Studies in Philosophy and Education (2005) 24: 79–83

© Springer 2005

Response MICHAEL A. PETERS

SAINT MARX, LITERALISM AND AMERICAN ACADEMIC REVOLUTIONARY MARXISM A Response to Professor Brosio

It would be churlish to be other than pleased when someone as prominent as Richard A. Brosio – the doyen of American revolutionary Marxism – should go to the trouble of reviewing my book and even to call it “worthwhile” along with a number of other praiseworthy epithets. And if the title of my response is a little facile and facetious the message is anything but. The points I wish to make have been accumulating over my short career and now fall out like so many lost coins to be refound, counted and reinvested. A warning then: if I sound a little miffed Richard Brosio should not take it to heart entirely as the criticisms I am about to raise in this response are more of a broadcast directed at those, especially American academics, who appropriate the label “revolutionary Marxists” and apply it themselves self-consciously. The process of canonisation in academia is a vital part of “disciple” and “discipline” probably to be uncovered in the scholastic ruins of the medieval university. And the popular saying “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” goes some way to explaining the importance of imitation and copying behaviour not only as a form of pedagogy but also as a form of academic self-stylization. There are many different aspects to this process from the unconscious adoption of mannerisms and habits to the more sophisticated modelling of one’s writing and thinking. So we have (unashameably) little Wittgensteinians, little Heideggerians and little Marxians. (I was a little Wittgensteinian when I was growing up.) We need them! This is, in part, social reproduction in the academy. We hear of it with students who are educated by professor so-and-so, or examined by professor such-and-such. Academic genealogies. After all many of us after the PhD never attain the same levels of scholarship again. Increasingly, government and state pressures are such that they direct us and our students to “useful knowledge” defined for us by national research agendas and funding patterns. Yet there is a sense where we should question our relationships to those thinkers we value, to examine the nature

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of these relationships, and also the processes of canonisation. Once sanctified, sainted, canonised, a thinker takes on a hagiography that impinges on the gospel or “true word” and its interpretation. And once texts are institutionalised as readings, as verified readings they easily become ossified, museumified, mummified – dry, dusty and fragile – only of historical interest rather than living texts or texts to be lived by. In a word, the process of beatification leads to a kind of literalness that I thought we had overcome with biblical hermeneutics in ages past. “The word is the way. It is my word.” I guess this is meant as a corrective to Brosio and others like him who have an incestuous relationship to Marx and never want to leave home. The remark also points up the moral regarding my own book Poststructuralism. Marxism and Neoliberalism. It was designed to do two things as I explained in the Preface: to demonstrate by way of textual investigations, historical research and philosophical argument that poststructuralism is neither anti-structuralist nor anti-Marxist, and; to use the intellectual resources of poststructuralism, especially its ruminations on the philosophy of the subject to attack the foundationalism and essentialism of neoliberalism as a form of economic rationalism. Brosio’s review of my book makes a half-hearted attempt to gander the drift of my thesis and analysis without any real appreciation for the turn of argument. I shall not dally over these infelicities for Brosio more or less gets the message even if he construes it from the perspective of revolutionary Marxism. I am not a revolutionary Marxist and I do not believe in its dogma: I do not hold to a kind of deterministic historical materialism; I do not believe in the base/superstructure model; I do not believe in the dialectic as a historical or logical necessity that will result inevitably in sublation or synthesis; while I believe that class and class politics has a role to play in western societies I do not believe that the proletarian is, should or will be a revolutionary vanguard; I do not believe in the rule of the proletariat (nor such simple or idealistic notions of governance). In short, I do not believe in the main articles of faith of revolutionary Marxism and I do not believe that all arguments or perspectives should be judged by its criteria. That does not mean to say that I do not believe the injustice of the rapaciousness of postmodern multinational capitalism; and yet I argue that postmodern capitalism – the capitalism of postmodernity, the capitalism of neoliberalism, and of a certain version of postindustrialism and the knowledge economy – is not the same historical entity that Marxian political economy identified and critiqued. Capitalism, society and the world have changed from the industrialism of Marx’s era. I investigate some of these issues in my small book. I would now go

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further and identify various forms of capitalism not only to be identified according to historical era but also according to national style: not only, for example, the early capitalism of the northern Italian trading cities during the Renaissance, or English nineteenth century industrial capitalism, but also, for example, Rhine capitalism, French State capitalism, the social capitalism of the Scandinavian countries, Japanese corporate capitalism, the neoliberal capitalism of the Anglo-American model; post-socialist Chinese capitalism. There are different generic types and national styles: think of the small-scale business capitalism characterised by the artisan, the merchant-shopkeeper and the family business in contrast to both state enterprise and large-scale multinational capitalism – which is described so well by Fernand Braudel (1979) in his celebrated Material Civilization, Economy and Capitalism. Brosio’s revolutionary Marxism reduces these differences to the same: they are all equally unpalatable and need to be swept away. My position is that we need to understand and analyse these differences. In the second half of his review Brosio quotes not so much Marx, chapter and verse – which would be tolerable – but himself and a few other American academic revolutionary Marxists (AARM). Let me pick up on a few points Brosio makes. 1. Poststructuralist thinkers do “not assist the core ideas and revolutionary potential of Marx’s work.” But then at one point in a rather overwritten first footnote Brosio seems to indicate that he is not really familiar with poststructuralism. He says, “As I studied Peters’ book it became necessary for me to clarify – if not nail down – what poststructuralism means.” And he then turns to H. Stuart Hughes and his colleague Rebecca A. Martusewicz, and later to his own and Mark Poster’s early work. Without maligning these authors I would recommend him to read my Poststructuralism, Politics and Education (1996) or even better, try a little Foucault or Derrida. 2. Brosio then suggests “The contemporary anti-global demonstrations against world capitalism is much more promising.” For what? Isn’t this a category mistake? Poststructuralism is not a protest movement! And the so-called falsely christened “anti-globalisation” movement is not an intellectual movement, neither is it necessarily anti-capitalist or a single unified movement, although poststructuralism may in fact illuminate it (see Peters, 2002). 3. “Poststructuralist and postmodernist views of history cause its advocates to be sceptical if not hostile to standard versions of historical materialism.” Yes (of course – see, for example, Nietzsche and Foucault on genealogy or Braudel on the longue durée).

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4. “The various post-views toward ontology and the epistemic subject are not helpful to Marxist revolutionary thought.” Really? So? This is the old chestnut about agency and the retreat from class struggle. If I had space I would not only signal my disagreement but also engage in argument that takes up this point from the viewpoint of “antiglobalisation” struggles. These are NOT predominately class struggles by class actors. The same type of unreformed comment appears again and again in the demand for “concrete struggle.” Brosio seemingly is not aware of the political struggles that Foucault, Lyotard, Kristeva, Derrida and others have been or were involved in over the course of their lives. 5. The point is raised again in the guise of humanism and Brosio quotes himself quoting Pauline Johnson. Even Heidegger’s brilliant “Letter on Humanism” acknowledges Marx and in a very Marxian gesture wants to strip away the metaphysical baggage that has accompanied every form of humanism since the Romans’ first appropriation of Greek norms and values. 6. The same criticism surfaces yet again in the comment “What are the political consequences in concrete terms when supposedly weak epistemic subjects face complexity beyond our ability to discern. . . .” Even the grammar shift from “weak epistemic subjects” to “our” betrays, and without embarking on another excursus on the philosophy of the subject I have to say poststructuralist thinkers are not talking about “the knowing subject”, the “cogito”, except to critique its bourgeois individualist and universal terms of reference; rather mostly they are replacing ontology with genealogy, universal necessity in human nature with historical (and materialist) accounts, very often to talk of the gendered subject, the racialised subject, the embodied subject (and embodied knowledge and rationality!). 7. “The narcissism of small differences” is a phrase I like a lot for its power to evoke, but really when we come to talk of the Other in all her gendered, raced and multiple subjectivities, are these “small” or “narcissistic”? 8. We get to the heart of the matter when Brosio forthrightly asserts “Marxism is a humanist project.” It is asserted with great authority but no argument, as though Brosio is the only true reader/interpreter of Marx. This proclivity towards literalness is at first amusing but then tiring, especially in view of the obvious – that poststructuralism, as I argued in my book, is a set of critical practices for reading and writing. I do not know whether the tendency towards tendentiousness is a characteristic of AARM but I suspect that is an empirical question.

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Brosio is helpful and there are some texts, including his that I will read (and perhaps ought to have read). I am also indebted to him for his reading and review of my book. I suspect there are more issues for discussion between us than any review or response can accommodate. Even when he writes that the great tradition of Anglo-American liberalism (Mill, Green, Dewey) has been “unable to control capitalism” and that European social democracy has failed in this regard he seems remarkably resistant to the historic failure of communism and unable to distinguish among the different form of European social democracy or, indeed, or forms alternative workable programs. The question he asks himself in his review is “does poststructuralist thought challenge capitalism? The answer is: Not enough!” But Richard, I want to analyse capitalism and understand how it transforms itself and what new dangers it poses and this is an intellectual task!

REFERENCES Braudel, F. (1979). Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme: XVe–XVIIle siècle. Paris: A. Colin. Peters, M.A. (1996). Poststructuralism, politics and education. Westpost, CT & London: Bergin & Garvey. Peters, M.A. (2002). Anti-globalisation and Guattari’s the three ecologies. Globalization, Special Issue: Globalism and its Challengers (http://globalization.icaap.org/ content/v2.1/02_peters.html).

School of Education University of Glasgow Glasgow G3 6NH UK and University of New Zealand E-mail: [email protected]