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The Rise of Semiotic MarxismAuthor(s): Albert BergesenSource: Sociological Perspectives , Vol. 36, No. 1 (Spring, 1993), pp. 1-22Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1389439Accessed: 28-04-2016 18:37 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at

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Soci ol ogcal Per specti ves V ol . 36 No 1 pp 1-22

Copyri ght C 1993 Pac ific Soci ol ogica l Associ at ion ISSN 0731-1214

THE RISE OF SEMIOTIC MARXISM

ALBERT BERGESEN University of Arizona

ABSTRACT: This paper identifies four distinct stages in the 20th century emergence of a new direction in Marxian theory. Called here Semiotic

Marxism, its central assumption is a reversal of the classic base/superstructure logic of determinate relations between the economic base and the political and ideological superstructure. Each stage builds upon the theoretical reconstitutions of the previous stage. To illustrate this step-by-step transformation, the theoretical logic of a representative Marxist theorist is explicated. These four stages in the emergence of a Semiotic Marxism are: (1) the initial inversion of base/superstructure logic (Gramsci), (2) the expansion of the logic of the ideological downward to merge with the logic of the political (Althusser), (3) the further expansion downward of the logic of the now merged ideologicallpolitical sphere to absorb the logic of the economic sphere (Poulantzas), and finally, (4) the recasting of the once Marxian social formation comprised of social relations in production, into the new Semiotic Marxist discursive formation composed of linguistic relations between subject identities (Laclau and Mouffe).

Marx is being turned on his head. Theoretical developments in 20th century Marxism has seen the rise of a line of theory which argues not only for an inversion of the base/superstructure model, but further that the logic of the superstructure-more specifically of ideology and language-is the logic of the social formation as a whole. (For reviews of recent Marxist theory, see: Ander- son 1976, 1983; Carnoy 1984; Boswell et. al., 1986; Wood 1986; Alexander 1982; Szymanski 1987; Aronowitz 1982; Geras 1987; Thompson 1984). To separate this trend from other post-Marxisms1 the term Semiotic Marxism is employed, reflecting the theoretical importance given cultural elements like beliefs and shared world views (Gramsci 1971; Burawoy 1979), culture (Nelson and Gross- berg 1988), ideology (Althusser 1971; Poulantzas 1978; Larrain 1986; Thernborn 1980), language (Coward and Ellis 1977), and discourse (Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Ryan 1982).

The purpose of this article is to explicate this change in Marxian logic by

Direct all correspondence to: Albert Bergesen, University of Arizona, Department of Sociology, Tucson, AZ 85921.


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2 SOC OLOGICAL PERSPECTI VES Vol ume 36 Number 1 199 3

1 ) 2 3 4

Base/Superstructure Ideology Absorbs Ideology/Politcal Separate Spheres Inversion The Political Absorbs the Economic Disappear

(Gramsd, 1930s) (AJthusser, 1960s) (Poulantzas,1970s) (Laclau & Mouffe, 1980s)

IDEOLOGICAL IDEOLOGICAL IDEOLOGICAL THE

POLMT1CAL POLITICAL DISCURSIVE

ECONOMIC FORMATION

PLITICAEJ ECONOMIC

Figure 1

Four Stages in the Rise of Semiotic Marxism

examining how theorized relations between the economic, political, and cultural/ideological spheres have been transformed since Gramsci. This paper identifies four distinct stages in the transformation of Marxian theoretical logic from

determination by the base to determination by the superstructure. A major Marxist theorist is discussed for each stage to illustrate how the base/superstructure model is being transformed.

In a first stage, represented by Gramsci (1971), the base/superstructure model is inverted, as consensually shared world views are now the determinant of the hegemony of the state, which in turn insures the reproduction of economic relations in the base. Semiotic Marxism, though, involves more than mere base/ superstructure inversion. In a second stage, illustrated by Althusser (1971), the logic of the ideological sphere expands downward, absorbing the logic of the state, creating, in his words, the "Ideological State Apparatus," that is, the

fusion of the ideological and political into one instance or sphere. Two important theoretical developments begin here. First, the logic of the

other spheres begin to be reduced to the logic of the ideological. Second, when


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THE RS E OF S EMOTCMARXS M3

the theoretical logic of the political and ideological are merged, there is an accompanying attenuation of causal analysis between these now disolving

spheres. The ideological is no longer thought to determine the political as earlier in Gramsci, because its logic has now absorbed the logic of the political. This newly fused ideological/political sphere, though, still determines the economic, but even that distinction will later disappear.

In Stage 3, illustrated by Poulantzas (1978), a unity of the ideological state and the economy is now theorized. At this point the base is now absorbed into the superstructure. They are now one theoretical entity. At this point Marxian theory has actually moved beyond the inversion of the base/superstructure model, for the ideological no longer determines the political, or the economic, for now it is one with them. With causal relations between spheres eliminated, post-structuralist semiotic logic of relations between signifiers is now theorized to be the logic of relations between classes. The logic of ideology no longer determines the logic of the base, but now is the logic of the base. At this point the Marxian social formation is transformed into the Semiotic Marxist "discursive formation," illustrated by Laclau and Mouffe (1985). What follows is an exposition of these four stages, which are diagrammed in Figure 1.

STAGE 1: BASE/SUPERSTRUCTURE INVERSION

The first stage of theoretical transformation involves the inversion of the base/superstructure model which is ackomplished by altering the causal order of the cultural, political, and economic spheres. This is explicit in Gramsci (1971), who asserts the importance of shared world views (ideology) as the new cement holding a social formation together. Gramsci's inversion of the base/superstructure model has been noted before: ". . . in Marx the former [economic structure] is the primary and subordinating one, while the latter [the super-structure] is the secondary and subordinate one ... In Gramsci it is exactly the opposite" (Bob- bio 1987:151). Perry Anderson also observes, "For in Gramsci's usage here, hegemony means the ideological subordination of the working class by the bour-

geosie, which enables it to rule by consent" (Anderson 1976-1977:26). No longer is power and control derived from the dynamics of the base, from

the ownership of the means of production. Now it comes from control of the state apparatus. But even here it is no longer the state of "force" and "coercion," but the "ethical" and "cultural" state. That is, a state which creates the "consent of the governed," where "this consent [is] organized, and not generic and vague" (Gramsci 1971:259). Exactly how this consent is orchestrated and manu- factured redefines the state from a formal apparatus of coercion to include the institutions, associations, and educational practices of civil society. This theoretical broadening of the State, though, is a two-way street. It not only gives political significance to institutions traditionally outside the realm of the state proper, but it allows the cultural functions of these institutions to now become the primary functions of the state. That is, once the state becomes coterminious


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4 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 36, Number 1, 1993

with the cultural functions of civil society-legitimizing, socializing, maintain- ing moral order-then these become the very functions of the Gramscian state.

In Gramsci, the state is now an instrument of socialization and cultural trans- mission, of passing on, and disseminating, world views and ideology. In short, "the entire function of the State has been transformed; the State has become an 'educator,' etc." (Gramsci 1971:260). For Gramsci, the older idea of the "State as policeman . . . whose functions are limited to safeguarding . . . public order [glosses over the fact] that in this form of regime (which anyway has never existed except on paper, as a limiting hypthesis) hegemony over its historical development belongs to private forces, to civil society-which is 'State' too, indeed is the State itself" (Gransci 1971:261).

Let us be perfectly clear what is being asserted here. State power, as force and violence, is dependent upon, better, determined by, the consensual foundation of civil society. This is the Granscian Inversion: belief, consensus, and agreement are the basis of state power, rather than state power being the basis of belief and consensus.

It should be noted that Gramsci does speak of both coercive and consensual aspects of the state, making the state seem a two-faced entity with both force and consent being equal parts. But upon closer examination these are not really equal portions, for his is a "doctrine of the State which conceives the latter [armour of coercion] as tentatively capable of withering away" (Gramsci

1971:263), that is, the coercive aspect is secondary, something that can be dis- pensed with. "It is possible to imagine the coercive element of the State withering away by degrees, as ever-more conspicious elements of regulated society (or ethical State or civil society) make their appearance" (p. 263). Following this logic, as the foundation of consent grows, the necessity of force declines, until you have a "State without a State," that is, the functions of the state are now consumed by the ideological and socialization processes of civil institutions. "The State is the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules" (p. 244). Domination is now

redefined as deriving from the creation of consensus-that is, derived from belief, agreement, understanding, and taken for granted assumptions. Since the state is a class state, we now have class rule transformed into class consent, created, maintained, and reproduced, by the "apparatus of the political and cultural hegemony" (p. 259).

Exactly how is class rule accomplished through ideas and world views? One way is for the interests of a single class to be understood as the interests of all classes. With the success of this belief comes the ability of that class to continue its privileged position while other classes consider this to be a state of affairs to which they can aspire. "The revolution which the bourgeois class has brought into the conception of law, and hence into the function of the State, consists especially in the will to conform . . ." (Gramsci 1971;260).

How is this "will to conform" created? The state works toward the "perfect


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preparaton of the 'spontaneous' consent of the masses who must 'live' those directives, modifying their own habits, their own will, their own convictions to

conform with those directives and with the objectives which they propose to achieve" (Gramsci 1971:266). And what generates these "habits," "wills," "convictions," this "consent of the masses"? Positions in social structures and the base of social relations? No. Belief is theorized to emerge from the state: the state as socializer, as "educator," the new top down implanter of mass consciousness.

In Gramsci, the state has been so diffused and masticated through civil institutions, from schools to private associations, that the state is really the nonstate, nothing but a sense of the generalized moral integration of society. In a way, the Gramscian state is the Parsonian world view. Social control has been shifted from formal political structure to general social institutions, such that the organic social whole (the state as everything) is now theoretically pressed into service in perpetuating the rule, privilege, and power of a particular social class. All of this accomplished through the ability to convince others that this class represents the interests of the social formation as a whole.

A remarkable achievement, really, considering there is little, or no use of power, force, or coercion accompanying this monumental task. The Gramscian state controls and dominates with the power of its ideas, as the "State tends to create and maintain a certain type of civilization and of citizen (and hence of collective life and individual relations), and to eliminate certain customs and

attitudes and to disseminate others" (Gramsci 1971:246). The result is "to create a new civilization, a new type of man and citizen [resulting in the construction within] the husk of political society a complex and well-articulated civil society, in which the individual can govern himself without this self-government thereby entering into conflict with political society-but rather becoming its normal continuation, its organic complement" (p. 268). This rule by consent, though, still means the rule of a particular class. But the social logic is now qualified, for it is rule on account of relations in culture or ideology (belief), not production, and it is rule through the state, not the class relation of ownership of the means of production.

In Gramsci, then, culture/ideology is no longer a thing to be explained but is now a thing that does the explaining; no longer an effect, it is becoming a cause. Social consciousness, as world views, is becoming the central factor in both the perpetuation, and change, of social relations. Rule and revolt now hinge on belief. The class struggle becomes the ideological struggle, Gramsci's "war of position" between bourgeois and proleterian world views, as they struggle for the mind of the working class to convince them they best represent the interests of the social formation as a whole. It is important to note that it is not only that the realm of ideas is the locus of struggle, but that struggle itself is becoming ideological struggle, taking precedent over more overt political and class struggle. Control over the structure of social consciousness is becoming the prerequi- site for control over the structure of production.

The Gramscian world view, then, is a mix of a past Marxism of relations in


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production and a future Marxism of relations in ideology. A material class ruling, but through ideational mechanisms. In the new Semiotic Marxian logic that

begins here, the ideational component will continue to grow, while the material will shrink, resulting in the eventual theoretical contention that class is actually a fetter to understanding social change (Laclau and Mouffe 1985).

STAGE 2: THE LOGIC OF IDEOLOGY ABSORBS THE LOGIC OF THE POLITICAL

As 20th-century Marxian theory develops, the Gramscian opening deepens and expands. In Gramsci, the key mechanism is hegemony, social control through belief, the common world view accepted across class lines. The hegemonic process takes place within the geo-juridical boundaries of the state, but as a sociological mechanism its central effect lies more in the realm of ideas-common belief-and as such, more within the ideological sphere proper.

The logic of ideology now becomes the logic of the state. This next step is clearly illustrated in Althusser (1970, 1971; Althusser and Balibar 1970; Benton 1984; Hirst 1976; Thompson 1978; McCarney 1989; Sprinkler 1987; Elliott 1987). Here the logic of the ideological sphere expands downward, merging with the logic of the political sphere. While Gramsci's inversion of the base/superstructure logic is a dramatic theoretical development, the transformation of Marxian

logic will actually go much further. Gramsci's ideological determination of the political and economic, it turns out, was only the first phase. It will be followed by a second, where the ideological actually merges with the political. If in the past the osmotic theoretical membrane between spheres allowed the logic of the economic base to penetrate the political and ideological-"vulgar Marxism"- the 20th century has seen a complete reversal. Now it is the logic of the ideological that permeates and replaces the logic of the political, and then moves on to absorb the logic of the economic.

This merging of spheres is articulated in Althusser's theory of the "Ideological State Apparatus (ISA). Ideology plus the state: will ideology have political logic, or politics ideological logic? It turns out the latter. The logic of this new fused entity is the logic of ideology. Not, though, as belief, agreement, or consensus as in Gramsci, but now the linguistic logic of Saussure (1966). Structural linguistics plus Marxism equals Althusser's structural Marxism.

Bringing Saussure Into Marxism

In Althusser there is not only a theoretical fusion of the previously separate ideological and political spheres, but the insertion of a new theoretical logic, Saussurian structural linguistics. This is not explicitly stated, but upon close examination the similarities between the logic of the Ideological State Apparatus and Saussure's logic of language is clear. While many critiqued Althusser for the degree of abstraction, the theoretical point of real importance is the utilization of


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the principles of language as the principles for the Ideological State Apparatus. The structural logic of language becomes the Althusserian logic of ideology.

Their similarity is clear. His theory of ideology operates as a synchronic structure, much like Saussure's langue. "Ideology has no history," he argues. Hence it is not a diachronic, but a synchronic reality, and as Saussure was interested in a general theory of linguistic systems, so Althusser is interested in "a theory of ideology in general, and not a theory of particular ideologies" (Althusser 1971:159). This general, abstract, structural theory of ideology has a similar aloof- ness from external reality as Saussure's langue has from practical, daily speech, or parole.

How does ideology work in the Althusserian social system? Through the various ISAs, ideology, "prescrib[es] material practices . . . which exist in the material actions of a subject acting in all consciousness according to his belief" (Althusser 1971:170). In this formulation the power of ideology exists not just at the level of rules, norms, or mores, but at an even more fundamental level, for the very subject who secondarily recognizes said rules and "prescriptions" as addressed to, and appropriate for, him/her, is itself an ideological creation. Althusser's mechanism is similar to Berger and Luckmann's (1966) notion of control through the social construction of reality-where people are controlled not so much through external sanctions or norms, but by being socially constructed and carrying out their ISA constituted identities. From the social formation's point of view Althusserian subjecthood is at the same time a particular role in a larger set of class relations. Therefore, in being so created, and in so natu- rally acting out these now class positions, the social relations of production are thereby reproduced. Ideological reproduction of class relations in production. "Ideology 'acts' or 'functions' in such a way that it 'recruits' subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or 'transforms' the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing" (Althusser 1971:174).

The process whereby individuals are transformed into subjects is strikingly similar to the Saussurian transformation of acoustic sounds into signified signs.

For Saussure, the linguistic sign is composed of two parts: the acoustic sound, the signifier, and the idea it represents, the signified. In Althusser the subject is similar to the Saussurian sign, representing a concrete individual (like the concrete acoustic sound) plus a social position in a division of labor, which is similar to a sign position in a system of rules and linguistic sign relations.

Saussure: Sign - Acoustic Sound (Signifier) + Idea (Signified).

Althusser: Subject - Individual (Signifier) + Social Position (Signified).

The Saussurian notion of langue, as a pre-existing system of cultural relations (in language) that make possible actual speech acts (parole) has a direct analog in Althusser, where ideology is a prexisting structure of culture that precedes


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8 SOC OLOGICAL PERSPECTI VES Volume 36 Number 1 1993

concrete individuals and makes their social practices possible. Ideology, and its embodiment in ISAs, then, act like the deep structural logic of language, in that

ISA rituals assign subjects societal positions in a fashion similar to rules of language assigning signs their position in a linguistic structure. In a very real sense the Althusserian "subject" is a kind of "human sign", a subject whose identity and self-understanding derives from his structural location in a system of other "signed persons", the totality of which constitutes the Althusserian social formation.

In Althusser ideology acts as langue, and the constituted subject acts as parole, as linguistic logic is pressed into service as the new social logic of Marxian reproduction. In Althusser's theoretical scheme the relation between his capital "S" and small "s" subjects is precisely the relation between Saussure's langue and

parole, as diagrammed below:

Deep A-Priori Structure Surface Manifestation

Saussure: Langue: The Linguistic system Parole: The behavior of actual of rul es . obser ved spee ch

Althusser: "S"ubject: The Ideological "S"ubject: The behavior of s pher e. actu al obser ved rol e

performance.

Subjects, as acting, behaving, social beings are theoretically analogous to every- day acting, behaving, speech behavior; that is parole. Further, like parole, their action presupposes the presence of an a priori structure of langue, or for Al- thusser, the a priori capital "S" Subject. Althusser's thinking is quite clear concerning the a priori nature of the capital "S" subject when he states, ". . .it then emerges that the interpellation of individuals as subjects presupposes the 'existence' of a Unique and central Other Subject" (Althusser 1971:178-179). That capital "S" subject is part of the larger system of ideology, the Althusserian analog to the Saussurian larger system of language.

Further in structural linguistics signs are controlled by the larger linguistic system in which they are assigned a position. In linguistics the question is one of meaning, signification, and interpretation. A fixed semiotic position provides the means to control and assign concrete sounds signification. This ability, or power, belongs to the deeper abstract linguistic system and its rules; this is the Saussurian power advantage of langue over parole. In Althusser this is the power ISAs have in assigning subjects positions within the structural relations of social formations. Althusser's subjects are ". . .inserted into practices governed by the rituals of the ISAs. They 'recognize' the existing state of affairs (das Bestehende) that 'it really is true that it is so and not otherwise,' and that they must be

obedient to God, to their conscience, to the priest, to de Gaulle, to the boss, to the engineer . .. their concrete material behavior is simply the inscription in life of the admirable words of the prayer: 'Amen -So be it"' (Althusser 1971:181).


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Here is Althusserian parole carrying out the a priori meaning of Althusserian langue. In this situation the social order, like the linguistic order, has structural locations that the rituals of the ISAs define, or label, or "insert subjects" into, such that these indivduals recognize themselves as positions in a religious structure ("obedient to God, to their conscience, to the priest"); a political structure ("obedient to De Gaulle"); an economic structure of relations in production ("obedient to the boss"); or a bureaucratic-technological structure ("obedient to the engineer").

From this perspective, social control now comes from an understanding of self as a social object vis-a-vis other social objects, or other "interpellated subjects". This meaningful self-definition is sufficient-by and large-to keep individuals in their place, that is, to provide social order. Define someone as a worker, and he will act as one; define him as a boss and he will act as one; define a mode of production as capitalist and it will act as one. The symbolic interactionist process of labeling and constructing by social definition is now a Marxian logic of social reproduction. Does Althusser really believe people play out their ideologically assigned roles? Althusser: "Yes, the subjects 'work by themselves.' The whole mystery of this effect lies in the first two moments" (Althusser 1971:182). Namely, of a "free subjectivity, a centre of initiatives, author of and responsible for its actions" [and] "a subjected being, who submits to a higher authority, and is therefore stripped of all freedom except that of freely accepting his submis-

sion" (p. 182). Following this logic, if individuals are transformed and reproduced as subjects, including class subjects, then even what they think, believe, and value will be in terms of the very definition of their social selves, their subjecthood. When "hailed" there is the "recognitition that they really do occu- py the place it designates for them as theirs in the world, a fixed residence: 'It really is me, I am here, a worker, a boss or a soldier "' (p. 178). To reproduce "a worker, a boss" is to reproduce the social relations of production, which now implicitly suggests the economic sphere is reproduced by the ISA, that is by the superstructure.

Class Relations Become Sign Relations

Saussure argued the arbitrary nature of the determinate relation between signifier and signified. Their association is due to rules of language. This is the theoretical advance of structural linguistics. Within the reality of a symbolic system like language it makes sense. Why, for instance, the signifier "tree" should refer to bark and leaves out there in the material world is solely a symbolic matter of the positional differences of this signifier within a system of linguistic relations. "Pree" or "flee" could just as easily signify the wood and bark as tree . The nature of the signifier has nothing to do with the reality of the things it represents. This is structuralism great assumption. The substantitive nature of the sign is arbitrary and comes about solely because of the linguistic rules that so define differences, similarities, and oppositions; the whole collection of struc-


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turalist and post-structuralist distinctions. In Althusser, this logic of semiotic systems is implicitly applied to social formations, and social class relations are

now treated as relations between semiotic signs. The elimination of the external referent as a determinant of sign position, and

therefore linguistic relations, is appropriate; its elimination as a determinant of social position and therefore class relations, is inappropriate, because it unhooks society from the external material world of nature. In Marxism, and sociological analysis in general, the external referent is the extra-social reality of material life, of nature, out there, beyond society, beyond modes of production, and partic- ularly beyond ideology and consciousness. Notice what happens, though, once this extra-social referent is eliminated: the role of material conditions, such as change in the forces of production, is eliminated as a factor affecting social change. To have no subject constituted outside the existing ideology removes the real world as a source of determination of subjects and aggregates of subjects as economic classes. The external referent for social formations is the material world, the real world of nature within which society grows, evolves, and sys- tematically interacts to produce and reproduce its individual members and their social relations. While the external referent may not determine the substantitive character of signs or their relations vis-a-vis each other in language, the material world does in fact determine the substantive nature of subjects and their social relations. At this point the linguistic logic of Saussurian strucutralism had im-

plicitly become the social logic of what is now clearly becoming a semiotic theory of the social formation.

STAGE 3: THE IDEOLOGICAL/POLITICAL LOGIC NOW ABSORBS THE LOGIC OF THE ECONOMIC BASE

In the theoretical logic of Althusser, the ideological and political effectively merge and together determine the reproduction of the economic. In the next stage, the now fused ideological/political sphere is merged with the remaining separate domain, the economic base. With this the attenuation of a logic of social

causation is clearly seen. With all three spheres merged, it is now impossible to say that the ideological/political determines anything, for all spheres are now one. This stage is clearly represented in the seminal work of Nicos Poulantzas (1973, 1974, 1978; Jessop 1985).

For Poulantzas the older conception of the state as Repressive State Apparatus and Ideological State Apparatus allows the economic logic to be separate from the ideological/political logic. He theorizes, though, that the economic is primor- dially penetrated by, and therefore a part of, the political/ideological sphere. This new entity can be thought of as the Althusserian Ideological State Appara- tus plus the economic, or to Poulantzas the, "Economic State Apparatus."

Earlier Althusserian assumptions are now too binding. Inserting subjects into a spearate economic sphere is inadequate for that implies the presence of at least two spheres. For Poulantzas, ISAs do not insert subjects into social relations of


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T HE RS E OF S EMOTCMARXS M1 1

production, because political and production relations are part and parcel of a single structural entity. He is explicit in his theoretical merging of the ideologi-

cal/political and the economic. "The political field of the State (as well as the sphere of ideology) has always, in different forms, been present in the constitution and reproduction of the relations of production" (Poulantzas 1978:17). That is, the social terrain, the place, the "political field" of the State, has "always" been present, been a part of, the very "constitution" and "reproduction" of, the "relations of production". Put another way, the superstructure has always been present in the constitution of the base, which has the effect of making base and superstructure inseparable. Now, the expanding realm of ideology, having previously absorbed the logic of the political, is here hypothesized to be one with the economic.

In the Poulantzian scheme the spheres are still separate yet intertwined and realizable only vis-a-vis each other. There is, "the presence of political (and ideological) relations within the relations of production: the latter, like their constituent relations of possession and economic property, find expression in class powers that are organically articulated to the political and ideological relations which concretize and legitimize them" (Poulantzas 1978:26). He reiterates that these political relations are "neither . . . simple additions to already existing relations of production, nor do they merely react upon them in the mode of absolute exteriority or temporal sequence. They are themselves present in the constitution of the relations of production" (p. 26). Ideology is not to be left in the superstructure as ideas, culture, belief, or values, but merged with material social relations. This assumption "extends the space of the State to the ideological institutions and emphasizes the State's presence within the relations of production through its role in ideological relations" (p. 29). Notice what is being asserted: the State as ideology and the ideological/state are present within relations of production. No longer superstructure reproducing base, but now insep- arably one with the base.

Fusing the Spheres

By what steps does Poulantzas theoretically fuse base and superstructure? He links the political to the economic through the following logic. First, relations of production involve "possession and economic property" and that involves "powers emanating from the sites that those relations delineate," and these powers are "bound up, as constitutive powers, with the political and ideological relations which consecrate and legitimize them and which are present in these economic relations" (Poulantzas 1978:36). That is, economic relations involve power over property, and power takes a political form. Therefore, at the very moment of the constitution of economic relations, lie political relations, and

since the Repressive State is giving way to the Ideological State, at the very heart of class relations lie ideological relations.

In short, the economic cannot come into being without the political, and the


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political is dominated by the ideological, making the ideological central to the very formation of the economic. All three spheres are becoming one: the tri-

partate division of society into economic, political, and ideological spheres, is now reduced to three interdependent branches of the state apparatus: the Ideo- logical State Apparatus, the Repressive State Apparatus, and now the Economic State Apparatus. "The State that plays a decisive role in organizing the modern nation is not itself an essence: neither the subject of history nor a mere instrument-object of the dominant class, it is, from the point of view of its class nature, the condensation of a class relationship of forces" (Poulantzas 1978:119). Examine this quote carefully. The state does not have an existence of its own, nor is it something used by classes. Rather it is the means whereby class forces appear, so that classes exist, as forces, only within the terms and relations of the

state, such that, at a deeper level of theoretical logic, the economic, the base, only exists or expresses itself through the political, the superstructure. If class dominance is established in the first instance by the state, then it is not constituted by economic relations in production but through political/ideological relations, such that the class division of society is now a product of how and where the state so constitutes classes.

The Growing Attenuation of Social Causation

The key logical extension of this theoretical reasoning is as follows. If the superstructure establishes dominant relations in production, class determination resulting from the forces of production is now eliminated, leading to a free- floating social formation, free to constitute itself, and its class divisions, in this way or that, regardless of the imperatives and restraints imposed by the exter- nality of material reality. What then determines the political and ideological if not the material base? For Poulantzas, the answer lies in a mutual determination/ indetermination model which has each sphere causing the other, a sort of mutual causality that is really no causality at all. "The national State and the borgeoise are all constituted on, and have their mutual relations determined by, one and the same terrain" (Poulantzas 1978:117).

Unity. Not one determining the other, for that would perpetuate the separation of spheres. With the continuing collapse of distinctions, not only between the ideological and political within the superstructure, but now between superstructure and base, there is this accompanying attenuation of causal analysis. In Gramsci and Althusser, the ideological and political determined relations in production. Now, in Poulantzas, this model is diluted with the assertion that all three spheres are mutually co-determinate. It is an important step beyond ideological causation, for with all determining all, there is really no starting point.

An example of this mutual determination can be seen when Poulantzas con-

trasts his vision of the state with what he calls the "instrumentalists" who see the state as a tool of the bourgeoise, and the "statists" who see the state as a more external and separate entity. For Poulantzas, both positions assume a


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separation of the economic and political, and he wants them fused. Not so fused, though, that the economic disappears, for that would be pure statism, and not so fused that the economic takes over, for that would be pure instru- mentalism/economism. Both exist, yet neither determines the other. They constitute, together, the "capitalist state", or "the State as the material condensation of a class relationship of forces" (Poulantzas 1978:130).

This "two-as-one" position can also be seen in accounts of the internal division of the state. For Poulantzas political differences are economic or class differences. "The establishment of the State's policy must be seen as the result of the class contradictions inscribed in the very structure of the State (the state as a relationship). The State is the condensation of a relationship of forces between classes and class fractions, such as these express themselves, in a necessarily

specific form, within the State itself. In other words, the State is through and through constituted-divided by class contradictions" (Poulantzas 1978:132). The crux of the Poulantzian merger of base and superstructure is now clear:

the denial of the independent existence of either. "The State is neither the instrumental depository (object) of a power-essence held by the dominant class" (Poulantzas 1978:148), that is, class power is neither a priori derived from positional location in production relations, nor is the state an object that is impacted upon by class forces, "nor [is it] a subject possessing a quantity of power equal to the quantity it takes from the classes which force it", that is, the state is not an independent source of power or interests either. Instead "the State is . . . the

strategic site or organization of the dominant class in its relationship to the dominated classes" (p. 148).

Here, in the political, is the "site", and "center", of the economic. The economic doesn't just impinge upon the political, but at a much more fundamental theoretical level, is asserted to be the political. "Class struggles traverse and constitute the State" (Poulantzas 1978:154). Yes, constitute, comprise-are the state. Economic struggle is political struggle. Again, unity. "Not at all a question of two mutually limiting sites or spaces [state and economy], but one, and even when the State and economy are empirically separate, this only reflects their theoretical union, [for] the capitalist separation of the State and the economy was never anything other than the specifically capitalist form of the State's presence in the relations of production" (p. 167).

STAGE 4: ALL SPHERES DISAPPEAR INTO DISCOURSE

The post-structuralist inversion of Saussurian parole over langue is now writ in Marxism as the power of moment to moment struggle over deeper determinate relations of production. With the ideological, political, and economic now merged, and sphere-to-sphere causal analysis all but gone, the way is paved to theorize a causal-free social formation, where there is little, or no, determination, and where what patterns do emerge are thought to be the by-product of surface behavior, struggle, conflict, coalition, bloc, and hegemonic formation.


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The century-long movement away from social structure results in a conception of a social formation that is not very social at all. It is more of a cultural or ideological formation, free from social relations in either base or superstructure. It is a formation of symbolic or ideological relations rather than material social relations.

This final step in the century-long movement toward a pure linguistic-based Marxism is well illustrated in the work of Laclau and Mouffe (1985, 1987; Laclau 1988; Mouffe 1979, 1988). Here the Marxian social formation is renamed the "discursive formation," reflecting the now explicit semiotic assumption that the substance of collective existence is "discourse," not historical social relations. Now social relations are dissolved into discursive relations, and the post- Saussurian logic of signs formally becomes the new Marxian logic of classes.

It is not just that culture or ideology determines social relations, but that ideology/culture, in the form of "discourse," are social relations. The Marxian formation becomes the semiotic formation predicated upon the post-structuralist infinite regress of signs.2 "We must begin by renouncing the conception of 'society' as a founding totality of its partial processes. We must, therefore, consider the openness of the social as the constitutive ground" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:95). Society, and with it class relations, have now become full-blown semiotic entities, where relations between classes are recast as relations between "identities" (read signs) as such, with the post-structuralist assumption, never completely defined or fixed. "Such a situation, in which there is a constant

movement from the elements to the system but no ultimate systems or elements ... a structure in which meaning is constantly negotiated and constructed, is what I call 'discourse'. The concept of discourse describes the ultimate nonfixity of anything existing in society" (Laclau 1988:254).

Now, even that tenuous link to the base, the famed "in the last instance," must be severed, as they speak of "the impossibility of a concept such as 'determination in the last instance by the economy' and [affirm] the precarious and relational character of every identity" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:199). They even criticize Althusser and Gramsci for lapsing into asserting that the economy is the final cause for social processses, for this would imply fixed relations, which in their post-structuralist semiotic world do not exist.

Here then is the final unhinging of the sociological logic of Marxism. The logic that has base determining superstrucure is not only inverted (Gramsci, Alt- husser, Poulantzas) but now completely dissolved as all economic, political, and ideologial elements float in the weightless void that is the discursive formation. Everything is set adrift, as they wish to "demonstrate the logical inconsistency of the necessary links postulated among the elements of the social totality and thus to show, by a different path, the impossibility of the object 'society' as a ratio- nally unified totality" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:99).

How do they get to this position? It begins with an attack upon base to superstructure reasoning. "I am opposed to the economic view of social evolu-


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tion as governed by a single economic logic, the view that conceives the unity of a social formation as the result of 'necessary effects' produced in ideological and political superstructures by the economic infrastructures" (Mouffe 1988:90). With the post-structuralist social formation being open-ended, "the discourse of 'historical necessity' loses its relevance and withdraws to the horizon of the social (in exactly the same way that, in deist discourse, the effects of God's presence in the world are drastically reduced)" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:29). Now nothing is given, nothing is a priori, no logocentricism of the "material," or the "base," for nothing is fixed.

How then is all this free-floating, temporally contingent conglomeration of social subjects, held together? How is a social formation to exist at all? By none other, it turns out, than the linguistic logic of Saussure, now in its now most relativisitc post-structualist format.

Beyond Gramsci

To reach this new position, even Gramsci, originator of the move away from the base, is now deemed inadequate. He did not go far enough. And why? Because his conception of hegemony "rests upon an ultimately incoherent conception, which is unable fully to overcome the dualism of classical Marxism. For Gramsci, even though diverse social elements have a merely relational iden

tity-achieved through articulatory practices-there must always be a single unifying principle in every hegemonic formation, and this can only be a fundamental class. Thus, two principles of the social order-the unity of the unifying principle, and its necessary class character-are not the contingent result of hegemonic struggle, but the necessary structural framework within which every struggle occurs. Class hegemony is not a wholly practical result of struggle, but has an ultimate ontological foundation" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:69).

This objection to Gramsci derives from the assumptions of post-structuralism. Specifically: no logocentricism, where here that takes the form of a determinate social theory and a priori social relations, not only in the base, it turns out, but anywhere in the social formation, including the ideological. The post- structuralist attack against the a priori of langue over parole now takes the form of an attack against a priori social structure preceding struggle and practice. They want only surface movement, only parole, that is, only struggle, with no a priori necessity deriving from positional location in social relations.

Earlier, in Althusser, linguistic structuralism was introduced as the logic of the superstructure. Now post-structuralism is introduced for the social formation as a whole. Earlier the theory of the positional location of signs became the theory of the relational location of classes. Now the post-structuralist theory of unraveling sign positions becomes the Semiotic Marxist theory of unraveling class positions. It is the "decentering of classes as the 'unfixing' of the meaning of any social event" (Laclau 1988:249). It is the post-structuralist endlessly deferred


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signifier, written into social theory as the never fixed, unclosed, unsutured, social formation. "Society is an ultimate impossibility, an impossible object, and

it exists only as the attempt to constitute that impossible object or order" (Laclau 1988:254). Linguistic parole rewritten as social practice and political struggle. "The unity of a social formation is the product of political articulations, which are in turn the result of the social practices that produce a hegemonic formation" (Mouffe 1988:90). No deep structure, no langue, no social relations in production, or for that matter anywhere. Classes and social subjects, cut off from their interests within relations of production, now acquire identity and interest through self-action and self-definition, for "the very identity of classes are transformed by the hegemonic tasks they take on themselves: the rigid line of de- marcation between the internal and external has fallen" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:58).

Now Beyond Even Althusser

The next to fall is Althusser, for even the Saussurian model of Althusser's ISA is deemed theoretically inadequate. The insertion of subjects into social relations is questioned, as it keeps superstucture and base separate. The movement toward surface play, narrative, moment to moment historical contingency as opposed to deep structural determination crosses the human sciences in the

second half of the 20th century. The importation of linguistic logic now means the post-structuralist logic of the infinitly regressing signifier which as semiotic Marxism becomes the never sutured social formation. The post-structuralist im- pulse to dissolve structure makes Althusser's ISAs too fixed and thus it is re- placed by the surface play of acting, struggling agents, similar to the post- structuralist surface play of signifiers, combining, recombining, in opposition, unity, together, apart, in hegemonic and anti-hegemonic configurations.

With a growing loss of faith in any kind of structure-linguistic or social- both Marx and Saussure are now too "structural", too fixed. "If the working class, as a hegemonic agent, manages to articulate around itself a number of

democratic demands and struggles, this is due not to any a priori structural privilege, but to a political initiative on the part of the class" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:65). Realize what is being said: class identity because people say it is so; not because they are, in fact, that class. Class position, social location, real location, is now a matter of assuming that identity, of acting like that subject by taking on the projects appropriate for that subject. "Thus the hegemonic subject is a class subject only in the sense that, on the basis of class position, a certain hegemonic formation is practically articulated" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:65).

This position begs the next question: what then is the basis of social interest? Out of what extra-actor conditions do they arise? The Semiotic Marxist answer is now none, for interests are now symbolic-identities-and established vis-a-vis each other through their practices. "'Interests,' then, are a social product and do not exist independently of the consciousness of the agents who are their bearers


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.. . .[for] ours is a criticism not of the notion of 'interests' but of their sup- posedly objective character" (Laclau and Mouffe 1987:98). Or, more clearly: "interests never exist prior to the discourses in which they are articulated and constituted; they cannot be the expression of already existing positions on the economic level" (Mouffe 1988:90).

Semiotic Marxism has come so far that it is no longer even argued that there is an interaction between base and superstructure. Now, any fixed relation, not only between base and superstructure, but within either, is so intertwined with conscious willed action-"contingency"-that there can be no such thing as a fixed relation of any kind. The extension of this is the argument that there can be no determinate logic at all, only contingencies, resolved in struggle, alliances,

bonding, agreement, consensus and articulations, between different and infin- ietly plural social subjects. It is a post-Marxism that is actually a pre-Marxism, a new Hobbesian universe populated not by self-maximizers, but by semiotically charged social particles-"social subjects"-with no necessary origin, and no tie to material reality through the anchor of social relations in production. Order, identity, and interest only come through "recompositons" in hegemonic and anti-hegemonic alliances, as social subjects forming semiotic social structures, arising out of their "initiative" and not historical necessity. The social formation has now become the discursive formation.

Dissolving the Social Formation

Before this discursive formation appears, the theoretical principles of the social formation must be intellectually dismantled. First, they repeat the by now familiar argument that the economic is constituted through the political and ideological, thereby stripping it of its autonomous determinative ability. "We will attempt to demonstrate that the space of the economy is itself structured as a political space" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:76-77). Now that the economic is on the political terrain, the next step is to dissolve the internal structure of the economic.

Their theoretical solvent comes in the form of political domination, which implies resistance, struggle, action-reaction, and with that the conclusion that the base cannot determine the superstructure because the superstructure is part of the constitution of the base. This step is recognizable as the earlier argument of Poulantzas. For the economic sphere to have its effect, "its laws of motion must be strictly endogenous and excludes all indeterminacy resulting from poli- tial or other external interventions-otherwise, the constitutive function could not refer exclusively to the economy" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:76). That is, for the theory of base determinism to operate it must do so totally independent of help, so to speak, from the political or ideological realms. But, they argue, this is not possible.

The act of purchasing labor, the wage relation which defines class, is not enough, for it must still be extracted, and this necessity to extract labor from the


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labor-power purchased by the capitalist" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:78) requires "domination." They assume for purchased labor, the base, to really be the base, that is, to be utilized in the capitalist labor process, there must also be super- structural elements in the form of the political factor, domination, and the ideological factor, worker consciousness and resistance to domination. "The fact is that once labor-power is purchased, the maximum possible labor has to be extracted from it. Hence, the labor process cannot exist without a series of relations of domination" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:79). Or, to put it another way, the economic cannot exist without the political. Therefore, the economic cannot determine the political and ideological because they are part and parcel of the economic's very being. "Since the worker is capable of social practices, he could

resist the imposed control mechanisms and force the capitalist to use different techniques. Thus, it is not a pure logic of capital which determines the evolution of the labor process; the latter is not merely the place where capital exerts its domination, but the ground of struggle [and so] 'workers' struggles understood in these terms, obviously cannot be explained by an endogenous logic of capitalism [which means] . .. the thesis that the productive forces are neutral, and that their development can be conceived as natural and unilinear, is entirely un- founded" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:79-80).

If they assume a class is not a class in terms of its structural location in production relations, where do they now derive its material interests? That is, if interests are no longer historical, no longer objective, and no longer material, what is left? In Semiotic Marxism classes now emerge in the free floating and topsy-turvy world of alliances and social identity establishment resulting from struggle and self-initiative. Its identity is given solely by its articulation within a hegemonic formation. Its identity, then, has become purely relational. And this system of relations itself has ceased to be fixed and stable-thereby making hegemonic practices possible-the sense of every social identity appears constantly deferred. The moment of the 'final' suture never arrives" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:86). The post-structualist moment. Every social identity constantly deferred. Also, these linguistic roots of the new Marxism are not hidden. "The 'state' or the 'ideas' would not be self-contained identities but rather 'differences' in the Saussurian sense, whose only identity is established relationally with other differences such as 'productive forces', 'relations of production', etc." (Laclau and Mouffe 1987:90).

Class relations as Saussurian sign relations. The complete triumph of the semiotic over the material. In the new Marxian discursive formation, in this "articulated discursive totality ... every element occupies a different position" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:106). Not, let us note, a class or political position, not a position in relations of production, or political power, but a semiotic position, for

... .all values [class and group identities] are values of opposition and are defined only by their difference" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:106). Pure Saussure. Except, remember, we are no longer dealing with just signifiers and symbols,


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but with classes, groups, parties, organizations and institutions. Again, note what this assumption does to causation. All necessary relations are gone. "Ne- cessity derives, therefore, not from an underlying intelligible principle but from the regularity of a system of structural positions. In this sense, no relation can be contingent or external, since the identity of its elements would then be specified outside the relation itself" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:106).

But what if the element, relation, or identity is class? What if class is not defined by ties to material production? What does it now mean if the classes of a society are only defined by and within that system? For one thing it means the social formation is now hermeneutically sealed. Human labor, interacting with nature in production, is not allowed to interact with the social formation. With- out the tie to nature and the material extra-social universe, social systems drift in

time and space, combining and recombining in endless synchronic permuta- tions, none of which has anything to do with the underlying material world through which the very members of this semiotically closed system must, in point of fact, interact if they are to materially survive and reproduce. "If the so- called nondiscursive complexes-institutions, techniques, productive organizations, and so on-are analyzed, we will only find more or less complex forms of differential positions among objects, which do not arise from a necessity external to the system structuring them and which can only therefore be conceived as discourse articulations" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:107).

Notice what happens here. When "techniques" and "productive organiza-

tions" like firms, plantations, haciendas, multinational corporations, collec- tivized farms, feudal manors, or hunter-gatherer kinship systems, do not "arise from a necessity external to the system", then their roots in material existence, their ties to, and interaction with, nature's forces of production, are gone. They become free floating social forms. Post-Marxism as pre-Marxism; idealism re- turns.

The result is inevitable. If a system can constitute itself as an object, there is no causation other than self causation. "This allows us to overcome the apparently insoluble problems concerning the base/superstructure relation: if State, ideas, relations of production, etc. have purely differential identities, the presence of each would involve the presence of the others. . . . In this sense, no causal theory about the efficacy of one element over another is necessary" (Laclau and Mouffe 1987:90-91). Hence, "a break with the discursive/extra discursive dichot- omy is the abandomnent of the thought/reality opposition" (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:110). Exactly. A purely Semiotic Marxism, where there is do difference between what one thinks of reality and reality itself.

CONCLUSION

At the end of the 20th century the theoretical corpus of Marxism has fled the intellectul terrain of social structure (class relations in material production) to be


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re-invented in the sphere of culture/ideology as the discursive formation with class relations re-theorized as signed subject relations governed by the linguistic logic of symbolic difference. If this is a more European turn, there has also been an Anglo-American turn away from theorizing social structure. It also flees social structure, but not up to culture, but instead down to acting, choosing, deciding, independent, individualism and the theory of rational choice. The once Marxism of social relations in production is now split between a Marxism of semiotic entities (Semiotic Marxism) and pre-sociological individualism (Rational Choice Marxism). This distain for social structure is not limited to Marxism. It has spread across all the human sciences. The great failure of nerve to theorize social structure in the late 20th century raises the question of why? I do not think anyone really knows, but a number of possibilities can be conceived.

The most prevalent answer is that Marxism failed (1) to explain the behavior of both working class and reformist state/bouregoise in the west, failed (2) as social experimentation when Marxist parties took state power in the east, and failed (3) to adequately account for the "new social movements" of gender, race, and ecology/enviornment. These are all real problems, obviously, but the question remains why wasn't a new materialism formulated, why not a new theory located in and about human social structuring? Why, instead, was there an abandonment of structure and a move to the idealism of linguistic/discursive models and to the non-sociological individualism, of rational choice? That question is harder to answer, and it may be that this movement in thought has

something to do with larger changes. The 100 year reign of sociological theory may be at an end. From the late 19th

through the late 20th centuries sociological explanation-Marxist and not-has been the prevalent mode of world thought about collective human problems. Social relations-in production, politics, and civil association-has constituted the heart of theorizing the collective reality of human association. But that faith in social structure-Marxian, Durkheimian, Weberian-now seems shattered. Paradigms may come in surges followed by the onslaught of normal science, until, after a while, all that is left is the normal science. The surge of original sociological theory at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries has had its neo-successors (neo-Marxists, neo-Weberians) but there has been no successor in the sense of another paradigmatic surge of equivalent intellectual gravity as what we now call the classics.

It may very well be that such surges in paradigmatic theory correspond to social change, and sociological theory corresponded to the realities created by the industrial and national revolutions. But the world changes, and while endless "neo-this" and "neo-thats" are possible, another surge of paradigmatic theory about the structure of human existence-not theory of the ideas or discourse about structured human life-not semiotics/hermenuetics/meaning analy-

sis/discourse analysis (although for the realm of ideas that is fine)-but theory about the global web of relations that entrap and ensnarl human existence, is hopefully on the horizon.


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T HE RS E OF S EMOTCMARXS M2 1

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Neil Fligstein, Terry Boswell, Wal-

ter L. Goldfrank, Michael Schwartz, Erik Olin Wright, Jeffrey Paige, Ran- dall Collins, John W. Meyer, Kathleen Schwartzman, and Peter K. Manning for helpful comments. This research was supported by the University of Arizona. Portions of this paper were presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Associa- tion, Atlanta, GA., August 24-27,

1988.

NOTES

1. Another recent trend in Marxian theory is "analytical" or "rational choice" Marxism which argues for microfounda-

tions for macro theory (see: Przeworski, 1985; Elster, 1985; Roemer, 1982, 1985; Wright, 1985; Wright, Levine, and Sober,

1992; Burawoy, 1989). 2. For an introduction to the post-

structuralist theories of Foucault, Derrida, and others see: Dreyfus and Robinson

(1982), Leitch (1983), Merquior (1986),

Norris (1987), Poster (1989), Silverman (1989).

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