RECOMMENCING REVOLUTION?
Politics and Society in the
work of Cornelius Castoriadis (1922 - 1997). Part I.
By Ian Pirie
First Published by
Updated:
Links:
Cornelius Castoriadis/Agora
International website
Biographical Background to the author of
these pages
What is meant by imagining other?
Politics and Society in the work of Cornelius Castoriadis (1922 - 1997). Part I.
1.
Overview.
A
few weeks before his death in 1997, at age 75, Cornelius Castoriadis said:
"I am a revolutionary, and I want to see radical change."[i] In 1949, Castoriadis had been one of the
founders of an influential revolutionary group called Socialisme
ou Barbarie, whose prime
aim was workers’ management; since 1980 he had been Director of
Studies at the Ecole des Hautes
Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. However, he had
long abandoned the traditional “left” or Marxist notion of revolution as
seizure of state power, and developed, instead, the view that the central
problem of all societies was the absence of “autonomy”. Societies everywhere, whether capitalist or
communist, had given power to someone or something “outside themselves”
(heteronomy). This heteronomous power
could be a “ruling class”, a bureaucracy, or a religious elite; or it could be
a world-view–such as “determinism”, or “God’s purpose”, or even the “laws of
nature”. In all such cases, a crucial
point was the fact that the way society is set up prevents people even seeing
that things could be otherwise, that they could democratically control their
own affairs. These ideas were to form
the basis of his work on the “imaginary institution of society”, and his view
that the existence of a “radical social imaginary” was the key to revolutionary
social change. It is because this is
such an original approach that I have called this piece “recommencing
revolution”.
Although
his background was in Marxism and Trotskyism, Castoriadis was well-known early
on for his criticisms of the “traditional left”, which were always forceful,
based in precise argument, and often colourful.
He was especially critical of the separation of theory and practice
which he saw in Marxism – despite so many Marxists’ claims to the contrary [ii]. (See further in section 5 (i) below). In
most of his writing Castoriadis also went beyond the narrow confines of what
usually passes for "politics".
He wrote extensively, and authoritatively, on philosophy - especially
that of Plato and Aristotle – and on economics, and psychology, and drew on
mathematical and anthropological ideas.
Underlying much of his work is an attempt to “put theory in its place”,
stressing both the importance and the limitations of theory.
Castoriadis’s “practice” too (his life
and work), was many-sided, as he actively contributed not only to politics, but
also to economic argument and to psychoanalysis. For example, having left Greece for Paris at
the end of the War (in 1945), he worked for the OECD from 1948 until 1970. When he started working for the OECD he was a
Trotskyist, and he remained a revolutionary, so his
choice of career his may seem odd, but (as David Ames Curtis wryly comments[iii])
it gave him a chance to observe at first hand the workings of both capitalism
and bureaucracy. (It also afforded him a
critical take on the problem of “development” [iv]). One of the symptoms of the failure to link
theory and practice lay, he believed, in the growth of bureaucracy, which he
saw as the separation of the “order-givers” from the “order-takers” [v].
(See
further section 3(iii) below, on bureaucracy, and Castoriadis’s
particular formulation: “bureaucratic society”).
Castoriadis
became a practising psychoanalyst (though with no ties to the international
psychoanalytic establishment) in 1974. (He was associated with a group of psychoanalysts who had broken
away from the followers of Lacan in 1968). In my view, one of his most original
contributions to modern thought lay in his linking the individual’s and society’s
need for self-definition and autonomy (this argument is elaborated below, in
section 5 (v)).
In
fact, few thinkers in the twentieth century can have had Castoriadis’s
breadth of knowledge and depth of understanding of the individual and
society. Not many have maintained, in
this age of cynicism and post-modernism, a lifelong commitment to the goal of
radical political liberation, coupled with a belief in both the need for, and
the possibility of, such a liberation.
Moreover,
the questions that Castoriadis addressed are surely still with us. Is it possible for us to manage our own
lives? How can we have both free
individuals and a free society? How far
can we go in understanding the society of which we are a part? And above all perhaps, what is the role of
“theory” in relation to this project of “recommencing the revolution”? The political and social problems he
identified also remain to be solved, among them: bureaucracy, heteronomy, and
the fragmentation and meaninglessness of the modern world. Given this, it is a puzzle to me that the
work of Castoriadis is not better known, and it is one aim of this paper to
summarise some of his contributions to modern political thought in such a way
that the reader may be enticed to find out more about him.
The
phrase “recommencing the revolution” seemed apt as a title for this paper, for
several reasons. First it was the title
of an article written for Socialisme ou Barbarie (henceforth S. ou B.) in
1963/4, in which Castoriadis speaks of the “ruination of classical Marxism”.
“Recommencing the Revolution” (see also endnote (ii) below) was translated (as
“Redefining Revolution”) by Maurice Brinton for the
British group Solidarity, and it was this Solidarity pamphlet which was my
first introduction to the work of Castoriadis, and I found this new view of
revolution both convincing and exciting.
The phrase also reflects several central aspects of Castoriadis’
thinking. All his life he believed in
revolution, but he came to see, first, that the term “revolution” needed
redefining, since the traditional left notion of capturing the state had proved
a total failure – the USSR was not, for him, a workers’ paradise. Moreover, revolutionary theory itself had to
be re-thought, as “what is essential in reality today… can be understood only
in the light of different analyses”.
Eventually Castoriadis came to argue that since society itself, and all
things social, are products of our collective imagination, revolutionary change
must consist in our fundamentally redefining the very meanings on which
existing society is based. This second
idea is expressed in Castoriadis’s notion of the
“radical social imaginary”.
This
paper will explore the evolution of Castoriadis’s
ideas, from revolutionary Marxism, via philosophy, social theory and
psychology, to a rejection of Marxism, and to the formulation of a critique of
the modern world, from a new revolutionary perspective. These thoughts will draw on three texts
written by Castoriadis between 1959 and 1965: Modern Capitalism and Revolution
(henceforth MCR), Recommencing Revolution (RR) & Modern Revolutionary Theory
(MRT). The last of these texts was
reprinted as the first part of The Imaginary Institution of Society. (See the Bibliography for full details of these
and other works by Castoriadis).
In a
future paper I will examine the key concept of the “social imaginary”, drawing
on a text from 1975, which became the second part of The Imaginary Institution
of Society (IIS). However, I will first
continue with this brief overview of Castoriadis’s
ideas and his political and philosophical position. I hope that this overview will support a
contention I wish to make, that the idea of the radical social imaginary
gradually emerged from his early Marxist thought, and that there is continuity
between the early and the later ideas of Castoriadis [vi].
To
some readers, no doubt, the dialogue with Marx may seem arcane or even
pointless. However, I want to show,
first, that Castoriadis constantly tried to make sense of the social, political
and historical context of his own life, and, second, (in doing this) that he
was true to one of the most basic tenets of Marxist philosophy which is, that
we cannot make sense of the world, and our part in it, if our “practice” does
not reflect our “theory”, and if our theory has no purchase on the real world
(see note ii). Moreover, in our thinking
we have to start with the real world, and when the real world changes we need
to change our thinking to make sense
of it (not continue to pretend that our predictions are right despite the
evidence accumulating to the contrary).
Castoriadis always strove to restore the link between theory and
practice, and he always tried to make philosophy relevant to social and
political action. In doing this, while rejecting Marxism, I believe that he
took a significant step towards putting theory in its place.
The
distinctive feature of Castoriadis’s outlook, then,
was his ability to acknowledge the social and political realities of the
twentieth century – including the travesty (as he saw it) of “socialism” in the
Soviet Union, and the demise of Marxism and other revolutionary movements -
while maintaining a belief in and a hope for a radically better future. In Castoriadis’s
own “General Introduction” to the first volume of his Political and Social
Writings, written in 1972[vii],
he usefully outlines the main stages of his life, which will be indicated in
this piece. He also summarises (p 3) “a few of the facts” about the three
decades that followed the Second World War. This summary is worth quoting,
despite its length, as it gives an indication of how he saw the twentieth
century. The extract also highlights
several key themes (italicised by me), which his work explores:
“the expansion of the Russian bureaucratic
machine and its empire over half of Europe; the bureaucracy’s accession to
power in China; the crisis of Stalinism, its ideological death and its real
survival; the popular revolts against
the bureaucracy in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia; the
disappearance of the traditional working-class movement in Western countries;
and the privatisation of individuals in all countries… the
internal collapse of the system of values and rules in modern society; the challenging, in words as well as deeds, of institutions, some of which (schools,
prisons) date from the beginning of historical societies and others of which
(the family) were born somewhere in the mists of time… the eclipse…of our
inherited bearings and of all bearings for reflection and action, with society dispossessed of its knowledge
and this knowledge itself, swelling like a malignant tumour, in a profound
crisis as to its meaning and function; the boundless proliferation of a
multitude of empty and irresponsible discourses, their industrialized
ideological fabrication and the glutting of the market by a plasticized pop
philosophy…..”
It
would be easy, as many have done, surveying these profound changes, to conclude
that history is indeed dead, that all ideologies are equally worthless and
dangerous, that the “progress” which modernism represented or promised was an
illusion, etc., etc. Yet Castoriadis
rejected what he saw as the emptiness of post-modern thought, and always
believed that we can make some sense of the world, though of course we should
not fall into the trap of believing that we will ever explain everything.
The
key to this realistic but critical approach lies in what Castoriadis called the
radical imaginary. This is what creates all social institutions
- in the broadest sense of the word “institutions”, and so including rational
thought itself, as well as the values and norms we adhere to. He had always rejected determinism, in any
form, and the positing of the radical (social) imaginary enabled him to develop
a sophisticated theoretical alternative to deterministic explanations of
society. Since we have created and continue to create society; since doing this
makes us what we are, then we must strive to maintain this capacity, or else we
will find ourselves allowing the institutions we have created to determine our
future. This way of looking at society
clearly underlies the political concept of autonomy[viii].
However,
it is important to stress right away that this, for Castoriadis, was a social autonomy that, of necessity,
exercises self-limitation. I believe that this idea is consistent with
his psychoanalytical approach. For, as a psychoanalyst, he understood that the individual needs to
be both autonomous (not directed by others or by forces outside him/herself),
and capable of living with others (in the family and in society). Moreover, we could say that the purpose of
psychoanalysis is to help the individual restore a lost balance – retaining a
sense of individuality (“self”) while at the same time recognising the social
dimension of his/her identity. And, just
as this requires that the individual first recognise, and then define limits to
his/her autonomy, so it is, surely, with society: the fundamental aim of any
society is to create, and then to maintain, its own identity. Sadly, most societies have “lost” this
knowledge that they are, as it were, their own creation - hence the reference
above to the “dispossession of [social] knowledge”.
What
is more, there is even an all-pervading myth that, especially with the help of
technology, “there are no limits”, that we (modern society) can have absolute
freedom – most vividly manifest as a desire for total control over nature.
Castoriadis, along with a growing body of opinion, would say this is not only
unachievable, but in a very real sense it is irrational.
The
questions to be posed in these papers ultimately home in on the viability of
this view of humanity - on the “social imaginary” and its implications for
social and political life. Thus the key
questions, in the end, will be: whether Castoriadis succeeded in laying a
philosophical basis for a new approach to revolutionary social change; whether
he successfully “redefined” revolution; and whether he did this without
betraying his radical intent. If we do
not agree with Castoriadis, we might either find that the basic concepts and
definitions are flawed, and reject the whole approach; or we might agree with
the notions of the radical imaginary, and even autonomy, as he defined them,
but find that it is possible to draw from them a liberal, reformist or even
pluralist politics, - even though this latter was never the intention of
Castoriadis himself, as is clear from the interview cited above.
2. Leaving Trotskyism
Cornelius
Castoriadis [ix],
1922 - 1997, was born in
It
is often acknowledged that S. ou B. (almost alone among "left" groups) had
an impact on the "events" of May 1968 in
The
uprisings in East Germany, Poland, and Hungary during the 1950s (and later in
Czechoslovakia) also vindicated and strengthened the S. ou B. perspective in two senses: first
the claim of these regimes to be socialist was clearly hollow, since workers
were demonstrating against their own “workers’ governments”, and second the
workers had an alternative – they were setting up workers’ councils, and
exercising real power both over production and in society[xiii].
As
is well known, many members of Communist Parties left
in disillusionment during this period, and especially after Khrushchev’s
denunciation of Stalin in 1956. However,
many on the left, especially with the “thaw”, maintained their belief that the
In
1966, Castoriadis convinced S. ou B. to disband.
On the one hand this was because of a sense of frustration at the
passivity of readers of the journal (like Marx, he saw "consumption"
as a way of dumbing down the masses). But on the
other hand, he was able to see the S. ou B. political message being taken up by students and
others in the '60s, and was somewhat vindicated by the near-revolution in
3. Building on Marx: from workers’ power to autonomy
Castoriadis
then worked in
(i) Contradictions
Castoriadis
argues that while there are (still,
and always) "contradictions" in capitalism, and that (as Marx argued)
capitalism cannot survive, what we
need to do is to re-think the nature of these contradictions. There are several original aspects to this
analysis, and some have still a strikingly contemporary flavour. Castoriadis
points out that most of what Marxists call contradictions are merely instances
of conflict.
For
Castoriadis, the fundamental contradiction is that modern capitalism both tries
to reduce the worker to a mere machine (and the citizen to a mere consumer), and
at the same time requires the worker, (and the citizen), to accept,
participate in and contribute to the processes of work (and of politics). In making this point, Castoriadis begins to
formulate a critique, which uses and goes beyond both Marx and Weber, of the
"rationalisation" which characterises modern capitalism and
bureaucracy. In other words, this "rationalisation" is per se contradictory, not simply because
we cannot regard humans as more than mere machines or passive objects, but
because rationalisation demands that we also and at the same time regard them
as rational and capable of autonomy.
(ii)
Autonomy
This
argument is coupled with a detailed critique of classical Marxist economics,
and of its underlying (objectivist, materialist and determinist)
philosophy. This leads Castoriadis to a
new[xvi]
emphasis on the self-conscious activity
of the working class in shaping and changing society, as against the
working out of impersonal objective economic laws. The word "autonomy" is used in the
last two paragraphs of MCR, (p 307) to describe the goal of this self-conscious
activity, and this concept is strengthened and developed in Castoriadis' later
work.
(iii)
Bureaucracy
Since
modern (“Western”) capitalism was also increasingly bureaucratic, both the
existing “capitalist” and “communist” forms of society in fact shared a common
fundamental characteristic, namely the drive for
"rationalisation". This
argument has a superficial similarity to the so-called “convergence thesis”
popularised by Clark Kerr in the late 1960s, and to James Burnham’s notion of a
“managerial society”.[xvii]
Castoriadis's argument, however, is distinct in two
respects. First, he argues that this process of rationalisation, or
bureaucratisation, “is accomplished through the ever-heightened separation of
direction and execution” (p273). This
creates a new social order, and the
effects go far beyond the work-place.
This order is still seen in terms of “classes” at the end (p 306) of MCR
– though defined in terms of “management or control” rather than “ownership”. On the one hand are the workers, reduced to
mere "executants", with no control over their work, and on the other
are the "order-givers" - the
bureaucrats and managers (whether in the workplace, in society, or in
politics). Second, as noted above, this
social order is based on a fundamental contradiction, and thus there is still
the possibility of avoiding barbarism and moving to socialism – the
“executants” will rise to the challenge given them by their own managers and
demand the right to manage!
We
can see here already the importance to Castoriadis of “autonomy” at work and in
society, and we will return to this later, in connection with his philosophical
and psychological arguments (section 5, especially (iii) (iv) and (v)). We may note also that he writes (ibid) of bureaucratisation
entailing “a transformation of the values and significations that form the
basis of people’s lives in society”, even a “destruction of the significations
of social activities” – and in his later writings this notion of
“significations” is also further explored.
At this point, however, Castoriadis is primarily redefining the content
of socialism (although much of the language used is still that of Marxism).
(iv)
Socialism
In
the final section of MCR, “For a Modern Revolutionary Movement”, Castoriadis
lists a number of “practical conclusions” (while warning that this is not a
“programme”!). First, the “revolutionary
movement has to be rebuilt from rock bottom”, since “everything which has
existed in the working class movement (ideology, parties, unions, etc) is
irrevocably and irretrievably finished, rotten, integrated into exploiting
society.” Moreover, since capitalism and bureaucratisation extend to the whole
of our lives, he also broadens (or “switches the axis” of) the “revolutionary
criticism of modern society”, (p 304-5) to include: “the inhuman and absurd
character of work… the arbitrariness and monstrosity of hierarchy… the
disintegration of communities, the dehumanisation of human relations, the
content and methods of capitalist education, the monstrosity of modern cities,
the double oppression imposed on women and on youth.” In short, socialism is concerned with “all
aspects of life”.
4. Transcending Marx.
I
believe it is possible to see in MCR that Castoriadis was already beginning to develop
a new approach to existing theory, and a new approach to the relation between
theory and practice. To illustrate this I would note the following arguments -
which often have a surprisingly contemporary feel, even over forty years later:
(i) With reference to the “objective/subjective” dichotomy,
which has played such a large part in Marxist argument, (especially in relation
to the “right conditions for socialism”) Castoriadis says (p 298): “there is
only one condition for socialism. It is neither ‘objective’ nor ‘subjective’.
It is historical.” Later (p 301) he
adds: “The process (of the ripening of the conditions for socialism) is historical. The subjective exists only inasmuch as it
modifies the objective, and the objective has no other signification than what
the actions of the subjective confer upon it in a given context and connection”
[xviii]. We will return in our second paper to the
further exploration, perhaps the redefinition, of the meaning of “historical”
in Castoriadis later work.
(ii)
Capitalism is (re-)defined as a form of society based on the increased
rational/scientific control both of people and of nature. This also provides a theoretical basis for
some of Castoriadis’s later writings against
ecological destruction – destruction being wrought by a supposedly
“rational" drive (but one that is actually “irrational”, as suggested
above) to control and conquer nature.
Such awareness of ecological principles is surely in advance of the time
when this text was written (1959).
(iii)
One “expression of bureaucratic politics” (p 302) is what he calls the
“privatisation” of individuals. Thus in
a society with a fundamental cleavage between “order-givers” and “order-takers”
the individual is bound to feel cut off from all things “public”. He goes on to say that, “[seen as] an
inability to confront the problem of society… it [the privatisation of
individuals] is anything but positive.
But there is something more and different than just this. The rejection of politics as it exists today
is, in a certain fashion, the wholesale rejection of present-day society. What is being rejected is the content of all
‘programs’ because all these programs – whether conservative, reformist or
‘communist’ merely represent different variants of the same type of
society… Today de-politicisation is a
criticism of the separation of politics from life.”
(iv)
Finally, (p 306) in language which can be found in later accounts of “new
social movements”[xix],
Castoriadis says the revolutionary movement itself must get rid of hierarchy
and specialists, and be “the place where…individuals learn about collective
life, run their own affairs, and fulfil and develop themselves, working for a
common objective in reciprocal recognition.”
5. Towards a new theory.
Whilst
MCR is a very forward-looking text, considering it was written in 1959, both
the break with Marx and the beginnings of a new approach are most clearly
stated in two further texts from the mid-sixties: “Recommencing the Revolution”
(1964 - RR) [xx]
and “Marxism and Revolutionary Theory” (1964-5 - MRT) [xxi].
(i) Theory and Practice have become separated.
In
Recommencing the Revolution Castoriadis, describes the history of Marxism to
date in relation to “theory and practice”:
“According to its own programme and its most deep-seated content,
Marxism could live only as a constantly renewed theoretical search that sheds
light on a world in constant change, and as a practice that constantly
transforms the world while also being transformed by it…” (Castoriadis Reader,
p 109) and yet, he charges, no theoretical progress has been made since 1923
(the year of Lukacs’s History and Class
Consciousness), and no Marxist group since the Spanish Civil War has “actually
acted on its principles and connected these with mass activity” (loc cit). The self-proclaimed defenders of Marxism “can
defend Marxism only by transforming it into its contrary, into an eternal
doctrine that could never be upset by any fact… Like a despairing lover whose mistress
has died prematurely, they can now express their love only by raping the
corpse.” (loc cit)
In
the opening paragraphs of MRT (CR p 139 - 40) Castoriadis makes it clear that
he is not arguing for a return to one “pure” or “correct” version of Marxism
over others; but that he regards Marxism as now an ideology, covering the truth
and incapable of being developed further.
Nor can one defend (as Lukacs tried to do) a “Marxist method” which is
separate from its content. A method,
Castoriadis argues, is simply an “operating set of categories”. And, if we regard the method as somehow
separate from the material it is being applied to, either the material being
put into categories already has some “distinctive sign” which tells you which
category to put it in (and how would this have come about?) or the material
really is “shapeless”, in which case the choice of category is arbitrary, and
“the distinction between true and false collapses”. (CR p 142 – 3). This, as Castoriadis puts it, is “the
question posed on the level of logic”, (i.e. at a purely theoretical
level). When we turn to history there is
a further problem, since “the categories we use to think historically are, for
an essential part, real products of historical development”, and “these categories
can clearly and effectively become forms of knowledge
of history only when they are embodied or realized in forms of effective social life” (original
emphasis)[xxii].
In
other words, (words which point towards the next step in Castoriadis’s
thinking): “It is clear that there can be no ‘method’ in history which would
remain unaffected by real historical development.” And therefore, “Since the object of
historical knowledge is itself a signifying object, or an object constituted by
significations, the development of the historical world is ipso facto the unfolding of a world of significations” (p 144,
emphasis added). He adds that “there can
be no break between matter and category, between fact and meaning.”
Castoriadis
emphasises (pre-empting, perhaps, a suggestion of post-modernism avant le mot or some form of relativism) that
this does not mean that all categories and methods are immediately put into
question at every moment by historical change – but that “each time it is a concrete question (emphasis added) whether historical change
has reached the point where the old categories and the old method are to be
reconsidered.” (ibid)
What
is quite clear, however, is that “the history we are living can no longer be
grasped with the help of Marxist categories” (ibid), and “we have arrived at
the point where we have to choose between remaining Marxist and remaining
revolutionaries” (p 145).
(ii)
No more “total theories”
Some,
of course, stuck to Marxism through thick and thin – fearing that by abandoning
it they would lose their “revolutionary impetus”; others gave up on revolution
as an ideal, simply because they saw that Marxism was failing. For Castoriadis,
both these strategies result from the “phantasy” that
there can be a total theory, which emerges at one point in time, yet contains
the truth about all time (and about all things!). Of course, our relationship to knowledge, and
to the world, is not like that – rather, theory is a making/doing, which lies somewhere “between chaos and absolute
knowledge”. Theory is “the always uncertain
attempt to realize the project of elucidating the world” (CR p 149). We are always “recommencing” the process of
trying to understand the world.
(iii)
Praxis and project
Theory,
then, is making/doing, and cannot be separated from practice; and there cannot
be a ready-made total theory. Moreover
we now live in a bureaucratic society which is tearing itself apart, since it
encourages a belief in peoples’ freedom, while controlling them more and more
in every aspect of their lives. There is
no future in total control, and people will – must – resist control to assert
their own autonomy [xxiii]. This is the new sense of “revolution” for
Castoriadis.
We
now arrive at a key statement of the principle behind Castoriadis’s
libertarian socialism, when he re-defines praxis (practice informed by theory):
“We call praxis that
making/doing in which the other or others are intended as autonomous beings and
considered as the essential agents of the development of their own autonomy.”
(150)
It
is worth noting here, that while this statement has Kantian overtones,
Castoriadis is not making a moral statement, nor is he simply describing the
necessary mental attitude we must adopt towards each other. Rather he is attempting to base this
recognition of each others’ autonomy in an ontology
- a view of what it is to act in the world. – a view which embeds the
individual in the social-historical (see (vi) below).
(iv)
The roots of the revolutionary project
It
should be clear from the way Castoriadis has argued, that he is far from seeing
revolution as a “totality” – a point he counters next (p 154), since it is a
“project” that we all “autonomously” seek to realise. But he also needs to deal with objections
that “autonomy” is a denial of reality, an illusion, infantile etc., He argues that there are both subjective and
objective roots of the revolutionary project – the subjective side lies in
wanting to “know what is going on in society… to be able to participate
directly in all the decisions that may affect my existence”. He goes on: “I do not accept the fact that my
lot is decided, day after day, by people whose projects are hostile to me or
simply unknown to me…” This is not an infantile desire (shades of Lenin! [xxiv])
since infants desire either total freedom or to be told what to do!
In
describing the “objective” aspects, Castoriadis is, in part, still close to his
Marxist roots, since he argues that the conflicts at heart of labour relations
and the economy have led to the setting-up of workers’ groups, whose demands
have extended to include the conditions and organisation of labour and even the
management of production (Russia 1917, Catalonia 1936, Hungary 1956). He adds that recent society has been
contested by mass movements, and that authority is being worn down, economic
motivation losing its force, “the instituted imaginary (an expression which is
amplified in (vii) below, and which will
be more fully examined in our second paper) is losing its hold”.
(v)
Self, other and society.
Later
in Marxism and Revolutionary Theory there is a crucial passage, in a section
headed “the sense of autonomy – the individual” (p 177) which makes use of
Freudian ideas, but interprets them in such a way as to bring together
explanations of individual behaviour with an understanding of how individual
and society are interdependent. Here
Castoriadis argues that the opposition “autonomy/heteronomy” operates at the
level of the individual psyche as well as socially. He quotes Freud’s dictum “Where Id was, Ego
shall come to be” (Wo
Es war, soll Ich werden) and argues that the Id, or unconscious, does not
consist simply of ready-made
instincts and drives, (libido, death instinct) as some interpretations have
it. Rather, it also contains the
“unconscious forces of rearing and repression” – that is, the unconscious is
“to a great extent” socially constructed (ibid) [xxv].
Castoriadis
uses Lacan’s explanation that the Unconscious
represents “the depository of intentions, desires, cathexes,
demands, expectations – significations to which the individual has been exposed
from the moment of conception… as these stem from those who engendered and
raised him”, or in other words: “the law of another” - another in me (p 177) [xxvi].
Heteronomy at the individual level, then, is when the subject “takes himself to
be” (that is, imagines himself to be
- an early use of the word imaginary, which Castoriadis was to modify later)
other than he/she is, because he/she is ruled by the content of the unconscious
– the “discourse of the Other”. And the
Other is, in a sense, society. Autonomy,
then, is when another relation is established with the Other – not a rejection
of other influences/discourses, since this is impossible (we are in large part
the product of how we react to such influences), nor the elimination or
suppression of drives (presumably also impossible!). Instead Castoriadis writes of replacing the
unconscious as an “agency of decision”, so that consciousness is making the decisions. This would create a new relation with the
Other, where I am aware of this discourse (the “law of another”, the “forces of
rearing and repression”) and can take it in, consider it, and either affirm it
or negate it in deciding on my own truth (p 179). This is not a static condition (a “state”)
but an unceasing movement, where the individual is one who is “capable of
uncovering his phantasies as phantasies
and who finally never allows them to dominate – unless he is so willing.” It is worth noting here that Castoriadis
states right away that this “new relation” could probably never be reached in
perfect form – “the notion of the subject’s own truth is itself much more a
problem than a solution”. A constant
theme in Castoriadis’s work has been that what we are
considering, be it the individual, society, a class, capitalism, even
socialism, is changing, moving, and never fixed (we are always
“recommencing…”).
This
position, he continues, means the rejection of two myths: (a) the definition of
a subject as a “point-like ego” (p 180), and (b) the belief in the “pure
freedom” of the individual as imagined by subjectivist philosophy (p 181). For Castoriadis, the subject is always “the
produced and productive union of the self and the other (or the world)” (ibid). It is crucial to reject these two myths,
since they have resulted in the desire to enslave on the one hand the “other”,
and on the other “corporeality”. The
other must always be a threat to a free and independently-consituted
ego, and if we “forget” (as traditional philosophy has) that the subject has a
“concrete structure”, then we descend into “the narcissism of the
consciousness” and come to regard our very bodies as alien or even
hostile. This is a rich passage, and I
would love to explore these ideas further, but I will have to leave this until
a later paper.
(vi) The social-historical.
In
the final pages of MRT, Castoriadis returns to the question of the “social”,
and notes that this “needs explicating” (or re-defining perhaps, since
theories/explanations of the individual as separate, atomistic, cannot provide
an adequate theory of society). First,
he underlines the “social dimension of autonomy”: autonomy can only be a social
relation or a social problem, and hence only this conception of the subject and
autonomy makes praxis (as defined) possible.
Then
Castoriadis introduces a concept which is fundamental to his thinking, and
which he will develop through later writings: the social-historical. With a
brief rejection of the philosophical distancing of the Other, which has led to
such dead-ends as “Hell is other people” (Sartre), Castoriadis argues that the
fact that “the other or others… [are] constitutive of the subject” recalls the
fact that “human existence is multiple (a
plusieurs)” (p 183)[xxvii]. But “this multiple existence” is not “mere intersubjectivity”… “it is social and historical existence
and, to us, this is the essential dimension of the problem. In a way, the intersubjective
is the material out of which the social is made but this material exists only
as a part and moment of the social, which it composes but which it also
presupposes.” It is worth stressing that
Castoriadis does not reject “intersubjectivity” – the
sharing of meanings or “significations” – but sees that these significations
are rooted in a social-historical reality.[xxviii]
(vii)
Instituted heteronomy - alienation as a social phenomenon
In a
final act of re-definition, Castoriadis begins to explore (p 184) the way in
which we have constructed “solidified institutional structures of economy,
power, ideology, mystification manipulation and violence”, which either are
alienating in themselves, or, because we allow them “autonomy”, and attribute
to them their own inertia or logic, then we become alienated in regard to them.
In this way, alienation “does not simply appear as the discourse of the other”
– though this has an essential role – but the "other… disappears into
collective anonymity, in the impersonal nature of the market or Plan, or “the
law of few presented as law as such”.
This is alienation as a social phenomenon, and this is the basic feature
of a “bureaucratic society”.
Note
that Castoriadis identifies two “steps” here – the first is that we attribute
“significations” to the world around us, and these are “instituted” in society.
But then, we lose sight of the fact that we originated these institutions, and
give them power over us, a power which easily becomes real because these
institutions and their signification are real…
However,
it is a mistake to imagine that we can simply abolish all institutions. Communism “in its mythical sense” is often
presented this way… This mythical idea
takes the form either of the “total man”, dominating history, or of a purely
transparent society, both of which are clearly unrealisable from Castoriadis’s point of view. Since on the one hand, individuals and their
Unconscious are “instituted” – then to call for the abolition of institutions
would be to call for the elimination of the Unconscious, perhaps even of the
subject! And on the other hand, as he has argued, we cannot have pure/total
knowledge of society, since we are continually “instituting” it. The social exists both as instituted and as
instituting (p 187).
Put
more simply, Castoriadis’s view is that we can
neither demand absolute freedom from society (as anarchists do?), just as we
cannot be free from or dominate nature (as Marxists have promised), since we
are part of both. Nor should we resign
ourselves to the inevitability of complete alienation, since society is not in
itself alienating, (although it is the “condition on which freedom/alienation
can exist”).
Thus,
having re-defined society and indicated the nature of alienation, Castoriadis
has placed himself politically in a position which is distinct from fatalistic,
deterministic philosophies on the one hand, and stereotypical
anarchistic/communistic positions on the other.
He has also laid the foundations for further explorations of the
“institution” of society.
In
the very last paragraph of this fascinating document, Castoriadis gives a
tantalising glimpse of another “key” which will help him to unlock the door to
a theory of revolutionary change. He
clarifies that he is not arguing for a society which “would completely coincide
with its institutions… [since this would have] a network of infinitely flat
institutions”. For “there will always be
a distance between society as instituting and what is, at each moment,
instituted – and this distance… is one of the expressions of the creativity of
history…. Just as an individual cannot grasp or provide himself with anything
at all – neither the world nor himself – outside the symbolic dimension, no
society can provide itself with anything outside the second-order symbolism
represented by institutions.” (p 189)
In
the sequel to this text – the Imaginary Institution of Society – Castoriadis
examines and explores the nature of this (second-order) “symbolism” and its
basis in our capacity to “imagine” (another concept that needs to be
re-defined) our society – as it is, and as it could be.
[i] In an interview
with Daniel Mermet, quoted in: Castoriadis, C.: Post-Scriptum sur l'Insignifiance,
Editions de l'Aube, 1998
[ii] For example, he wrote in 1972 that: “Marxism had not achieved the transcendence of the
antinomy between theory and practice.
The theory, having turned speculative again, had become dissociated into
a metaphysics that will not say its own name and a so-called positive science
founded upon the former’s prejudices and mimicking
the sociologically dominant model of society.
To these two was annexed a practice conceived of as the application of
truths derived from the theory, i.e. conceived of ultimately as technique.” (p
29 of General Introduction to Cornelius Castoriadis: Political and Social
Writings (henceforth PSW), translated and edited by David Ames Curtis (Vol. 1,
of three volumes)
Recommencing the
Revolution also appears in PSW Vol. 3, p 27-53.
[iii] See the Foreword to PSW Vol. 1.
[iv]
E.g. “From Ecology to Autonomy” (1980) CR p 239 ff.
[v] As early as
1949 in “Socialism or Barbarism”, PSW vol. 1 p. 76-106.
[vi] This is a different position to
that expressed by Brian Singer in two papers published in the Canadian Journal
of Political and Social Theory :
No. 3
(Fall 1979): Pp 35 - 56: Brian Singer: The Early Castoriadis -
socialism, barbarism and the bureaucratic thread
No. 4
(Winter 1980): Pp 75 - 101: Brian Singer: The Later Castoriadis -
institutions under interrogation.
[vii] See his General Introduction to PSW (Vol 1, p.3). This Introduction to the three volumes of his
political and social writings, covering the years 1946 to 1979, also gives a
succinct account of the stages through which Castoriadis’s
ideas evolved.
[viii]
We see here how Castoriadis took the idea of workers’ self-management
and developed and transformed it. We will elaborate on this below.
[ix] He adopted
other names, as did many revolutionaries who had many enemies and who were
trying to keep "straight" jobs. Articles in S. ou B. (and in the English translations
published by Solidarity) appear under: Pierre Cardan,
Pierre Chaulieu, Jean-Marc Coudray.
For further details of this use of pseudonyms among revolutionaries, see PSW 1
(Foreward p viii and footnote 5, also Appendix H)
[x] The idea that civilisation has a
choice, between socialism or some such alternative as barbarism, goes back to
Marx and Engels – for example in the reference in the Communist manifesto to
the future of class conflict, where there would be either “a revolutionary
constitution of society at large, or “the common ruin of the contending
classes”. Different meanings have been attached to the word barbarism, by
Trotsky, Rosa Luxembourg and others. For
Castoriadis, any “exploitative society”, whether “capitalist” or “communist”,
could tend towards barbarism in so far as any chance to criticise or think
alternatives is prevented. The crucial point about the alternative “socialism
or barbarism” is that it does not represent any kind of inevitability - we do have a choice. See the detailed discussion by David Ames
Curtis: “Socialism or Barbarism: The Alternative Presented in the Work of
Cornelius Castoriadis” in Revue Europeenne des
Sciences Sociales, 86 (1989): 293-322.
[xi] Cohn-Bendit,
D. and G.: Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative, translated by Arnold Pomerans, McGraw-Hill (1968) and Hirsh, A.: “Castoriadis
and Socialisme ou Barbarie” in The French New Left: An Intellectual History
from Sartre to Gorz,
[xii] Castoriadis points out
(Introduction to PSW vol. 1 p 8) that “Trotsky had written in black and white
that if the war ended without the victory of world revolution, the analysis of
the Russian regime would have to be revised and it would have to be admitted
that Stalinist bureaucracy and fascism already had sketched the outline of a
new type of exploitative regime, which he identified, moreover, with
barbarism.” When the war ended, no such
revision of the analysis took place, of course – and Trotsky’s “epigones”
resorted to claiming that the war “had not really ended. Probably for them it
still has not ended.” He also wrote,
adopting a typical stance of “a plague
on both your houses”: “by means of the theory of the “socialist bases of the
Soviet economy”, the Fourth International is indulging in the same kind of
mendacious and hypocritical apologetics that bourgeois professors employ when
they talk about the sovereignty of the people and civil equality, as guaranteed
by the Constitution” – for they are confusing the “real relations of production
with the juridical formulas employed by the bureaucracy to camouflage these
relations”. (The Problem of the USSR, 1947, in PSW Vol. 1 p 50-51)
[xiii] See: Harman, C.: “Bureaucracy and Revolution in
[xiv] See “The Social Regime in
[xv]
MCR: “Le Mouvement Revolutionnaire
sous le Capitalisme Moderne”: S. ou B. No. 31, first
translated into English, as “Modern Capitalism and Revolution” (Paul Cardan), by Maurice Brinton,
Solidarity,
[xvi]
"New" except that it is present in the more radical aspects of
Marx's writing.
Castoriadis drew
a distinction between two sides of Marx, and regarded Capital as far from
revolutionary in its reduction of society (and people!) to economic formulae: the central weakness in Marx’s economic
theory, for castoriadis, is that at times Marx
acknowledges that workers, through industrial action, can sometimes affect
(drive up) the wages they receive, but his "mature" economic theory
is based on the assumption that workers' wages either diminish over time, or at
the very best remain constant. But, argues Castoriadis, this could only happen
if workers have no consciousness of what is going on. And yet the capitalist
“system” itself requires them to improve their working methods, to
“participate” in production, and to consume more. (One might even argue that it
requires that they demand wage rises!). Hence, for Castoriadis, the
"contradictory" nature of capitalist economics.
[xvii] Burnham, J.
The Managerial revolution, Greenwood Press (1972); Kerr, C.: “Industrialism and Industrial Man”
(2nd British Edition 1973), Penguin/Heinemann Educational.
[xviii] Maurice Brinton’s
translation for Solidarity differs slightly: “the subjective is only of
importance inasmuch as it modifies what is objective. And what is objective
only acquires the meaning which the actions of the subjective confer to it in a
given context and connection.”
[xix] E.g.
[xx]
“Recommencing the Revolution” can be found in PSW vol. 3 p 27-53, also
in CR p 106-137.
[xxi]
Part of this text (the first section of ch. 1 and all of ch. 2) appears
in CR (pp 106 - 195). It appeared first in the final issues of Socialisme ou Barbarie,
and was reprinted, in three chapters, as the first part of IIS (pp 9 - 164).
Castoriadis writes a typical note in the Preface to IIS that he has not
re-written this text, as it is valuable to see the “scaffolding” as it is being
erected, not just a completed building.
[xxii]
Thus, in Antiquity, the dominant categories used to understand the
society are political, and “economic” concepts are not helpful – not because
such societies were less advanced, or because the economic did not exist, but
because the economy was not a separate “autonomous” moment of human activity
(this happened in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of course, with the
birth of capitalism).
[xxiii] See previously, in Recommencing the
Revolution: capitalism is a society where values
have collapsed (p 122) and therefore there is no culture which can
“structure personalities adequate to it (i.e. to make the culture function, if
only as the exploited)”. Yet the system
has not collapsed, and people have continued to produce (and to produce a
culture). It is evident, then, that people do constantly strive to give meaning
to their lives, and that this effort is now becoming an “aspiration for
autonomy”.
[xxiv] Lenin: “Left-wing communism, an infantile disorder”
1920. (Progress Publishers,
[xxv] I found this a significant reading, having previously
assumed that Freud saw a conflict between the individual and society, which was
represented by a conflict between the Id (representing inherent drives) and the
Ego and Super-Ego (constructed as the individual grows in society). It is
easier to conceive of the Ego and Super-Ego as socially-constructed, than to
argue that our very Unconscious must also be in large part a product of our
upbringing…
[xxvi] Jacques Lacan, “Remarques sur le rapport de D. Laglache”, in Psychanalyse 6
(1961) – see note 33 on p 192 of CR.
[xxvii] Castoriadis makes much of this point in his work,
and, drawing on anthropology, he asks: how do
we account for the existence of so many different patterns of social life?
[xxviii]
The nature of the social-historical is further explored in the second
part of the Imaginary Institution of Society, but here (footnote 42, added in
1975) Castoriadis simply notes that the concept is intended to bring together
the synchronic and the diachronic “multiplicity of dimensions” of existence
“which are traditionally denoted by the terms ‘society’ and ‘history’”.
*************************************************
Bibliography:
(i) Works by Castoriadis:
“CR”:
The Castoriadis Reader, Edited by David
“PSW”:
Cornelius
Castoriadis: Political and Social Writings, translated and edited by David Ames
Curtis (three volumes) University of
Castoriadis, C.:
Post-Scriptum sur l'Insignifiance, Editions de l'Aube,
(1998).
(ii) Articles etc. on Castoriadis:
Brian Singer: “The Early Castoriadis - socialism, barbarism and the
bureaucratic thread” in The Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory:
No. 3 (Fall 1979): pp 35 – 56.
Brian Singer: “The Later Castoriadis - institutions
under interrogation” in The Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory:
No. 4 (Winter 1980): pp 75 –101
David
(iii) Other:
Burnham, J.: “The Managerial Revolution”,
Cohn-Bendit, D.and G.: “Obsolete
Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative”, translated by Arnold Pomerans,
McGraw-Hill
(1968)
Kerr, C.:
“Industrialism and Industrial Man” (2nd British Edition 1973),
Penguin/Heinemann Educational
Harman, C.: “Bureaucracy and Revolution in
Hirsh, A.: “Castoriadis and Socialisme
ou Barbarie” in “The French
New Left: An Intellectual History from Sartre to Gorz”,
Lenin, V.I.: “Left-wing communism, an infantile
disorder” 1920. (Progress Publishers,