Philosophy represents the people's class struggle in theory. In return it helps the people to distinguish in theory and in all ideas (political, ethical, aesthetic, etc.) between true ideas and false ideas. In principle, true ideas always serve the people; false ideas always serve the enemies of the people.
~on the reproduction of the conditions of production
'the necessity to renew the means of production if production is to be possible.' the ultimate condition of production is therefore the reproduction of the conditions of production. ('Capital Vol. II' familiar and ignored.) the 'obviousness' is so integrated into our everyday 'consciousness' that it is extremely hard, almost impossible, to raise oneself to the point of view of reproduction.
the process of production sets to work the existing productive forces under definite relations of production ↦ every social formation must reproduce the conditions of production at the same time as it produces: I. the productive forces II. the existing relations of production.
reproduction of the means of production: Capital Vol. II: no production is possible which does not allow for the reproduction of the material conditions of production. raw material. fixed installations (buildings). instruments of production (machinery).
'what happens at the level of the firm is an effect, which only gives an idea of the necessity of reproduction but absolutely fails to allow its conditions and mechanism to be thought.'
Mr. Capitalist needs both Mr. Sheep and Mr. Engineer, Mr. Sheep and Mr. Engineer need Mr. Blank, Mr. Blank needs Mr. ... in order to think this mechanism, which leads to a kind of endless chian, it is necessary to follow Marx's 'global procedure' and to study in particular the relations of the circulation of capital between Department I (production of means of production) and Department II (production of means of consumption), and the realization of surplus-value, in Capital Vol. II and III, reproduction of labour-power.
'we have not discussed the reproduction of productive forces,—the reproduction of labour power takes place essentially outside the firm (the firm is blind for good reasons). this reproduction is ensured by giving labour power the material means to reproduce itself: wages (Marx's scientific term: variable capital). Wages represent only that part of value produced by expenditure of labour power which is indispensible for its reproduction. (housing, food, clothing) to enable the wage earner to present himself the next day: and, indispensible for raising and educating children in whom the proletariat reproduces itself. wages: determined by historically variable minumum and by historical needs imposed by class struggle.
labour power must be 'competent,' diversely skilled and reproduced as such: according to the requirements of the socio-technical division of labour.
reproduction of the (diversified) skills of labour power provided for in capitalist regimes. less 'on the spot' training (apprenticeships, etc.), achieved more and more outside production: by the capitalist education system, other instances and institutions.
What do children learn at school?—a number of techniques, elements of 'scientific' and 'literary' culture: directly useful in different jobs in production. 'know-how' and 'the rules of good behavior': the attitude that should be observed by every agent in the division of labour, rules of respect for the socio-technical division of labour and ultimately the rules of the order established by class domination.
'the reproduction of labour power requires not only a reproduction of its skills but at the same time a reproduction of its submission to the established order, to the ruling ideology for the workers and a reproduction of the ability to manipulate the ruling ideology correctly for the agents of exploitation and repression to provide for the domination of the ruling class 'in words.'
all agents of production, exploitation and repression must be steeped in their ideology to perform their tasks 'conscientiously.'
exploiters, their auxiliaries (managers), their high priests.
'it is in the forms and under the forms of ideological subjection that provision is made for the reproduction of the skills of labour power.'
mark the effective presence of a new reality: ideology.
crucial question: reproduction of the relations of production. What is society? infrastructure and superstructure.
Marx conceived the structure of every society as constituted by 'levels' or 'instances' articulated by a specific determination: the infrastructure or economic base (unity of productive forces and relations of production) and the superstructure, which itself contains two levels: politico-legal (law and State) and ideology (religious, ethical, legal, political, etc.).
this representation has a crucial theoretical advantage: it makes it possible to inscribe in the theoretical apparatus its essential concepts, what I have called their respective indices of effectivity.
the upper floors could not 'stay up' if they did not rest precisely on their base. determination in the last instance by the economic base. the 'floors' are endowed with different indices of effectivity if they are determinant in their own (unspecified) ways, this is only true insofar as they are determined by the base.
1. there is a 'relative autonomy' of the superstructure with respect to the base. 2. there is a reciprocal action of the superstructure on the base. remains descriptive.
'it is possible and necessary to think what characterizes the essential of the existence and nature of the superstructure on the basis of reproduction.'
the state. 18th Brumaire, Civil War in France, State and Rev.
the state is explicitly conceived as a repressive apparatus—a 'machine' of repression which enables the ruling class to ensure their domination over the working class, thus enabling the process of surplus-value extortion (capitalist exploitation).
State Apparatus: police, courts, prisons, armies, which will intervene as a supplementary repressive force when 'outrun by events.' [See: the deployment of the National Guard during riots related to ongoing police brutality.] its basic 'function' is repression. again partly descriptive.
1.'descriptive theory'—the irreversible beginning of the theory. 2. the 'descriptive' form in which this theory requires, precisely as an effect of this 'contradiction.' a development of the theory which goes beyond the form of description.
The Marxist-Leninist descriptive theory of the state is fundamentally correct.
State ↦ Class State ↦ Repressive State Apparatus. Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie.
every descriptive theory runs the risk of 'blocking' the development of the theory, and yet that development is essential.—indispensible to add something.
—essentials of the marxist theory of the state.
the state (and its existence in an apparatus) has no meaning except as a function of state power. the whole of the political class struggle revolves around the state.
*state power———state apparatus* (state power: the objective)—the state apparatus may survive without the state apparatus being affected or modified: it may survive political events which affect the possession of state power.
18th Brumaire. Class Struggles in France.
2. The State is the RSA. II. state power and State Apparatus must be distinguished. III the objective of class struggle concerns state power. IV. the proletariat must seize state power in order to destroy the existing bourgeoisie state apparatus to replace it and set in motion its destruction—the end of state power and every state apparatus.—the state ideological apparatuses.
we must advance cautiously in a terrain unsystematized in theoretical form the decisive advances umplied by their experiences and procedures, restricted to the terrain of political practice.
the Marxist classics treated the State as a more complex reality than the classical definition. (Only Gramsci attempted to traverse this terrain)
in order to advance the theory of the state it is necessary to add: ideological state apparatuses. (RSA and ISA must be distinguished)
Repressive State Apparatus: government, administration, army, courts, police, prisons—'functions by (or though) violence.'
Ideological State Apparatuses: religious ISAs, educational ISAs, family ISAs, legal, political, trade union, communication, cultural—presented to the observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions—systems of churches, systems of schools, 'different parties,' press, arts, sports.
the unity that constitutes this 'plurality' of ISAs as a body is not immediately visible.
whereas the unified RSA is public domain, the ISAs are in part of private domain. (families are private)
Gramsci: the distinction between public and private is a distinction internal to bourgeoisie law and valid in the (subordinate) domains in which bourgeoisie law exercises its 'authority.' the domain of the State escapes this because the State is 'above the law.' the State, the ruling class, is neither public nor private—on the contrary, it is the precondition of any distinction between public and private.
RSA 'functions' by violence, ISAs 'function' by ideology. RSA predominantly (but not exclusively) through repression. there is no such thing as a purely repressive apparatus, or a purely ideological apparatus, the ISAs function secondarily through repression, even if concealed or symbolic. punishment, expulsion, 'discipline,' censorship, present in the family. double functioning of SAs.
the ISAs 'function' predominantly by ideology, what unifies their diversity is precisely this functioning, insofar as the ideology by which they function is always unified, despite its diversity and contradictions, beneath the ruling ideology, which is the ideology of the ruling class. realized precisely in its contradictions.
no class can hold State Power over a long period without at the same time exercising its hegemony over and in the ISAs. Lenin's anguished concern.
ISAs are not only the stake but the site of bitter class struggle. the class struggle extends beyonds the ISAs because it is rooted elsewhere than in ideology, in the Infrastructure, in the relations of production (exploitation).—basis for class relations.
what exactly is the extent of the role of the ISAs? what is their importance based on?
~on the reproduction of the relations of production.
how is the reproduction of the relations of production secured? beyond descriptive language for the most part, it is secured by the exercise of State power in the State Apparatuses. can be assembled in the form of the following 3 features:
1. all SAs function both by repression and by ideology, difference in predominance.
2. RSA—organized whole centralized beneath commanding unity. ISA—multiple, distinct, 'relatively autonomous,' capable of providing an objective field of contradictions which express the effects of class struggle.
3. RSA unity secured by organization under leadership of the representatives of the classes in power executing their politics. ISA unity is secured in contradictory forms by ruling ideology.
ideological relations are present in processes of production and circulation.
it is possible to present the reproduction of the relations of production according to a kind of 'division of labour.'—the role of the RSAs consists in securing by force the physical conditions of the relations of exploitation. the state apparatus secures by repression the political conditions for the action of the ISAs. it is 'here' that the role of ruling ideology is heavily concentrated.
it is the intermediation of the ruling ideology that ensures 'hegemony' between RSAs and ISA.
it is no accident that all ideological struggle from the 16th to the 18th century was concentrated in anti-clerical and anti-religious struggle.
I believe that the ideological state apparatus which has been installed in the dominant position in mature capitalist social formations as a result of violent political and ideological class struggle against the old dominant ISA (the church) is the educational ideological apparatus. in the ideological representation that the bourgeoisie has tried to give itself and the class it exploits it seems that the dominant is the political ideological state apparatus (parliamentary democracy, parties, voting). but, history shows that the bourgeoisie is still able to accomodate itself to political ISAs other than parliamentary democracy.—one might add: the School-Family couple has replaced the Church-Family couple. but why? how?
1. all ISAs contribute to the same result: reproduction of the relations of production/exploitation.
2. each contributes in a way appropriate to it.
3. this concert is dominated by a single score; occasionally disturbed by contradictions. the score of the Ideology of the current ruling class.
4. in this concert one ISA has the dominant role.
no other ideological state apparatus has the obligatory audience of the totality of the children in the capitalist social formation eight hours a day for five or six days out of seven.
but it is by apprenticeship in a variety of 'know-how' wrapped up in the massive inculcation of ideology of the ruling class that the relations of production in a capitalist social formation, relations of exploitation, between exploiters and exploited, are largely reproduced. these mechanisms are naturally covered up and concealed. the unprecedented crisis now shaking the education system, often in conjuction with a crisis shaking the family system, takes on a political meaning, given that the school is the dominant ISA playing a determinant part in the reproduction of relations of production of a mode of production threatened in its existence by the world class struggle. [Need more information on the family and communication ISA. healthy abstractions?]
~On Ideology.
first conceived as the (genetic) theory of ideas. Marx, 80 years later, gave the term a different meaning; here, ideology is the system of ideas and representations which dominate the mind of a social group.
a paradox: everything seems to lead Marx to formulate a theory of ideology (and he does) but, it is not Marxist. Capital only contains hints.
Althusser puts forward a very schematic theory of ideology—
Ideology has no history. what justifies a theory of ideology in general? the theory of ideologies depends on a history of social formations. ideologies (regional and class) have a history, their determination is outside them. to put foward a theory of ideology in general, and if this is an element of a theory of ideologies one must put foward: ideology has no history.
In the German Ideology, ideology is much like the pre-Freudian dream. Illusions, empty, vain, 'the day's residues.' the thesis that ideology has no history is purely negative.
1. I think it is possible for ideologies to have a history of their own (determined by class struggle.)
2. also possible to hold that ideology has no history in an absolutely positive sense—this sense is a positive one if it is true that the pecularity of ideology is that it is endowed with a structure and functioning such as to make it a non-historical reality; an omni-historical reality, the sense in which that structure and functioning are immutable, present in the same form through what we can call history, history of class struggles/class society.
our proposition: 'ideology has no history' can and must related directly to Freud's proposition that the unconscious is eternal, that it has no history. ideology is eternal exactly like the unconscious. (not unrelated) omnipresent in its immutable form throughout history (of social formations with classes).
—ideology is a 'representation' of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.
in order to approach my central thesis on the structure and functioning of ideology I shall present two theses, one negative, one positive. I concerns the object, which is 'represented' in the imaginary form of ideology. II concerns the materiality of ideology.
Thesis I: ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.—religious, ethical, legal, political ideology, so many 'world outlooks.' we admit that the ideology we are discussing does not 'correspond to reality,' they constitute an illusion—we admit that they 'allude' to reality, and only need to be interpreted.
two different types of interpretation: mechanistic and hermeneutic.
the essential point is that on condition that we interpret the imaginary transposition (inversion) of ideology we arrive at the conclusion 'men represent their real conditions of existence to themselves in an imaginary form.' this interpretation leaves our problem unsettled: why do men 'need' this imaginary transposition of their real conditions of existence in order to 'represent to themselves' their real conditions?
the first answer ... that cause is the existence of a small number of men who cynically base their domination of the 'people' on a falsified representation of the world which they have imagined in order to enslave other minds by dominating their imagination.
the second answer (of Feuerbach and Young Marx) which is more profound (just as false): this cause is the material alienation which reigns in the conditions of existence of men themselves. this is how Marx defends the idea that men make themselves an alienated (imaginary) representation because their conditions are themselves alienating.
so, we return: it is not their real conditions of existence, their real world, that 'men' 'represent to themselves' in ideology, but above all it is their relation to those conditions of existence which is represented to them. it is this relation which is at the center of every ideological (imaginary) representation of the world. it is this relation that contains the 'cause' which has to explain the distortion. it is the imaginary nature of this relation which underlies all the imaginary distortion that we can observe.
all ideology represents in its necessarily imaginary distortion not the existing relations of production (and other relations) but above all the (imaginary) relationship of individuals to the relations of production and the relations that derive from them.
what is represented in ideology is therefore not the system of real relations which govern the existence of individuals, but the imaginary relation of those individuals to the real relations in which they live.
why is the representation given to individuals of their (individual) relation to the social relations which govern their conditions of existence and their collective and individual life necessarily an imaginary relation? what is the nature of this imaginariness?
Thesis II: ideology has a material existence.
I even suggested that the ideal and spiritual existence of 'ideas' arises exclusively in an ideology of the 'idea' and of ideology ... it is merely useful to us in order to show what every serious analysis of any ideology will immediately and empirically show to every observer, however critical.
While discussing the ISAs and their practices, I said that each of them was the realization of ideology (religious, ethical, political, aesthetic).
return: an ideology always exists in an apparatus and its practices. this existence is material. (matter exists in different modalities, in the last instance 'physical')
imaginary relations of individuals is itself material. an individual believes in ____. their belief derives from the ideas of the individual concerned; from him as a subject with a consciousness, which contain the idesa of his beliefs.
thus, by means of an absolutely ideological 'conceptual' device there set up (a subject endowed with a consciousness in which he freely forms or recognizes the ideas which he believes), the (material) attitude of the subject concerned naturally follows.
the individual participates in certain regular practices which are those of the ideological apparatus in which 'depend' the ideas which he has in all consciousness freely chosen as a subject.
throughout this schema we observe that the ideological representation of ideology is itself forced to recognize that every 'subject' endowed with a 'consciousness' and believing in the 'ideas' that his 'consciousness' inspires in him and freely accepts, must 'act according to his ideas,' must therefore inscribe his own ideas as a free subject in the actions of his material practice. if he does not, he is 'wicked.' if he does not, it is because he has 'other ideas' however inconsistent or perverse or cynical. [My handwriting is getting rather difficult to read so I'll have to doublecheck that these are even correct later.]
in every case, the ideology of ideology thus recognizes, despite distortion, that the 'ideas' of a 'subject' exist in his actions, and if not, it lends him 'other ideas' corresponding that he does perform.
this ideology talks of notions [actions?]: I shall talk of actions inserted into practices and point out these practices are governed by rituals, in which practices are inscribed, within the material existence of an ideological apparatus, even if only a small part. church, club, school day, party meeting.
notional schema of ideology. we are advancing in poorly explored domains.
when only a single subject is concerned, the existence of the idesa of his belief is material in that his ideas are his material actions inserted into material practices governed by material rituals which are themselves defined by material ideological apparatuses from which derive the ideas of the subject. 'material' must be affected by different modalities. not simply an 'inversion.'
disappeared: the term ideas
survive: the terms subject, consciousness, belief, action
appear: the terms practices, rituals, ideological apparatuses.
... 'from this series I shall immediately extract the decisive central term on which everything else depends: the notion of the subject, so, 2 conjoint theses:'
I. there is no practice except by and in an ideology
II. there is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects
ideology interpellates individuals as subjects.
there is no ideology except for concrete subjects, and this destination for ideology is only made possible by the subject: meaning, by the category of the subject and its functioning.
an ideological notion: man is by nature subject.
the category of the subject is the constitutive category of all ideology, whatever its determinations and whatever its historical date—since ideology has no history; the category of the subject is only constitutive of all ideology insofar as all ideology has the fuction (which defines it) of 'constituting' concrete individuals as subjects.
ideology is nothing but its functioning in the material forms of existence of that functioning.
the author and reader are ideological subjects living spontaneously in ideology.
the 'obviousness' that you and I are subjects is an ideological effect, the elementary ideological effect. obviousness as obviousness, a peculiarity of ideology. at work in this reaction is the ideological recognition function which is one of two functions (inverse: misrecognition) (material ritual practices of ideological recognition).
'in this preliminary remark and illustrations, I only point out that you and I are always already subjects, and as such constantly practice the rituals of ideological recognition, which guarantee for us that we are indeed concrete, individual, distinguishable, and naturally irreplacable subjects.'
6 April, 1969. 1 December, 2023.
but to recognize we are subjects and that we function in practical everyday rituals, this recognition only gives us 'consciousness' of our incessant (eternal) practice of ideological recognition—its consciousness, its recognition—but this does not give us (scientific) knowledge of the mechanisms of this recognition. from within ideology we have to outline disourse which tries to break with ideology (to begin scientific...) 'a special mode of exposition:' 'concrete' enough to be recognized, 'abstract' enough to be thinkable and thought, giving rise to knowledge.
all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, by the functioning of the category of the subject.
concrete individuals———concrete subjects.
police: hey, you there.
'[illegible]' subjects among individuals, 'transforms' individuals into subjects by precise operation of interpellation.
in reality these things happen without any succession, the existence of ideology and the hailing or interpellation of individuals as subjects are one and the same thing. what thus seems to take place outside ideology in reality takes place in ideology. what really takes place in ideology seems to take place outside it.
ideology has no outside but is at the same time nothing but outside. (the theory of criticism and self-criticism depends on this)
ideology has always-already interpellated individuals as subjects, individuals are always-already subjects.—before its birth, the child is always-already subject appointed as a subject in and by the specific familial ideological configuration in which it is 'expected' once it has been conceived.
what I shall now turn to are the ways the 'actors' in this scene of interpellation, and their roles, are reflected in the very structure of all ideology.
all ideology is centered.
the duplicate mirror-structure of ideology ensures simultaneously:
*the interpellation of 'individuals' as subjects
*their subjection to the Subject
*the mutual recognition of sujects and Subject, the subject-recognition of each other, the subjects recognition of himself
*the absolute guarantee that that everything is really so, and that on condition that the subject recognize what they are and behave accordingly, everything will be all right
there are no subjects except by and for their subjection. the reality in question is this mechanism, the reality necessarily ignored in the very forms of recognition. (misrecognition) is, in the last resort, the reproduction of the relations of production and of the relations deriving from them.
(there is no 'technical division of labour' except in the ideology of the ruling class) a mask of social (class) division of labour.
(the State and its Apparatuses only have meaning from the point of view of the class struggle)
(it is only from the point of view of the classes, of the class struggle that it is possible to explain the ideologies existing in a social formation)
(ideologies are not 'born' in the ISAs but from the social classes at grips in the class struggle: from their conditions of existence, their practices, their experiences of the struggle, etc.)
[Absolutely brilliant.]
*Marx: introduction to the critique of po. ec.
Lenin: philosophical notebooks, what is to be done
*Mao: on contradiction
'what is the specificity of the Marxist dialectic?'
~the process of theoretical practice
~a 'pre-given' complex whole
~contradiction and overdetermination
Mao: the principal that the universal only resides in the particular.
contradiction in the practice of class struggle
contradiction is always specific and specificity universally appertains to its essence. labours on a 'pre-existing' universal. aim and achievement is precisely to refuse this universal the abstractions or temptations of philosophy (ideology).
scientifically specified universality. if the universal is to be this specificity we have no right to invoke a universal which is not the universal of this specificity.
*Introduction (I presumably mean Marx's Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy)
Generality I ↦ Generality III
the use of general concepts is indispensible to a scientific theoretical practice, but does not coincide with the product of scientific labour. the general concept is the prior condition.
what is Generality I?
(historical materialism: science of the evolution of social formations)
Generality I is a preliminary of an ideological nature.
'its particular labour consists of elaborating its own scientific facts through a critique of the 'ideological' facts elaborated by an earlier ideological theoretical practice.' an ex-Generality III.
'every transformation (practice) presupposes the transformation of a raw material into products by setting into motion determinate means of production.'
Generality II - constituted by the corpus of concepts whose more or less contradictory unity constitutes the 'theory' of the science at the historical moment under consideration. the concept of 'theory' includes the whole field of technique, the field in which all the problems of the science must necessarily be posed.
theoretical practice produces Generality III by the work of II on I.
III≠I - never an identity of essence.
the work takes place 'within' knowledge. concepts-in-thought (III), concrete reality. abstraction - the essence of science, thoughts, and theory. 'concrete' - essence of the real determinate ideological abstract.
The German Ideology, only one step from reducing ideology to a simple (temporary) phenomenon of social formation.
hoping to be 'concrete,' ideological practice denies the reality of the process that produces knowledge.
Hegel contra Marx 'conceives the real as the result of self-synthesizing, self deepening, self moving thought.'
when Generality II works on Generality I it is never working on itself, hence the transformation.—qualitatively new specified scientific generality.
the moment of the Idea—ideological through and through.
only now does the profound meaning of the Marxist critique of Hegel begin to appear in its all its implications.
the identification of thought and being—the speculative sin par excellence.
Generality I is not the product of an 'operation of abstraction' performed by a 'subject' but the result of a complex process of elaboration which involves several distinct concrete practices on different levels, empirical, technical, and ideological. the 'act' of abstraction is an ideological myth.
I qualitatively differs from II, II has priority.
the fate of Marxist theory is between the expectation (absence) of freedom and freedom itself.
Lenin—there are, in Hegel, utilizable analyses and even isolated demonstrations of a materialist character.
[Marxism] qualitatively different theory, recognizes the essence of scientific practice, distinguishes it from the ideology that some have wanted to impose on it, takes seriously its particular characteristics, thinks them, expresses them alongside the practical conditions even of their recognition.
abandoning the ideological problematic for the field of a new scientific problematic.
what's politically at stake is the critique of reformism. nothing can change solely on its own basis.
what then is the specificity of contradiction?
the dialectic is 'the study of contradiction in the very essence of objects'=the doctrine of the unity of opposites. Mao provides 'explanations and development' suddenly we come upon their remarkable concepts.
I. the distinction between the principal contradiction and secondaries.
II. the distinction between the principal aspect and secondary aspects of every contradiction.
III. the uneven development of contradiction.
told 'that's how it is,' it's up to us to seek the deeper theoretical reasons.
I implies the existence of several contradictions in the same process, implies the existence of a complex process. II reflects within each contradiction the complexity of the process (plurality of contradictions), it is their complexity which we must consider.
this 'simple process with two opposites' in which the Whole is split into two contradictory parts is precisely the very womb of the Hegelian contradiction.
complex processes are never anything but given complexities, their reduction to simple origins is never envisaged, in fact or principle. 'simplicity is merely the result of a complex process.' we are in a world foreign to Hegel.
the simple only ever exists within a complex structure; the universal existence of a simple category is never original, it only appears as the end result of a long historical process, as the product of a highly differentiated social structure, so, where reality is concerned, we are never dealing with the pure existence of simplicity, be it essence or category, but with the existence of 'concretes,' of complex and structural beings and processes.
ideological practice (struggle)
Hegelian categories might be useful in ideological practice but they lose their weight in Marxist scientific and theoretical practice, where the only categories in use and practice are the categories of the Marxist dialectic.
~structure in dominance: contradiction and overdetermination.
'nothing in this world develops absolutely evenly.'—law of uneven development. to grasp this we must return to the essential difference of Marxist contradictions which distinguish a principal contradiction in any complex process, and a principal aspect in any contradiction. we must now consider the (dominant) principal contradiction.
that one contradiction dominates the other presupposes that the complexity in which it features is a structural unity, and that the structure implies the indicated domination-subordination relations between the contradictions. Domination is not just an indifferent fact, it is essential to the complexity iteslf. the unity discussed by Marxism is the unity of complexity itself. the complex whole has the unity of a structure articulated in dominance.
there is not and cannot be a Hegelian politics.
if every contradiction is a contradiction of a complex whole structured in dominance, this complex whole cannot be envisaged without its contradictions without their basically uneven relations. each contradiction, each essential articulation of the strucutre, and the general relation of the articulation in the structure in dominance, constitutes so many conditions of the existence of the complex whole itself. the secondary are essential even to the existence of the principal contradiction; they are the conditions of its existence.
this reflection of the conditions of existence of the contradiction within itself, this reflection of the structure articulated in dominance that constitutes the unity of the complex whole within each contradiction, this is the most profound characteristic of the Marxist dialectic.—overdetermination—designates the following essential quality of contradiction: the reflection in contradiction itself of its conditions of existence, that is, of its situation in the structure in dominance of the complex whole.
this is not a universal 'situation' but the relation of this situation in fact to this situation in principle, that is, the very relation which makes of this situation in fact a 'variation' of the—invariant—structure in dominance, of the totality. overdetermined.
it is this very peculiar type of determination which gives Marxist contradiction its specificity and enables us to explain Marxist practice theoretically, whether it is theoretical or political.
displacement-condensation
to be a Marxist and to be able to act politically (or theoretically) it is necessary at all costs to distinguish the principal among the secondary among contradictions and their aspects.
the nodality of development (the specific phases) and the specific nodality of the structure at each phase are the very existence and reality of the complex whole, a condensation of the contradiction, only because every social formation is affected by unevenness are the relations of such a social formation with other formations of different economic, political, and ideological maturity affected by it, and it enables us to understand how these relations are possible.
in real history determination in the last instance by the economy is exercised precisely in the permutations of the principal role between the economy, politics, theory, etc. excercised essentially for internal and necessary reasons by permutations, displacements, condensations.
to say that contradiction is a motive force is to say that it implies a real struggle, real confrontation, precisely located within the structure of the complex whole. non-antagonism, antagonism, explosion.