the Wool Exchange RATES Vr 22 May Camp David rAk Irom the issue or the Camp David treaty being a complex issue (Letters, 8 May) it is Nigel The test of the treaty is not left unity in Britain a false picture of the YCL tion here.
LPYS, the Young Liberal ww our locener.
snoula operale I WAS very sad, but also very it, the YCL has May). I was sad because I thought that the aim of Socialist Challenge was to be a forum for building - which you article. won't do by an article giving such In my branch. In Dundee which has just under 50 members, we pride ourselves on being the biggest political vouth organisaWe are bigger than the Young Tories and the SWP and • we nave gol a record second to none in how a revolutionary youth organisation We hold regular education classes covering all aspects of before 1984 - not waiting unti then for a general election, as the people interviewed claimed.
But the thing that personal irritated me more than anything else was the suggestion that co SYCLers never discuss Ireland For all the many demands on established a working collective on Ireland, and personaly nave over le rouev years led discussions on Ireland at dozens of YCL meeting of them on the day I read the CHRIS MYANT, Morning Star TARIQ Ali's article on France, May 1968 (15 May) despite many excellent general points. gives a totally false view of the position of the French Communist Party. schools AT A recent meeting of the East voted overwhelmingly 'not to - operate with police visits to schools, acuvites organisca o. the police for school pupils ....police recruitment drives etc enquiry has been held into the death of Blair Peach.
AlI NUT 'members, especially area, should ensure that a simular motion is passed in their school and branch union group,as par of the national campaign for a Public Enquiry wille teners volana community workers are facing cutbacks in jobs and resources une volce nave extra resources te promote their public image and to attempt to indoctrinate every Class or scool studculs l H Metropolitan area
THE publication of Perry Anderson's new book Arguments within English Marxism is an event of major importance for the British left. Anderson's book is a polemic against Edward Thompson's influential text The Poverty of Theory, published last year.
Thompson's book was itself an attack on "Althusserian Marxism' regards of 'dogmatic' thought in British Marxism. The debate which Anderson takes up with Thompson ranges over a wide range of questions, including the nature of historical method, Marxism and philosophy.
In part, it is a continuation of a debate which was initiated between them 15 years ago on te nature or wc oourscols Icvolon l Britain, and the extent and character of the Marxist tradition in Britain.
All this may debate is an extremely important one, not just because of the influence of Thompson's broadside against Althusser, but also because the stakes of this debate are ultimately political.
In The Poverty. of Thompson declares 'war' Marxism and 'all such Marxisms'. In reality, his 'war' turns out not to be just against Althusser and his familiar system of concepts, but defence fundamental categories of Marxist theory.
It challenges vulgar determinism', but it is also opposed to the very notion of Marxism as any form of socio-economic Politically it goes beyond rejecting Stalmism to dispensing with revolutionary Marxism, too. Science Edward Thompson theory of scientific knowledge, which he argues is incapable of understanding history. According to Althusser, scientific knowledge is derived from the application of Generalities II (G2 scientific theories) to Generalities I (GI -the "raw material, Generalities III knowledge).
Thompson correctly points out that because of Althusser's insistence on the differences between the 'real concrete' and the 'concrete in thought, Althusser's epistemology runs the risk of circularity. The knowledge takes place entirely without the possibility of verification in the real There are evident parallels with Kant, and a radical difference between Althusser's account and that of Marx in the Grundrisse. Thompson counterposes to this an untenable account of how history.
Thompson recommends the 'reality rule' of Hexter - that historians should back the case which seems most realistic in terms of the evidence. The nature of these terms is com. pletely unelaborated.
Thompson retreats into empiricism, refusand what Thompson 'structuralist', seem very abtruse. But the of the 'old new left'.
Theory Edwardagainst Althusser's the the determinism.
'Althusser's the object of knowledge) to (G3 production of in thought, Yet entirely understand to elaborate independent anti-Stalinist, anti-capitalist positions.
publication of a rejoinder, editor of 'New Left Review in the early '60s.
portant works on Marxism to be published for years. NEW LEFT REVIEW EDWARD Thompson is Britain's foremost Marxist historian. Author of 'The Making of the English Working Class', 'William Morris - Romantic to Revolutionary' and numerous other works, he is one of the veterans They were the generation of left wingers who split with the Communist Party at the time of the invasion of Hungary in 1956 and began Thompson's 'The Poverty of Theory', published last year, attacked many of the ideas about Marxism fashionable on the left. This week sees 'Arguments Within English Marxism' (NLB, £3.95), by Perry Anderson, who took over from Thompson as PHIL HEARSE argues that Anderson's book is one of the most imobjective analysis CICIC ICC LU Thompson's account, minant of class.
out trying to achieve a of society' theory of mon with Marxism'. accusato technological or theories.
divorced from practice.
Review and to New new left', ' 60s. Rebuff series of Althusser's clusions, apparatuses.
contribution tribution numerous classes have not developed any sense of class solidarity or consciousness. Marxism would therefore find it impossible to make any of class relations without consciousness, which itself, in becomes the key deterThompson's explanation of class gives an insight into his whole account of the corpus of Marxist concepts. He argues that Marx started 'unitary theory of society'. But he became obsessed with the narrow concerns of political economy, leading to a false economic determinism and the infamous 'base/superstructure' model.
According to Thompson, this privileges the economic and is precisely not a 'unitary theory in which culture and value systems play their proper part - but a false 'economic man'. This account is not at all an original one, but shares much in commany forms of 'anti-determinist The typical failure of this account is its inability to grasp the importance for Marxism of the concept of the social relations of produc tion as the determining level of social reality. Marxism is a determinism. But all Marx's 'economic' categories turn out to be social relations, not objects or structures.
It is precisely for this reason that all the about Marxism being narrowly 'economic' determinism are so wide of the mark In his The Poverty of Theory Thompson attempted to give a social account of Althusser's was the last systemiser of Stalinist thought. His epigones in the universities and polytechnics were 'lumpen bourgeois' Much of the responsibility for introducing this dogmatic clericv was given to New Left Left Books who were charged with 'an insistent pressure to re-assert Marxism as as doctrine'. On behalf of the old Thompson made a damning judgement of the grour around Perry Anderson, Robin Blackburn and Quintin Hoare, who took over NLR in the early 'Anderson delivers a blistering rebuff to this accusations. Having defended project of elaborating the categories of Marxism, although not all his conAnderson rigorously demonstrates Althusser's personal distance from the Stalinist He rightly demonstrates the scope of the - we would say an historic conmade by. the ' NIR team in introducing a wide variety of European Marxist thought, previously unknown in Britain, thus making a crucial contribution to broadening the scope of Marxist culture in this country.
The debate between Anderson and Thomp
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angry to read the article 'Why we eft the Young Communists' (
'68 - CP led General
- Perry Anderson replies • to Edward Thompson TAKES ON A CRITIC