Perry Anderson, Marxism and the New Left

by Paul Blackledge

"This survey of the political writings of Perry Anderson explores the evolution of an influential current of new leftist thinking that has developed in the last 50 years and reviews its engagement with critical theorists such as Ernst Brenner, Francis Fukuyama, and Federic Jameson. Anderson is the editor of the New Left Review and a professor at University of California at Los Angeles, where he published articles on a range of European Marxist opinions including Deutscher, Gramsci, Sartre, Lukács, Althusser, and Poulantzas. Andersons contributions to political theory are recorded and illuminated in terms of postmodern and leftist theory."

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Kristofer D]

There are two books dedicated entirely to Perry Anderson and one book dedicated to the history of the New Left Review. One was published before the soft reboot of the New Left Review in 2000; all three were published before the economic implosion of the Great Financial Crisis and the subsequent decade (decades?) of populism. All three are worth reading, although they naturally cover a great deal of the same territory. Gregory Elliott’s Perry Anderson: The Merciless Laboratory of History is the most sophisticated exposition of the three; Elliott demonstrates more familiarity with Anderson’s major intellectual influences (from Sartre to Deutscher to Mandel) but he is also quite sympathetic to his subject. For a critique of Comrade Perry, rather, one must turn to Paul Blackledge’s excellent book on the sage from Mount Olympus.

While Elliott’s work is perhaps on a higher level of theoretical sophistication altogether — Elliott has also written a truly excellent monograph on Althusser, a key point of reference for a young Anderson — Blackledge provides the most forceful critique of Anderson, that Anderson simply has no answer to the question of practical political organization. Anderson’s focus on establishing a theoretical culture amongst the proletariat is all well and good; but Anderson’s own critique leads him to a significant impasse. And although Blackledge’s book was published two decades ago, his overall critique of Anderson remains as valid now as it was then.

Let’s briefly retrace the trajectory of Anderson’s thought (while Blackledge’s account is excellent, it still covers much of the same ground as Elliott’s slightly older book and, dare I say it, it isn’t quite as good). After an early period under the influence of Sartre, Anderson broadly came under the influence of Althusser by the late 60s. Simultaneously, he came to reject Maoism in favor of an idiosyncratic understanding of the Trotskyist tradition. (Although Anderson is typically viewed as being on the right of Trotskyism, he could perhaps just as fairly be viewed as on the far left of Stalinism.) His Althusserianism was tempered by Colletti, and then, as the 70s dragged on, tempered further by Timpanaro and finally G.A. Cohen. Meanwhile his political allegiance shifted more and more towards an explicit Trotskyism and a critique of the Western Marxism he himself played a large part in introducing to an Anglophone audience.

A significant aspect of Anderson’s rejection of Western Marxism was its inability or unwillingness to engage in strategic questions, to articulate a political theory, along with its aversion to developing economic theory, something Anderson places particular emphasis on. Instead, Western Marxism, particularly after the War, focused its energies almost exclusively on aesthetics (notably with the Frankfurt School) and epistemology (again, the Frankfurt School, but also notably Althusser and Colletti). The major exception to this overall trend was, of course, Gramsci, who was a leader within a mass political party, in contrast to the bulk of Western Marxists.

At the height of his intellectual productivity in the 1970s, Anderson attempted to address and correct these shortcomings of Western Marxism himself, publishing 2 (of a projected 4) volumes of the evolution of the Western European state that constitute two foundational works in historical sociology. Simultaneously he published a balance sheet of Western Marxism and a sustained assessment of Antonio Gramsci, in addition to a “settling of accounts” with Althusser as part of his (somewhat one-sided) controversy with E.P. Thompson.

Anderson’s mid-1970s essay on Gramsci was epochal both for Anglo understanding of Gramsci and for Anderson’s own thought. Here he makes clear his belief that the proletariat of the West cannot follow the Eastern road to power. Rather, in the context of bourgeois democracy, an altogether different type of rupture is required. Whereas force is determinant, in the West, consent is dominant. The system, to a large degree, relies on the notional consent of its subjects. The upshot here is twofold: a break with consent would require a cultural revolution of sorts. The hegemonic struggle is conducted on the field of ideas. But force is, in the last instant, determinant. To engage in open struggle against bourgeois democracy requires the use of force; accordingly, it would require an organization capable of conducting such a struggle.

But Blackledge correctly points out that Anderson has no idea whatsoever what such a political organization would look like. Certainly Anderson had, by the time of the Gramsci article, broken with his previous recurring enthusiasm for Labour (and, for that matter, Maoism). Fast forwarding two decades, Anderson lauds Fredric Jameson for producing perhaps the crowning achievement of Western Marxism, an analysis which unifies an aesthetic theory (largely an original creation of Jameson himself derived from a vast pastiche of Western Marxism and French structuralism/post-structuralism) with an economic theory (effectively a straightforward adaptation of Ernest Mandel’s work in the 70s with little qualification or ammendation).

Anderson argues that the “original” Jamesonian synthesis, however, still lacks one crucial ingredient: a theory of politics. We might, however, turn this exact critique towards Anderson himself. Anderson’s own clear preoccupation with politics aside, there is simply very little in Anderson beyond highly abstract formulations such as “consent is dominant, force is determinant”. While this is an insight relevant to any opponent of capitalism in the West, it also provides very little clear practical guidance about “what is to be done”. Clearly Anderson was struggling deeply with the question of what a revolutionary political theory might look like for the countries of advanced capitalism; as an indication of the aporetic point in his own thought, his tetralogy of the modern capitalist state was abandoned at its midpoint.

It is this political agnosticism that provides an opening for a critique of the Andersonian project altogether. Blackledge offers one illustration: Anderson’s lucid assessment of the state of affairs in Palestine does not, however, offer anything approximating a viable left-wing strategy that realistically accounts for what actually exists on the ground. Surely Orwell’s snickering remarks about British “bohemian Bolsheviks” in The Road to Wigan Pier would apply to Anderson, a privileged mandarin residing far above the rough and tumble of day-to-day political struggle. And yet, Anderson (and the New Left Review) have persisted to this day; perhaps this cool distance is the trick to longevity after all.

[Harry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked this up on a whim after the recent Anderson-Tooze furore. Decidedly unconvincing - Anderson ceases to have a distinct project (which absolutely should be criticised) and instead becomes a ventriloquising character of whatever figure he is reading (whether Cohen, Williams, Gramsci or someone else). In then criticising these figures, with some quotes from Anderson, Blackledge exposes Anderson's alleged failings.

The main takeaway becomes an 'original sin' style argument that Anderson's innate Deutscherism (the origins of which are very thinly established), means he is unable to really grasp the class character of the USSR, and consequently, ends up further rightwards following the collapse in the 1990s.

This is all far too neat, and really lets Anderson off the hook for the limits of his work on its own terms (which has mainly consisted of destroying coherent English language use of Gramsci)