Freeing Althusser

C ABSTRACT: C
R R
I The concept of structural causality, associated with the work I
S of Louis Althusser, was, one can say, short-lived: even its foremost S
I I
S advocates seemed to drop it just about as quickly as they picked it up, S

from Spinoza:
&
while other concepts in Althusser’s work continued to be popular. This &
paper proposes to discuss both the problems with and the merits of
C C
R the concept, calling particular attention to the philosophical work it R
I was supposed to do, which was both critical and constructive, negative I
T T

A Reconsidera-
I and positive. Critical and negative in that it offered a way to avoid I
Q both a naturalistic mechanism and a Hegelian expressivism. In other Q
U U
E words, it aimed to avoid both a naïve materialism and a naïve idealism. E
Constructive and positive, in that it was contributing to a new picture of
# #
the relationship between structure and what is structured, by trying to

tion of Structural
3 3
give an account of the manner in which structure was present and “in
the real”: and, I will add, thereby providing the groundwork for a better
version of dialectical materialism. There is no doubt that Spinoza’s
philosophy provided Althusser with the model for thinking of this form

Causality
of causality. But the use of Spinoza as a model can also be identified
as the source of many of the problems with the concept. An essay by
Warren Montag dealing with an exchange between Althusser and Pierre
Macherey will serve as the basis for my discussion of Spinoza and
structural causality.

Keywords:
Althusser, Hegel, Macherey, Montag, Spinoza, structural causality.

Ed Pluth “Thought must begin by placing itself at the standpoint of

“But if Spinoza is called an atheist for the sole reason that he does
not distinguish God from the world, it is a misuse of the term. Spinozism
might really just as well or even better have been termed ACOSMISM…
Spinoza maintains that there is no such thing as what is known as the
world; it is merely a form of God, and in and for itself it is nothing. The
world has no true reality, and all this that we know as the world has been
cast into the abyss of the one identity. There is therefore no such thing
as finite reality, it has no truth whatever” (Hegel 1994, p. 281)

336 Freeing Althusser from Spinoza: A Reconsideration of Structural Causality 337 Freeing Althusser from Spinoza: A Reconsideration of Structural Causality
 In so many ways, for so many reasons, Spinoza seems to be a C Spinoza, since it will lead to a different way of evaluating the relationship C
R R
philosopher who is preferable to Hegel – non-totalitarian, radically I between the apparent and the real. The way to get at this is through a I
democratic, a seemingly communist, horizontal ontology… So why S reconsideration of structural causality. S
I I
try to free Althusser from Spinoza? In 1979 Pierre Macherey asked, S S
intentionally messing with the chronology, “Hegel or Spinoza”? His &
The foremost criticisms of the concept of structural causality &
answer, of course, was “Spinoza,” and his reason for putting Spinoza target its fatal circularity. As Ted Benton argued, the concept seems
C C
after Hegel was to suggest that Spinoza had been capable of reading R to do either too little or too much: it cannot do much to help us to R
Hegel in a certain sense, and was in fact a better reader of Hegel than I understand specific causal relations among elements of an event or a I
T T
Hegel had been of Spinoza. At the end of his book, he claims that I totality– and so it is essentially useless as far as political and critical I
the choice for Spinoza is made, not without some reservations, in Q practice goes. And if structural causality is about the causality of Q
U U
the expectation that Spinoza’s work would aid in the development of E something like a totality itself, then it makes structure way too strong, E
a non-Hegelian dialectic, one that would avoid, among other things, external, and transcendent – yet again making the concept theoretically
# #
what Macherey called the “evolutionism” of Hegel’s. I will assume this 3 uninteresting, tautological, and as far as practice goes, even debilitating 3
criticism of Hegel is familiar enough. Also, Spinoza’s work could, it was (Benton 1984, pp. 64-5). On this view, the Spinozism that inspired
hoped, serve as a better basis for materialism. Yet it is fair to say that the structural causality would make the concept a bit too God-drunk.
jury is still out on all this. Such objections to structural causality seem to follow a Popperian
There are some obvious reasons why a Spinozistic model line of attack, and this seems to be the consensus view of its problems.
is problematic for any project that wishes to continue with both What Gregory Elliot calls Althusser’s “rationalist epistemology” is
materialism and dialectics. Such necessary conceptual tools as time, described by him as “untenable – condemned by an internalism which
change, negation…these all have a shaky status in Spinoza’s philosophy insulated theoretical discourse from empirical evidence and severs it
– or, strictly speaking, on the Hegelian interpretation of Spinoza at from its real referent” (Elliot 1987, p. 329). Since there is nothing that
least, they have no status at all. Then there is the theism. This is why could count as a refutation of the theory of structural causality, this
Hegel called Spinoza’s philosophy an ACOSMISM. The God-drunk account goes, the concept cannot really be considered to do all that
philosopher was certainly no atheist: what he did deny, Hegel argued, much. What is philosophical and rationalist about it, which Elliot calls
was the reality of the world itself. By denying the reality of time, the its “internalism,” dooms it to the status of a pseudo-science.
reality of human experience itself is called into question. Thus, “the For a similar conclusion in slightly different terms, we can also
world,” such as we know it and experience it, it can be fairly argued, turn to Jacques Rancière, who, in an interview about the Cahiers project,
does not exist, Spinoza’s philosophy must hold. Macherey does not ever was asked by Peter Hallward:
really address this aspect of Hegel’s criticism. Perhaps that is because And this idea of structural causality, central to analysis of the
the denunciation of the apparent world in Spinoza actually goes ‘action of the structure’ (to use the Cahiers’ phrase)…could it have, in
quite well with the Althusserian critique of ideology and its embrace principle, served as mediation between theory and practice, once all
of science as a radical break with the empirical. Isn’t something like reference to consciousness, to the subject, to militant will, etc. was
Spinoza’s acosmism entirely appropriate as a model for a wide range of removed? And this way, through the analysis of causality, it would
contemporary approaches to human experience, from psychoanalysis be possible not only to study history but to understand how to make
to Marxism, all of which are suspicious of what is merely apparent and history. (Rancière 2012, p. 269)
seemingly obvious? To which Rancière replied:
My reconsideration of the question “Hegel or Spinoza” here is Yes, certainly, it allowed for a kind of double attitude. First one
in large part driven by concerns about acosmism. Freeing Althusser could say, here we are presenting theory, as far as can be from any
from Spinoza, I am arguing, means freeing Althusser from Spinozistic thought of engagement, of lived experience; this theory refutes false
“acosmism”. And this, I believe, brings his work closer to Hegel than to ideas, idealist ideas about the relation between theory and practice. But

338 Freeing Althusser from Spinoza: A Reconsideration of Structural Causality 339 Freeing Althusser from Spinoza: A Reconsideration of Structural Causality
one could also hope that theoretical practice itself might open up other C model, time, space, or structure to which it is applied – such as, most C
R R
fields for new ways of thinking about political practice… In fact it didn’t I notably, the capitalist mode of production, its origins, its conditions, its I
open any such fields. (p. 269) S future. A theory of structural causality on its own will not tell us much S
I I
And although Rancière does not in this interview go into specific S about the particulars of the social movements, transformations, etc. S
reasons for why the concept did not open up ways for thinking about &
that are associated with that mode of production’s appearance. Yet, &
the links between theory and practice, one can easily imagine that the philosophically speaking, the concept continues to do much more than it
C C
circularity problem would be a major one. R seems at first blush. R
But it is Jean-Claude Milner, interviewed by Knox Peden in the I I
T T
same volume, who refers explicitly to what he thinks was the lamentable I It seems that no discussion of structural causality can get started I
absence of Popper for those working in France during this period. Now Q without turning to how Althusser himself developed it as an alternative Q
U U
that Popper’s line of questioning is better known in France, Milner E to other views of causality, called mechanism and expressivism. This E
observes that “the will to pose questions on the productive character of may be familiar territory, so my discussion here will try to link these
# #
a structure, all these kinds of questions no longer command attention. 3 two views, or models, to some contemporary theoretical (and anti- 3
I even feel that the general mode of questioning which was that of the theoretical) positions that should help to shed light on why I think the
Cahiers pour l’Analyse is a mode of questioning that has become very philosophical insight associated with the concept of structural causality
distant” – and the concept of structural causality was of course a crucial is still important today.
one for the Cahiers (Milner 2012, p. 242). Milner’s verdict is that the According to the mechanistic or linear model of causality, any
works of Althusser “would fall apart” if submitted to the kind of reading given thing or event, considered as an effect, is generally thought
he gave to Lacan in his own L’oeuvre claire. This is no doubt, again, to be caused by something external to it and materially distinct from
because of the circular problem theories of “productive structures” it. On this model, one may posit a multitude of elements, some with
have. For, what could count as a refutation of structural causality? more force than others, some able to bring about a greater number
What I describe as the critical, negative force of the concept is of effects than others, influencing other elements in the space or
still I think fairly easy to appreciate and does not really need much domain being considered to greater and lesser degrees. One thing to
of a defense, as I hope the following discussion will make clear. observe right away about this model of causality is how it contains an
What it is opposed to is what many thinkers are still opposed to. My almost inevitable reductionistic tendency: and with this point we can
reconsideration here wishes to go further, of course, by rehabilitating already see one of the philosophical errors the concept of structural
the constructive work the concept does, a work that needs to be causality was designed to avoid. In Althusser’s work the mechanism,
understood in the correct way. I will argue that it needs to be defended and reductionism, to be critiqued and avoided would have been found
and appreciated primarily as a philosophical, theoretical point, or as especially in the sort of economism present in some variants of
a philosophical creation. Against the typical criticisms, I argue that Marxism.
the concept of structural causality is bound to be misunderstood While some type of mechanical causality may be necessary in the
and misrepresented if it is taken in confirmationist, verificationist, natural science (along with its reductionism…and is this model really
or empiricist directions; and, thus, it is misunderstood if objections changed at all by quantum physics?), it does not seem to work as well in
to it on such bases are taken seriously. It is, instead, a concept that the social or human sciences. One would expect regularities and laws
primarily serves to provide a framework for more empirical sorts of to emerge from a mechanistic model of causality. Yet these seem to be
research (with their own criteria for validity), and as such it should not totally absent from social and historical phenomena. Obviously, classes
be expected to give much on its own in the way of specific information do not always act in their objective economic interests! Obviously,
about any particular system or structure one wishes to study in the decreases in wages do not automatically cause strikes, revolts, etc., or
first place. In other words, I am agreeing that the concept of structural even any increase in militancy and discontent… Strategically, politically,
causality itself will never have much to say about the specifics of any and rhetorically, however, one can see the appeal of this model for

340 Freeing Althusser from Spinoza: A Reconsideration of Structural Causality 341 Freeing Althusser from Spinoza: A Reconsideration of Structural Causality
social scientists and political militants: it would allow for the claim that C access to all the facts, and all the causes…). In this way, even when they C
R R
capitalism’s demise is etched into the very nature of capitalism as a I wish to avoid postmodern relativism, such scholars have a rather empty I
mode of production itself…provided the nature of capitalism as a social, S notion of truth: truth is the inaccessible totality of facts. Hence, with S
I I
economic, political “cause” is understood a certain way. S respect to something like capitalism as a distinct mode of production, S
And there’s the rub. Within this model, how can something like &
it is easy for advocates of this variant within mechanical causality to &
capitalism be thought of as a cause at all? One could think of capitalism become nominalists since they are not willing to become Platonists.
C C
as a sort of cause that is in principle independent of its effects, but this R Much better to argue that there is no such thing as capitalism, strictly R
would seem to suggest some sort of Platonism. Capitalism is what it is. I speaking, and to see it instead as a sometimes useful, sometimes I
T T
It emerges at certain times, and will (possibly, inevitably?) fade away at I misleading, theoretical abstraction. Or, one can go the Margaret I
others…In other words, its causal power may be seen to ebb and flow, Q Thatcher route and claim, as she did about society, that it just does Q
U U
and there may be periods in which it is operating better than others E not exist! There is no such thing. Or, if you prefer (as libertarians and E
– more effectively within a totality, for example. It is interesting that neo-liberals also seem to in the case of capitalism)…it has ALWAYS
# #
Marxists as well as Libertarians, Neo-Liberals, Neo-Classicists, etc. may 3 existed, a little bit, insofar as some people have always pursued profit 3
be said to flirt with such a crypto-Platonist understanding of capitalism. and trade. Then, capitalism becomes naturalized: it becomes equivalent
Empirical failures of capitalism may be thought to be due to its impure to exchange. The ways in which exchange occurs change (different
incarnations. Capitalism, for example, may be too constrained by State tools, different relationships, etc.)…and all this is simply the history of
mechanisms that are alien to it and hampering its growth. Hence one capitalism.
can equally well, within this model, advocate for a more pure capitalism,
a better incarnation of it. One of the main virtues of structural causality is that it is fairly
But far more common is another option or variant consistent easily able to avoid these unpleasant variants contained within
with mechanistic causality; one that seems to destroy the thing itself, mechanical causality. And on my reading, structural causality in fact
capitalism, by atomizing it into nothingness. This is an anti-theoretical will always have an easier time avoiding mechanical causality than it
hyper-empiricism or eclecticism. This variant thinks of capitalism not will have avoiding the next model of causality to consider, expressive
as some kind of essence, but as a swarming multiplicity of events and causality. This is directly due, we shall see, to the Spinozist inspiration
effects. The more causes for whatever effect or event is being studied for structural causality.
that one can incorporate into one’s story the better, and more accurate, We can think of mechanical causality as a sort of externalism,
the story is. And for this reason this variant within mechanical causality in which any given thing or phenomenon, considered as an effect, is
always in fact says too little – for there is always more that can be said, caused by something other to it. By contrast, then, it is helpful to think
more effects to consider, more causes to posit: the French Revolution of expressive causality as a model that corrects externalism with a kind
from the point of view of x, y, z… of internalism. Effects are seen in this case not as external to their
Some version of this hyper-empiricism is probably the most causes and thus distinct from them, but as expressions of their causes
widespread view among historians and social scientists today. Far instead. One can easily see how such a model would allow for the
more threatening to such disciplines than the claim that there is no existence of something like capitalism as a distinct mode of production,
truth is this, their own ingrained postmodern eclecticism, according to while avoiding both the transcendent, idealist Platonism and the hyper-
which the best a scholar can do is take into account as many different empiricist atomism that mechanism encourages. For in this model
causes of an event as she can. Thus it can readily be admitted that it causes present themselves, at least a bit, in what they bring about.
is impossible to give a total picture of all the causes of capitalism, the They are in the real, a real presence. And it is on the question of the
French Revolution, or the Civil War...What one can be sure of, in fact, is distinctness, or not, of causes (or essences, it is easy to see now) from
that there is never any one cause of anything, and certainly no one true their effects that different variants open up within expressive causality.
story (except the total story that one could give, per impossibile, if one had Of course, Hegel is in many ways the paradigm for this type of

342 Freeing Althusser from Spinoza: A Reconsideration of Structural Causality 343 Freeing Althusser from Spinoza: A Reconsideration of Structural Causality
causality in Althusser’s discussions of it. Consider here the clichéd C did have a category for the effectivity of the whole on its elements or C
R R
and ridiculous criticism of Hegel: that he could deduce the necessity I parts, but on the absolute condition that the whole was not a structure. I
of everything from the same simple system, even the existence of the S (Althusser 1970, p. 186-7) S
I I
keyboard I am using. But some strands of contemporary theory can S What Althusser is actually describing here is what unifies the S
be read as variants of this view. To mention just one that is relevant &
two models of causality discussed so far: a traditional philosophical &
today: expressive causality seems to be present in paranoid and conception of a whole in terms of a homogenous unity. The natural
C C
totalizing histories. Consider Foucaldian micropower, which is seem R sciences posit this for nature, and Hegelianism posits this for Absolute R
to radically permeate the social space and manners of behavior… I Spirit (as Nietzsche posits this for the will to power, etc.): these are I
T T
Consider also Judith Butler’s performative theory of gender identity, in I wholes in which one and the same set of rules and conditions applies. I
which it is never clear when or if we are ever not performing gender. The Q While such notions of a whole can certainly, Althusser claims, think of Q
U U
performance of gender seems to accompany all other acts a person can E “the effectivity of the whole on its elements or parts” they fail to think of E
possibly engage in. From this perspective, expressive causality is always the whole as a structure, he adds. So the question is, what does thinking
# #
able to explain too much, while also always saying really nothing at all, 3 of the whole as a structure, rather than as anything else (a unified 3
since it is always saying the same thing. totality? an essence?) do? Why is this important?
Here is how Althusser recaps these two models, as he transitions Beyond externalism and internalism, mechanism and
into his discussion of Marx’s discovery of structural causality (the word expressionism, thinking of a whole as a structure is supposed to open
“effectivity” in this passage is referring to the manner of presence of a up a different way of thinking about the relation between causes and
cause, or a whole, or a structure): their effects, as well as to give us a different vision of the presence and
Very schematically, we can say that classical philosophy…had status of a cause itself. Thus, the concept of structural causality was
two and only two systems of concepts with which to think effectivity. developed by Althusser in order to be able to explain better the real
The mechanistic system, Cartesian in origin, which reduced causality presence of something like capitalism as a distinct mode of production
to a transitive and analytical effectivity: it could not be made to think the in diverse economic situations – situations, always, in which capitalism
effectivity of a whole on its elements, except at the cost of extra-ordinary is also seen to have not fully saturated the field within which it operates;
distortions (such as those in Descartes’ ‘psychology’ and biology). But and thus, situations that in some way exceed the cause in question, and
a second system was available, one conceived precisely in order to deal are not entirely permeated and affected by it. In this way, what Althusser
with the effectivity of a whole on its elements: the Leibnizian concept of is proposing is a conception of a whole or totality that differs from the
expression. This is the model that dominates all Hegel’s thought. But it classical philosophical one. This is why notions like overdetermination,
presupposes in principle that the whole in question be reducible to an domination, determination in the final instance, etc., would be
inner essence, of which the elements of the whole are then no more than associated with the concept of structural causality: a structural cause
the phenomenal forms of expression, the inner principle of the essence may be seen to dominate and determine its situation, although it never
being present at each point in the whole, such that at each moment it is functions as a TOTAL cause for all the effects/events in a situation.
possible to write the immediately adequate equation: such and such an In this way it differs from an expressive cause, which, on the (bad)
element (economic, political, legal, literary, religious, etc., in Hegel) = Hegelian model, is one that does permeate the whole; and it differs from
the inner essence of the whole. Here was a model which made it possible a mechanical cause, the conditions for which are universally applicable
to think the effectivity of the whole on each of its elements, but if this to the situation in which it occurs. As Althusser describes it:
category – inner essence/outer phenomenon – was to be applicable If the whole is posed as structured, i.e., as possessing a type
everywhere and at every moment to each of the phenomena arising in of unity quite different from the type of unity of the spiritual whole…
the totality in question, it presupposed that the whole had a certain nature, not only does it become impossible to think the determination of the
precisely the nature of a ‘spiritual’ whole in which each element was expressive elements by the structure in the categories of analytical and transitive
of the entire totality as a ‘pars totalis’. In other words, Leibniz and Hegel causality, it also becomes impossible to think it in the category of the global

344 Freeing Althusser from Spinoza: A Reconsideration of Structural Causality 345 Freeing Althusser from Spinoza: A Reconsideration of Structural Causality
expressive causality of a universal inner essence immanent in its phenomenon. C a “theory according to which the meaning of a text is expressed in all C
R R
The proposal to think the determination of the elements of a whole by I its parts, each of which in turn is read insofar as it is reduced to the I
the structure of the whole posed an absolutely new problem in the most S meaning that pervades the whole” (Montag 2013, p. 81). The direction S
I I
theoretically embarrassing circumstances. (Althusser 1970, p. 187) S Althusser wanted to go, no doubt, was toward the notion of structure as, S
And the next lines of this passage are where Althusser claims &
not latent, but an “absent exteriority” then. Althusser therefore seems &
that it was Spinoza who signals the way out of this theoretical comfortable with hanging on to a notion of structure that is in some
C C
embarrassment. R sense distinct from what it structures. Freeing Althusser from Spinoza R
Notice the description of expressive causality here in terms of I is very much about how to make such a move, for, as we shall see, his I
T T
immanence: it posits a totality, a whole, whose “inner essence” is I Spinozism ultimately obscures it. I
“immanent in its phenomenon”. This suggests that structural causality, Q Q
U U
by contrast, is not going to lean exclusively on the notion that a E As is well known, Spinoza can be read as both an atheist and a E
structure is immanent in its effects either. But if it is not immanent is it pantheist. In one and the same passage from Reading Capital, Montag
# #
transcendent, as well as being transcendental? That is, is a structural 3 observes that, discussing the manner in which structure is supposed 3
cause not only present in its effects but must it not also be in some to be present (and not latent) in the real, “Althusser will employ the
sense other to them? Can it be a condition of possibility for its effects formulae ‘present in its effects’ and ‘exists in its effects’ as if they are
(which it must be, if we are to continue to think of it as a cause at all) synonymous, while in fact they constitute the two opposing directions
without also somehow being beyond its effects? that readings of Spinoza have taken, the pantheist and the atheist”
This line of questioning is the focal point of Warren Montag’s (Montag 2013, p. 90). At first blush, this may be making a mountain out of
brilliant essay on a debate between Pierre Macherey (who would later a molehill: there hardly seems to be any difference between saying that
author, of course, Hegel or Spinoza?) and Althusser, which is a chapter a structure or cause is present in its effects versus saying it exists in its
entitled “Between Spinozists” in Althusser and His Contemporaries – the effects. If the point is to avoid a notion of latent structure, it would seem
entire book is a must-read for anyone interested in these matters. that either formulation would work fine. However, there are very different
Macherey, in a letter to Althusser in 1965, after reading the then still implications to each, as Montag keenly observes. If a structure is
unpublished manuscript of Reading Capital, and himself still committed merely “present in” its effects, this suggests that structure may well be
to the notion of structure and a certain structuralism, expressed present elsewhere – a structure present in its effects is not necessarily
concerns about the very presence of the notion of a “structured whole” exhausted by its effects. Thus, it may be “present in” as well as “absent
in Althusser’s work. The issue was this: for Macherey “the idea of the from”. Such a structure would be, in principle, transcendent to what it
whole is really the spiritualist conception of structure” (Montag 2013, p. is present in. And if it is transcendent to what it is present in, it is not all
74). In other words, Macherey felt that retaining the notion of a whole, at that different from the expressivist notion of a latent structure – this is
all, rendered problematic the very distinction Althusser was struggling chief among Montag’s, and Macherey’s, concerns.
to articulate between structural causality and expressive causality; the Montag’s idea is that if, as Althusser also put it, structure is said
latter, as we saw above, being linked by Althusser himself to a “spiritual” instead to “exist in its effects,” then this would amount to going with
(i.e., Hegelian) notion of structure. What was at stake in Macherey’s a more radically “atheistic” conception of it: for the implication is that
point, as Althusser himself articulated it in his written reply to Macherey, that’s all there is to it; structure is only there in them and nowhere else.
was the difference between positing a “latent” structure vs. positing one Hence going more in the direction of Spinoza than Hegel, in this context,
that is, in Althusser’s own words, an “absent exteriority” (Montag 2013, means less transcendence and more immanence. More Spinoza,
p. 75-6). Relying on a notion of latent structure would of course bring up according to Macherey and Montag, means saying not that structure is
the hermeneutic problems that Althusser was keen to avoid throughout somehow magically “present in” its effects…but that it just is in them,
Reading Capital, and such a notion is not all that different from a key full stop. The god is in the statue, but not only there, in this one statue,
aspect of expressive causality itself. As Montag puts it, this would be but elsewhere as well…in other places and phenomena at the same time…

346 Freeing Althusser from Spinoza: A Reconsideration of Structural Causality 347 Freeing Althusser from Spinoza: A Reconsideration of Structural Causality
and yet nowhere else. C ultimately avoided by marking the structure’s exteriority as “absent”. C
R R
But is this view – let’s call it radical immanence – a sufficiently I This should be taken to mean not that a structure is absent from what it I
atheistic Spinozism? I suggest that Althusser’s own notion of an S effects, in the sense that it is beyond, but rather that its very exteriority S
I I
“absent exteriority” would go even farther in this direction, even if it S is itself an absent, voided out one. So that if there is a Spinozism here, S
risks repeating the problems found in a notion of latent structure. As &
it is not one in which there is a superabundant substance/cause/ &
Montag himself notes, Althusser did wish to avoid “any reading of structure, but instead a hollowed-out one: a void placed there where
C C
overdetermination as chance or indeterminate and therefore unknowable R there was God or Nature. One could argue (as Zizek and others have, of R
disorder” (Montag 2013, p. 96). The point, I take it, is that Althusser I course) that this is the way to understand Hegel. I
T T
was concerned that there would be an insufficient difference between a I But what is this really doing? How is marking structural cause I
doctrine that would uphold the radical immanence of structure and the Q as an “absent exteriority” not making structure into nothing at all? Q
U U
hyper-empiricism of mechanistic causality. What Montag identifies as E One of the keys to Althusser’s philosophy of course is the distinction E
the atheist reading of Spinoza amounts to holding that a structure just between real objects and conceptual, theoretical objects. Claiming that
# #
is in its effects. And if that is the case…then there is nothing, strictly 3 a structural cause is an “absent exteriority” is another way of saying 3
speaking, but effects. that structure is a conceptual object, and not a real object. What does
Let’s agree that Althusser too had to avoid any notion of a latent that mean? Conceptual objects are not identical to real objects (the
structure in order not to fall in to expressivism. And so he had to go in concept of sugar is not sweet), but they are not merely fake or irreal
the direction of Spinoza to work his way out of this particular version for all that either. Similarly, Althusser’s view that structures are an
of Hegelian philosophy. But, as Montag points out, Althusser also felt absent exteriority avoids simply identifying structures with what they
like he had to avoid the doctrine of radical immanence (the atheist, not are structuring, while also avoiding seeing them as mere “constructs”
pantheist, Spinoza, as Montag would have it), since this would have – since they are, after all, identified as causes…just as one should not
been hyper-empiricist in its own way: it would have been, as Montag assert that the conceptual objects of the natural sciences are merely
describes it, “a lapse into a ‘pluralism’ and ‘hyper-empiricism,’ according constructed since they are not identical to the objects of the senses.
to which Marxism is nothing more than the observation of innumerable Such objects are indeed produced by a theoretical labor and leap, and yet
indifferent and indeterminate factors, to cite the critique of Althusser’s this does not take away from their real efficacy. Structural causes are to
comrade Gilbert Mury” (Montag 2013, p. 93). Here we see the difficult be thought of in a similar manner, and reducing them to the immanent
position the concept of structural causality is in, caught between obscures this.
the Scylla and Charybdis of mechanistic empiricism and spiritualist
expressivism, seeking what seems to be an impossible middle ground If one problem with Spinozism is its proximity to an atheoretical
between them. Montag wishes to place an atheist interpretation of pluralism – the “atheist” Spinozism, which would seem to reduce
Spinoza in that middle ground, not appreciating sufficiently that the a cause or structure to its effects – another problem with it is its
radical immanence of structure makes it hardly discernible from the derealization of the apparent. This is what Hegel called Spinoza’s
pluralism and hyper-empiricism of mechanistic causality that are also to acosmism, and, as I mentioned earlier, it does not seem to be of concern
be avoided. to Macherey and Montag.
Rather than seeing Althusser’s use of both “present in” and It is certainly the case that in order to get a grip on the true nature
“exists in” as an inconsistency or hesitation that could be settled by of the real some kind of parallax view is required, as Zizek has long
going in the direction of a more atheistic reading of Spinoza, we should argued: some way of looking awry, some theoretical break is needed
take the use of both phrases to signal the way toward a key positive in order to get a grasp on what is really there. The distinction between
insight. One must be able to say both at the same time – present in ideology and science is still entirely relevant. But it is also a mistake to
and exists in – if one is to think of structure as an “absent exteriority”. take this to mean that the apparent is false and irreal…which is another
This does risk positing structure as a latent structure, but that risk is problem with what going too far in a Spinozist direction does.

348 Freeing Althusser from Spinoza: A Reconsideration of Structural Causality 349 Freeing Althusser from Spinoza: A Reconsideration of Structural Causality
 A Hegelian thesis that is helpful in this context is articulated in C a truth and a real that are not self-evident (that are not, in Althusser’s C
R R
the Logic: it is of the essence of essence to appear. Modified for our I terminology, ideological), by means of the creation of conceptual I
purposes, this would mean that a structural cause is not without its S objects. Can’t we read Hegel as an inversion of Spinozism, wherein S
I I
effects. This is a thesis, I suggest, that cannot be maintained within S we see a much-needed now promotion of what otherwise appears to be S
a Spinozist framework, and is one of the reasons why Hegel rightly &
derived and merely apparent (thinking, culture, etc.)? And where in the &
accused Spinoza of acosmism, not atheism. place of God/substance/Nature, we have an (active, efficacious) void/
C C
What does acosmism mean? Literally, of course, it means that R cause? What Montag describes as the incomplete project of Althusser’s R
the cosmos does not exist – a ridiculous point to make about Spinoza, I philosophy seems to lie more in this Hegelian direction than in the I
T T
it would seem. But given the irreality of time and finitude in Spinoza, is I direction of Spinoza. I
it not possible to take Spinoza to be saying just this? Even someone as Q Q
U U
otherwise sympathetic to Spinoza as Deleuze noted this very point. For E E
Spinoza, he wrote, BIBLIOGRAPHY
# #
there still remains a difference between substance and the modes: 3 Althusser, Louis 1970. Reading Capital. Translated by Ben Brewster. 3
Spinoza’s substance appears independent of the modes, while the London: New Left Books.
modes are dependent on substance, but as though on something other Benton, Ted 1984. The Rise and Fall of Structural Marxism. New York:
than themselves. Substance must itself be said of the modes and only St. Martin’s Press.
of the modes. Such a condition can be satisfied only at the price of a Deleuze, Gilles 1994. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul
more general categorical reversal according to which being is said of Patton.
becoming, identity of that which is different, the one of the multiple, etc. New York: Columbia University Press.
(Deleuze 1994, p. 40) Elliot, Gregory 1987. Althusser: The Detour of Theory. London: Verso.
What else is this saying other than that the modes are irreal? And .
is this not to agree with Hegel’s charge of acosmism? Hallward, Peter and Knox Peden (Eds.) 2012. Concept and Form:
Structural causality upholds the status of structure as a real Volume
presence. But it should also be taken to mean that the presence of Two: Interviews and Essays on the Cahiers pour l’analyse. London:
structure is in the apparent, without any hint of a de-realization of the Verso.
apparent – which is a needless and unjustified move, as the distinction Hegel, G. W. F. 1995. Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Medieval
between conceptual and real objects shows us. What this allows and
for is the thesis that something of the apparent is able to overrun its Modern Philosophy. Translated by E.S. Haldane and Frances H.
conditions. Thus, only some aspects of the apparent are effects of Simson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
the cause – not the whole of the apparent. A structural cause is thus Macherey, Pierre 1979. Hegel ou Spin oza. Paris: Éditions la
not fully determining of a situation, and this is just what the notion of découverte.
determination in the last instance is supposed to be getting at. There Milner, Jean-Claude 1995. L’oeuvre claire. Paris: Seuil.
may well be a dominant shape to a given domain, but there is always --- 2012. ‘The Force of Minimalism: An Interview with Jean-Claude
more in the domain than what is causing its particular, dominant shape. Milner’.
An acosmism couldn’t strictly speaking allow for this: for the apparent With Knox Peden. In Concept and Form Volume Two: Interviews and
must be real for this kind of “downward causation” (or upward?) to be Essays on the Cahiers pour l’analyse. Ed. Peter Hallward and Knox
the case. Peden. London: Verso.
Thus, structural causality lets one hang on to the apparent and Montag, Warren 2013. Althusser and His Contemporaries.
preserve the appearances, thereby avoiding the philosophical errors Durham: Duke
of reductionism and de-realization…while also giving us a purchase on University Press.

350 Freeing Althusser from Spinoza: A Reconsideration of Structural Causality 351 Freeing Althusser from Spinoza: A Reconsideration of Structural Causality
 Rancière, Jacques 2012. ‘Only in the Form of Rupture’: An C
R
Interview with I
Jacques Rancière’. With Peter Hallward. In Concept and Form S
I
Volume Two: Interviews and Essays on the Cahiers pour S
l’analyse. London: Verso. &

C
R
I
T
I
Q
U
E

#
3

352 Freeing Althusser from Spinoza: A Reconsideration of Structural Causality