Marxist Humanism - Criticisms

Criticisms

The most potent criticism of Marxist Humanism has come from within the Marxist movement. Louis Althusser, the French Structuralist Marxist, criticises Marxist Humanists for not recognising the dichotomy between 'Young Marx' and 'Mature Marx'. Althusser believes Marx's thought to be marked by a radical "epistemological break". For Althusser, the humanism of Marx's early writings — influenced by Hegel and Feuerbach — is fundamentally incongruous with the "scientific", structure-concerned theory found in Marx's mature works such as Das Kapital. Of the Marxist Humanist's reliance on the 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts Althusser writes, "We do not publish our own drafts, that is, our own mistakes, but we do sometimes publish other people's" (cited in Gregory Elliot's "introduction: In the Mirror of Machiavelli" an introduction for Althusser's "Machiavelli and us", p. xi). The Humanists contend that ‘Marxism’ developed lopsidedly because Marx's early works were unknown until after the orthodox ideas were in vogue — the Manuscripts of 1844 were published only in 1932 — and to understand his latter works properly it is necessary to understand Marx's philosophical foundations. Althusser, however, does not defend orthodox Marxism's economic reductionism and determinism; instead, he develops his own theories regarding ideological hegemony and conditioning within class societies, through the concept of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA) and interpellation which constitutes the subject.