Arguments Within English Marxism

by Perry Anderson

The characteristic form taken by English Marxism since the war has been the study of history. No writer exemplifies its achievements better than Edward Thompson, whose Making of the English Working Class is probably the most influential single work of historical scholarship by a socialist today. An editor of The New Reasoner in 1957–59, a founder of the New Left in 1960, now an eloquent champion of civil rights, Thompson has most recently aroused widespread interest with the appearance of his Poverty of Theory , which combines philosophical and political polemic with Louis Althusser, and powerful advocacy of the historian’s craft. Arguments Within English Marxism is an assessment of its central theses that relates them to Thompson’s major historical writings themselves. Thus the role of human agency—the part of the conscious choice and active will—in history is discussed through consideration of its treatment in The Making of the English Working Class . The problems of base and superstructure in historical materialism, and of affiliation to values in the past, are reviewed in the light of Whigs and Hunters . The claims of utopian imagination are illustrated from the findings of William Morris . Questions of socialist strategy are broached in part through the articles now collected in Writing by Candlelight. Exploring at once differences and convergences between New Left Review and one of its founders, the essay concludes by suggesting the virtues of diversity within a common socialist culture.

Genres: History, Theory, Philosophy, Nonfiction

226 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Perry Anderson is an English Marxist intellectual and historian. He is Professor of History and Sociology at UCLA and an editor of the New Left Review. He is the brother of historian Benedict Anderson.

He was an influence on the New Left. He bore the brunt of the disapproval of E.P. Thompson in the latter's The Poverty of Theory, in a controversy during the late 1970s over the scientific Marxism of Louis Althusser, and the use of history and theory in the politics of the Left. In the mid-1960s, Thompson wrote an essay for the annual Socialist Register that rejected Anderson's view of aristocratic dominance of Britain's historical trajectory, as well as Anderson's seeming preference for continental European theorists over radical British traditions and empiricism. Anderson delivered two responses to Thompson's polemics, first in an essay in New Left Review (January-February 1966) called "Socialism and Pseudo-Empiricism" and then in a more conciliatory yet ambitious overview, Arguments within English Marxism (1980).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_An...

Reviews

[Differengenera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anderson weighs up a spat between himself and the historian EP Thompson which arose from a critique PA and Tom Nairn wrote on the failures of the British working class to develop an authentic revolutionary programme based on class independence. Thompson challenged their line with more attention to the granular aspects of English history and then wrote a polemical attack on the French theorist Althusser, which he saw as the germ of all this continental abstraction the new generation of leftists were going in for at the time.

Anderson walks meticulously through Thompsons arguments, gives credit where it's due (Althusser doesn't know much about history, restates certain problematics without solving them) but is also devastating in his treatment of Thompson's oversights. Different sections of EPT's works contradict themselves according to argumentative requirements. He's also parochial, venerating a backwards British nationalism (the presence of which in the class he overstates), ignores the depredations of Empire and on a couple of occasions goes in for straightforward racist apologia.
At issue is the definition of class. Anderson moderates between Thompson's culture and class-consciousness as predominant, against a more orthodox Marxist perspective who, from EPT's pov, follow the man in getting bogged down in abstractions derived from the degenerate analytic of political economy. Again EPTs pique works against him, and he comes down on history-writing as sentimental exercise is celebrating liberal values.

Anderson maintains it is necessary to work with concepts such modes of production, social formations, apparatuses, forces versus relations of production, conjunctures, determinations but his considerations of people who do - Sartre, Cohen, Balibar - all wind up at impasses, because they're trying to solve one of the central problems of philosophy - structure versus agency - and the gap between this and the very specific, and not at all uniform, way in which collective action moves towards an outcome is probably unbridgeable. (actually quite reassuring to see some of the big brains of the last century come up short on the fundamentals).
Was interesting to see Anderson seeming to go in for the idea that Marx's method was accomplished and only needs applying, don't think that's true. As far as class goes, I reckon you need objective composition as a social material force and subjective composition as a social political force. And the former won't really be legible unless / until you have the latter. I know this is just the in itself for itself distinction - hard to get away from rigorous sounding terminology, it's v seductive - but Marx was tracking a rolling wave rather than an inert sociology.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

The argument between Perry Anderson and E.P. Thompson has continued into the afterlife. Anderson wrote a gallant appreciation of Thompson in his obituary for the great historian, found in Anderson's collection of essays, SPECTRUM. In their prime these two British Marxists battled over the role of theory and practice in the making of history and in THE MAKING OF THE ENGLISH WORKING CLASS, the title of Thompson's magnum opus. This debate is all business, not personal. At stake is the right strategy for revolution in the First World. Why had England failed to produce a single Marxist thinker of first-class importance, and could this be related to the political backwardness of the English proletariat compared to continental counterparts? Anderson's contention is found in two well-known phrases, "no feudalism, no socialism" and "In England, a supine bourgeoisie produced a politically weak proletariat". Precisely due to the early launch of capitalist property relations in Britain no socialist revolution was required to fulfill democratic tasks, as in Russia, China and Cuba, and even if it had been on the agenda, the British working class had no bourgeois revolution to emulate; not Cromwell, not 1688. These structuralist arguments do not wash with Thompson. They cast the proletariat as simply reactive, waiting for the revolution while pining for socialism. His MAKING OF THE ENGLISH WORKING CLASS shows how English workers defended their rights as Englishmen against their employers but then expanded on them, fighting for the right to strike and form unions. Class consciousness, in his view, is forged in battle, not supra-historical conditions, or in Anderson's language, borrowed from Althusser, structures. This is Marxist debate, history, politics, class consciousness, at the highest level.

[Emre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kitabın orjinal ismi olan Arguments Within English Marxism, hem içerikte E.P. Thompson'ı ve çalışmalarını merkezine alarak yoğun bir kritik getiren Perry Anderson'un niyetini daha iyi ifade ediyor hem de kitabın geniş bir alana sahip olan Marksist literatürden sınırlandırılarak ayrılmasını sağlıyor; Türkçe basımda orjinal isme sadık kalınması daha tutarlı olurdu.
Kendisinin de dahil olduğu tarihçiler kuşağı ve İngiliz Yeni Solu hakkında içeriden konuşan Anderson, Thompson'la mukayeseli olarak Althusser'ın teorik ve politik tavır alışlarını, Stalinist ve Troçkist etkileri, William Morris'in ütopik edebi üretimine ve sosyalist strateji üzerine erken öngörülerine harika bir eleştirel pencere açan değerli bir metinle karşımızda duruyor.

[AleSanSil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesante debate. Estoy más de acuerdo con Anderson que con Thompson en temas como la definición de clase, la estrategia socialista o el papel del trotskismo; en la cuestión nacional/internacional creo que hay un amplio espacio intermedio mucho más sólido que las posiciones de los dos autores y en lo referente al énfasis de Thompson en la acción humana pienso que su enfoque es más interesante que el de Anderson. Aunque pueda haber alguna mala interpretación o exceso en el combate de Thompson contra Althusser, en líneas generales veo correctas sus críticas y me parece un total desacierto de Anderson haber escrito para defender al francés.

[bautista · Rating 4 out of 5]

parece más un alegato a favor de althusser que un debate o una revisión de los conceptos de thompson por momentos pero los argumentos están muy bien expuestos y se notan las buenas intenciones de anderson