ABSTRACT
Generally, a Marxian approach to interpreting political theory involves reading texts as ideological reflections of particular historical and material conditions.2
The task of interpretation is not to understand the argument of the texts in order to answer a set of normative questions about the political as a set of practices, institutions, or ways of thinking (i.e., what they should be). Rather, the aim of Marxian interpretation is to historically and concretely situate arguments that often present themselves as timeless, universal truths and paradigms, or as radical epistemic breaks, and show how such arguments in fact serve the interests of a particular class within society (most frequently the bourgeoisie within capitalist societies). This does not preclude reconstructing the logic of the arguments presented, but it does demand the additional step of showing how such arguments often depend on assumptions that are either unstated or, if explicit, presume conditions that hold because of previous historical developments and/or because of the existence of certain structures and relationships. Two key elements of a Marxian interpretation are historical or dialectical
materialism and class analysis.3 Historical materialism places primary importance on how societies produce their material needs (i.e., their modes of production) and how those arrangements create and, in turn, depend upon certain relations of production (i.e., classes). History is driven by class conflict, which emerges because of developments and contradictions within the mode of production. Each mode of production sets the stage for the next, which builds upon it and actualizes what is of value, while suppressing the negative. This is the dialectic. Socialism, for instance, takes advantage of the abundance and efficiency made possible by the development of the productive forces under capitalism and carries out a logic of socialization begun with the productive process itself, while
eliminating the negative inefficiencies and exploitation of market relations and rationalizing the economy through central planning. Class analysis involves showing how the economic determines directly and
indirectly the political, social, and cultural. It involves showing how dominant ideas, especially those articulated in academic and philosophical terms, are ideological in the sense that they reflect and protect the interest of the ruling class. This relationship between the economic/material base and the ideological, political, legal, and cultural superstructure is particularly important to consider under the capitalist mode of production, where the social, the political, and the cultural appear to be independent, timeless, and/or representative of the universal interest, but in fact arise from and help to sustain, again, directly and indirectly, the mode of production and associated class relations. In other words, they are ideological. At times, Marx appears to mechanically juxtapose empirical reality, accessible
via science, to ideology, understood as an inverted or distorted reflection of reality or “false consciousness.”4 At other times, he suggests a more complex view of ideology as a framework constituted by concepts and relationships that make certain elements of reality visible, while occluding others. This second understanding of ideology has guided much of Marxian analysis after Marx since it recognizes both the durability of bourgeois ideology and the need to theorize counterhegemonic ideologies in the struggle for socialism. In keeping with Marx’s call for a “ruthless criticism of everything existing,”
those working within the Marxian tradition have analyzed texts in philosophy and political theory, but they have also set their sights on a wide range of subjects and areas including political tracts, art, mass culture, and common sense.5 Such criticism is ruthless in the sense that, wrote Marx, it “must not be afraid of its own conclusions, nor of conflict with the powers that be.”6 This suggested that Marx’s writings and conclusions could also be subjected to “ruthless criticism.” However, when putting his ideas to use to analyze the nature of specific historical and concrete conditions, later Marxists struggled with the fine line between, on the one hand, privileging Marxism’s critical and analytical edge (its status as a science and method) and, on the other hand, fetishizing and valorizing critique as an autonomous and intellectual exercise independent of material conditions and struggle (its status as pure philosophy). The latter view of Marxism ran the risk of delinking critique from politics and from the particular conditions of its emergence and thus putting critique to the service of the status quo. For Marx, reflection and practice were inextricably linked, with reflection always related to practice and practice always informed by theoretical insights. The risk of reducing historical materialism and class analysis to timeless tools of interpretation is that rather than aiding concrete and situated forms of analysis, they become yet more tools of the bourgeois ideology Marx opposed. Political theorists like C. B. Macpherson and Richard Ashcraft adopted this
general Marxian method in the academic realm to understand the ways that political theory texts universalize particular (class) interests and to highlight the
political and ideological, as opposed to philosophical, nature of political theory more generally. Their interest is in examining how the category of class is understood, deployed, or hidden and how the text can be understood to be responding to historically specific political and economic conditions. The political implications of this approach are less direct in that the object of analysis is usually a canonical political theory text and the aim is primarily to propose and put into practice a particular method of interpretation. Here too, however, the aim is to show the relationship between the supposedly autonomous academic sphere (the field of philosophy in particular) and specific economic, political, and ideological conflicts. The first section of this chapter deals with the interpretive approach Karl Marx
simultaneously practiced and developed. It asks: What texts and areas did Marx understand as worthy of interpretation? What did he view as the primary goal of interpretation? Is there one clear approach to interpretation in Marx’s own work or are there several different methods existing in tension? The second section examines how professional political theorists like Mac-
pherson and Ashcraft understand and apply Marxian techniques to the study of canonical texts in political theory. They use a Marxian approach to rectify what they view as the mistaken equation of political theory with philosophy, and the mistaken belief that any serious political theory must distance itself from any association with history, ideology, and concrete political struggle. Those wishing to treat political theory as philosophy often consider Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan one of the more philosophically rigorous texts in political theory. For authors like Macpherson and Ashcraft, however, a historical and class-based approach illustrates the ways in which the text relies upon assumptions very much informed by immediate political concerns and historical context. Here again, Marxian analysis can be seen as a way to view the workings of ideology both in terms of how it forms a system and also how that system can be exposed and resisted. The last section explores the implications of understanding Marxism primarily
as a method of interpretation. Does understanding Marxism as a method depoliticize and weaken it or account for its constant reinvigoration? Is it possible to understand Marxism only as a method? Specifically, this section examines the tension between Marxism as a method of analysis or science and the ways in which that method of analysis calls for a reconsideration of Marxism itself. The challenge Marx and Marxists set for themselves was to use historical materialism to better understand the world in order to change it, but also to modify Marxism without falling prey to reformism and opportunism.
