays great emphasis on this point.33 But it so happens that this difference results from the social superiority of socialism, a superiority which affects the development of personalities on condition that the objective bases of the biography are changed. The careful analysis of the social determination of the personality is therefore no less necessary in socialism than in capitalism, and the solution to problems of the development of the personality does not refer any less to tasks of social construction. Flence, as I believe I have shown, the extreme importance of socialist democracy for the very problems before us — an importance which would risk being underestimated if, in the interests of a ‘personal-creative moment’, the objective difficulties of psychic development in socialism itself and the responsibilities for overcoming them were ascribed to individuals. In this respect it seems to me that there is food for thought in the following

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passage from the intervention by Werner Rohr, a psychologist from the G.D.R., during a discussion about this book which I will return to later. After havmg expressed his interest in the analyses which I made of the fetishism of psychic capacities which corresponds to commodity fetishism, W. Rohr adds: It would not be right to consider this problem to be characteristic of capitalism, and consequently to hold that it does not concern us. The exceptions which have been taken to Sève for not having an adequate knowledge of Soviet psychological literature, and for not specifically tackling the problems of the development of the personality in socialist conditions, cannot lay the basis for an argument to the effect that Sève5s analyses were worthless for the development of the socialist personality and can be dismissed as having no practical value for us. I think that there is also much to be taken from them regarding our own development and I would like to give the following example. He says that from one point of view what is called the heroic period of socialism, or the period of construction of its bases, is more favourable for the development of the personality than the period of the global, systematic, many-sided construction of socialism, because the need of those who participate in it to develop their personality, a need that is activated by the revolutionary process, can then be largely satisfied through a social development the rate of which is more rapid than that of the development of the personality itself. Thus the socialist revolutionary process satisfies the needs of development of the personality which were blocked before the revolution. We can easily establish this empirically if we look at a number of cadres among us belonging to generations which are between forty and sixty years old. At a certain age they were confronted with tasks the solution of which was formative for the personality. If we consider many tasks of this sort it will be quickly established that to consign them today to young cadres is no longer necessary and moreover no longer possible. The rapidity of social development in the initial stages of the process of socialist transformation provided a number of possibilities to satisfy this or that need and to actively involve one’s personality. Now that many-sided socialist development is underway this need of those participating in it to develop and to actively involve their personality is largely and globally created by ourselves. Our march forward necessarily creates it, without our yet being able to bring about the social conditions to satisfy it with the same speed. Sève has this non-correspondence between the rate of development of individuals and that of society in mind when he refers to the danger of a lasting stagnation of the personality, or of its drifting towards private life, domestic narrowness and other similar occurrences. We cannot say that this does not concern us in any way.34

These observations by W. Rohr seem to me to confirm not that which

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G. Mialo calls the ‘personal-creative moment’ does not exist, but that it rests wholly on corresponding social relations. While the ideas contained in this book have therefore continued to be discussed from a humanist perspective, with all the ambiguities which this term is able to conceal, they have also been discussed from a theoretical antihumanist perspective. Thus the publication in La Nouvelle Critique35 of a part of the postscript which I wrote for the second edition of the book brought me one letter, among others, from a professor of philosophy who, while declaring himself in agreement with several aspects of my book, also stated that he did not understand my ‘obstinate struggle’ against theoretical antihumanism and wrote: ‘one changes nothing in the notion of human essence by describing it as a scientific concept. You recognise this yourself in arguing that the term essence contributes nothing to science. Why, therefore, the wish at any price to reintroduce this pre-scientific notion into scientific language?’. Commenting in my reply to this correspondent36 on the frequent assertion by Marx that ‘all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided’,37 and showing that, every philosophical formulation aside, the relations of production clearly play the part of an essence in Captial, I wrote : What essence is involved here ? An abstract entity ? A ‘noumenal’ reality ? Obviously not. It is a matter of historical, concrete, material relations of production as science can objectively apprehend them. In what way, therefore, do these relations merit being described as essence by Marx, and not as appearance as my correspondent would like? In this, that they constitute a deep reality, the immediate representation of which on the surface of social life merely furnishes an unrecognisable, alienated image; in this, that once brought to the light of scientific knowledge, these essential relations make it possible to understand not only the necessary movement which is it work among the apparent accidents but also the processes through which they show themselves on the surface of social life in mystifying appearances. This is precisely the whole meaning of historical materialism : to found a science of society and its history able to reach the essential relations generating necessary movements on the basis of a radical critique of the ideological appearances to which they give rise ... Obviously imprisoned in the traditional philosophical conception of the essence, the speculative problematic of the essence (and more precisely, in his case, the Kantian noumenon/phenomenon problematic), my correspondent rejects it in the formal logical sense without surpassing it. He does not understand the fundamental positive contribution of Marxism which is inseparable from the negation of the speculative problematic : the elaboration of an absolutely new, dialectical-materialist problematic of the essence, understood not at all as abstract substance mysteriously haunting

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the concrete but as the fundamental relation and necessary movement within which the concrete, with its immediate, frequently paradoxical forms of appearance, is produced. Hence, in relation to the question of the human essence which we are particularly concerned with and which is the very one from which the new dialectical materialist philosophy was born, the incomprehension of Marx’s most central thesis in this respect : the 6th Thesis on Feuerbach ...

But over and above the reply to this persistent objection it is necessary to ask oneself about the meaning of this persistence itself. At the end of my reply to this correspondent I wrote : It may be wondered why even though we have shown twenty times in what respect the anti-essentialist, antihumanist reduction of Marxism is unacceptable, it still has a high reputation particularly among young philosophers who are Marxist or who are attracted by Marxism. But is it altogether so surprising ? The crisis of capitalism is very advanced and its traditional philosophical ideology so outworn that one can see through it fairly easily. Many young philosophers are rising up against this ideology and as, thanks to the efforts and successes of our movement, it increasingly becomes clear that Marxism is the only radical and well-founded critique of all ideology, they are tending to go over to Marxism, but in the first place seeing in it merely the negation of every speculative attitude. From the biographical point of view this going over to the critical aspect of Marxism often corresponds to their separation from the bourgeoisie and their orientation towards revolutionary action, but taking this above all as meaning destruction of bourgeois society. Do we not fmd here the sociohistorical basis of the interest in reductive, even negativistic, interpretations of Marxism ? For going over to Marxism completely implies much more : the assimilation of the positive content of the new philosophy, an assimilation which is made altogether easier by going over to the working class in practice not only as the grave-digger of capitalism but as the heir to the nation, by fully adopting the positive ends and the forms of struggle and organisation of the workers’ revolutionary movement, and by solidarity with already constructed socialism. Although this transition is less prolonged and difficult for the young intellectual today than for those of earlier generations, it remains none the less a process which has to be completed. I ask the question : at a time when the transition of young intellectuals to Marxism is assuming a mass character in France, is not the interest in a Marxism more or less theoretically reduced to its negative and critical aspects the temporary price — temporary to the extent that we can vigorously and persuasively overcome it — of its inevitable bourgeois limitations ? If this is the case, then to struggle for a true understanding of the Marxist theory of essence is at the same time to struggle for young intellectuals to go over to the revolutionary proletariat more completely, i.e. to struggle for a really essential revolution.

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Beyond these few remarks, this is certainly a question which deserves continued thought. It deserves continued thought more especially as another important opportunity to reconsider the theoretical antihumanist interpretation of Marxism theoretical sense of the term has presented itself in recent months and in a way which directly concerns the author of this book. For partially emerging from a four-year public silence in relation to this book, in which the reasons for a limited but fundamental disagreement with his own theses were stated at some length, Louis Althusser devotes several references and a few explicit Unes to it in his Réponse à John Lewis. Here they are: For Marxist philosophy there can be no Subject as absolute Centre, radical Origin or sole Cause. And to get out of this difficulty one cannot make do with a category like that of the ‘ex-centration of the Essence’ (L. Sève), for it is an illusory compromise which, under the false ‘ daring’ of a word which is wholly conformist in its root (ex-Centration), protects the umbilical link between Essence and Centre and therefore remains imprisoned in idealist philosophy: as there is no Centre any