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Rethinking Marxism

A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society

ISSN: 0893-5696 (Print) 1475-8059 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rrmx20

On Overdetermination and Althusser: OurResponse to Silverman and Park

Stephen Resnick & Richard Wolff

To cite this article: Stephen Resnick & Richard Wolff (2013) On Overdetermination and

Althusser: Our Response to Silverman and Park, Rethinking Marxism, 25:3, 341-349, DOI:10.1080/08935696.2013.798969

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2013.798969

Published online: 25 Jun 2013.

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On Overdetermination and Althusser:Our Response to Silverman and Park

Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff

We respond to critical comment directed at our understanding of overdetermination

and our argument that Althusser fell into economic determinism despite also

offering a way out of it. Our first response reviews what the concept of over-

determination is and what it implies. On that basis, we argue that the first critic’s

claim of ‘‘prediction’’ is logically impossible. Our second response explains why we

still think that a tension arises in Althusser’s work between formulating a notion of

overdetermination that in effect rules out any form of causal determination in the

last instance and yet affirming economic determination in the last instance. On that

basis, we criticize and reject the second critic’s claim that Althusser escaped this

tension between offered nondeterminist and determinist positions.

Key Words: Overdetermination, Louis Althusser, Prediction, Existing-in-Change,Determinisms

We are not surprised that Knowledge and Class has raised the questions and criticisms

found in these two articles. They are pertinent to studies of the meaning of the

concept of overdetermination, Althusser’s development of it, and its reformulation in

our book. Silverman raises substantive questions about how we understood and more

generally how one should understand the concept of overdetermination. Similarly,Park questions how we understand Althusser’s particular contribution of over-

determination. In this response we take up their important questions and criticisms.

To begin with Mark Silverman’s article, we agree with him that the notion of

overdetermination has to do with how one understands entities to exist. In our view,

they exist only as sites of combined effects emanating from other similarly

constituted processes. These constituting and constituted processes are different in

kind (in our work we have used the taxonomy of different economic, political,

cultural, and natural processes) because, for each of them, their causally combined

effects are different. In other words, any one process is not the mere reflection of(caused by) others’ effects but rather is the unique site of all other processes’

combined effects.

Since any process exists only as a result of the others’ combined impact, it exists *

is constituted *in contradiction. When we offer this explanation in class lectures, we

– 2013 Association for Economic and Social Analysis

Rethinking Marxism, 2013Vol. 25, No. 3, 341 349, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2013.798969

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like to say that any process is pushed and pulled in different (contradictory)

directions by these constituting and diverse effects. That existing-in-contradiction

means that existing-in-motion (the result of the contradictory pushes and pulls) is the

nature of being. The phrase ‘‘any existing being’’ refers to/includes, for example, anyexisting social or natural process, a word or equation in a discourse, the discourse

itself, a human agent, a corporate entity, or a society as the combination of

constituting processes. In an early article focused on a Marxian notion of transition

from feudalism to capitalism (Resnick and Wolff 1979), we argued that a feudal

society does not exist and then undergo change or radical alteration by, on the one

hand, the impact of long distance trade, as per Sweezy’s (1976, 33 56) determinist

explanation for feudalism’s dissolution, or by, on the other hand, relations and forces

of production, as per Dobb’s (1976, 57 67) equally determinist counterexplanation.

Rather, a feudal society exists in transition, always becoming that which it is not, forthat becoming is its nature. Because of this point, and to answer one of Silverman’s

questions, we years ago deliberately chose the word ‘‘process’’ rather than ‘‘entity’’

or ‘‘thing’’ when referring to aspects of society in order to convey this over-

determinist conception of being as existence in motion.

To elaborate: because every process is at one and the same time constituted

(passive) and constituting (active), no process has any existence or meaning without

the others. Each exists only in its particular relationship to others. In that relation-

ship, processes codetermine one another; their mutual codetermination is merely

another way of discussing the logic of overdetermination. It follows that allontological and epistemological claims as to some independently existing process

or subset of processes are rejected. No process or subset of processes can be

conceived as merely cause or effect without thereby violating the premise of

overdetermination. Processes cannot occur alone, for in that case, they would be

empty of content, meaningless, or simply nonexistent.

From our reading of Silverman’s article, we all agree on the above apropos

questions concerning how to assess the validity of knowledge. From an over-

determinist perspective, neither experience nor thought can occur alone. Because

they constitute one another, neither one nor the other can be asserted to be a ground,foundation, or standard to validate any knowledge claim. That is why we, like

Silverman, reject all traditional epistemological claims that would privilege a subset

of processes *for the empiricists, experience; for the rationalists, thinking *by

assuming they existed independently of all other processes. That assumed indepen-

dence is no minor matter, for without it, neither empiricism nor rationalism nor

combinations of them can serve as a foundation (standard) of knowledge. So far we

seem to have agreement.

Here is where we disagree: for us, overdetermination logically rules out any

concept of prediction. We also claim that the logical impossibility of prediction *

once one assumes overdetermination *is a condition of existence of practiced

prediction (making sense of being). Let us explain this seeming contradiction, for it

goes to the heart of Silverman’s argument and criticism levied against us.

That being exists in contradiction *pushed here and there *is equivalent to

arguing that its motion is indeterminate. That is what we mean and always meant by a

342 RESNICK AND WOLFF

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process pushed in different directions by its contradictory nature. Sometimes we try

to capture this indeterminacy by using the descriptive word ‘‘mess.’’ Again, let us

take a moment to explain.

Visually, think of any one of our four kinds of processes to be depicted, say, on awhiteboard in a classroom. For example, how are we to show to students the nature

of an overdetermined class process? We begin by drawing directed lines from other,

nonclass processes (for the moment assumed to exist as dots on the white board

only to convey this lesson) to an empty but common space on the whiteboard. Lines

emanating from each of these other, nonclass processes denote the distinct and

different effects of each of them, the different determinations each entails. The

ends of each of these drawn lines converge to the common space on the

whiteboard *a site initially empty *that becomes increasingly dense, defined or

concretized, as we add each of its constituting determinations *

namely, ever morecausal lines ending at that designated space. A key point to keep in mind as we draw

these lines is that the class process in question doesn’t exist prior to those drawn

lines (effects of nonclass processes) but rather only as a result of them. It has

proved too easy (and perhaps tempting?) to forget that the class process is

constituted as the effect of all the nonclass processes in its environment. This

conception of how the class process is understood parallels the mathematical

understanding of a line on a graph as a dense set of an infinite number of distinct

(nonclass) points.

The same infinity of effects that constitutes the class process likewise yields itsmovement or activity, its existence in change. In turn, the movements and change of

the class process alter its effects upon and thus its participation in shaping all the

other processes that coexist with the class process. That is what overdetermination

and codetermination mean. Pictorially, as we draw these many and diverse mutually

interacting effects, the diagram on the board very soon approaches a mess: it soon

becomes evident to the eye that all one can observe is a massive jumble of

interacting lines (effects) in which it becomes impossible to decipher visually where

any process ever begins, ends, or, in fact, what it is.

Students often laugh, perhaps nervously, at the result, for there is something in aconstructed picture of life’s gross disorder and indeterminacy that appeals to them,

at least at some level. Perhaps we react similarly to a Picasso or Kandinsky painting:

the pictured disorder is both amusing and unnerving. In any case, this mess is what we

think the notion of overdetermination conveys about what being is.

The content of the above paragraph is why we must disagree with Silverman on

the issue of ‘‘prediction.’’ To our way of thinking, it becomes logically impossible to

isolate, much less identify, any process or subset of processes that forms what he

calls ‘‘sufficiently stated initial conditions’’ (Silverman 2013). If all we ever have is

a swirl of interacting and mutually constituting effects, then a mess is a mess.Those supposed ‘‘initial conditions’’ are themselves constituted by effects emanat-

ing from all the other conditions, and the latter are infinite in nature and ever

changing. In other words, any so-called condition only exists by virtue of what it is

not: namely, effects emanating from the other conditions. Unless one were

endowed with a godlike ability to do so, how does one go about identifying and

OVERDETERMINATION 343

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isolating a subset of these, if there is an infinity of them and if each and all exist in

change as a result of their mutual codetermination? The image we used above is

that of a hodgepodge of intersecting lines without being able to discern where one

leaves off and another begins; identification of any one or more conditions becomesimpossible. One cannot identify what are initial conditions and what are not,

irrespective of how carefully one might proceed or what additional information is

supplied.

In introducing a notion of prediction, we think Silverman also has reintroduced

the old problem of determination in the last instance *not in epistemology but

rather in ontology. Ironically, he affirms indeterminism when it comes to knowledge

claims but determinism when it comes to societal claims. Let us add here that we

well understand that one of these positions need not necessarily entail the other.

One can argue for a form of determinism or essentialism in theory but not of theory.

And the converse is surely possible. In fact, if we were to claim otherwise *that

determinism in one must necessarily imply determinism in the other, we too would

fall into the trap of a determinism in which one position can be deduced from the

other.

Bearing this qualifier in mind, let’s explore Silverman’s determinist problem, but

in a way that we see it arising from our different perspective. To isolate a set of

claimed sufficient conditions as the basis of prediction is equivalent to somehow

knowing, for some predicted event to occur, which of the infinite and interacting

conditions are more and which are less important; which are necessary and which

are contingent; which are antecedent and which are not. Our response holds that the

use of those notions violates the premise of overdetermination. Those notions

transform the overdetermined mess (how we have conceptualized life) into an

ordered life in which an observer can, carefully of course, order processes and

conditions such that some come before others so as to predict events on their basis.

Coming before means that those specified conditions have a prior existence, which

is the precise assumption that is ruled out by the notion of overdetermination

we offer. For us, nothing exists prior to the existence of others; processes and their

determinations only exist in relation to others. Hence, the terms ‘‘necessary,’’

‘‘sufficiently stated,’’ and ‘‘initial’’ have no meaning in this notion of over-determination. We think this way pertains not only to Silverman’s criticisms but,

as we shall see, also to Park’s.

To isolate a subset of processes or conditions out of the swirl of interacting and

constituting effects so as to endow that subset with the status of ‘‘sufficient

conditions’’ is an act that falls into the very determinism that overdetermination

rejects. There are no ‘‘sufficient conditions,’’ for all conditions actively constitute

and are passively constituted. The determining power or importance of each only

exists as a result of these constituting effects arising from the others. On the latter,

we very much agree with Silverman’s nicely put phrasing: the determining ‘‘proper-ties of the variable are a function of the relationship’’ (316). How is one to choose or

even identify a subset as necessary or sufficient, as more or less important, if all have

this codetermining power? They all are necessary, and that assumed ‘‘all’’ is precisely

why we as humans can’t predict. That is, we can predict if and only if we argue

(implicitly if not explicitly) against overdetermination by making some effects


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emanating from some processes/conditions more important than (or enabling them to

come first and before) others. When we engage in that act of ordering, we have

Silverman’s posed ‘‘sufficiently stated initial conditions.’’ However, the very ordering

of processes already presumes independence among them. That independence, as weargued in Knowledge and Class (1987) and elsewhere over the years (see, for

example, Resnick and Wolff 2006) and have repeated here, is precisely what

overdetermination rejects.

We do agree with Silverman that, faced with the overdetermined mess that is life,

one reaction by some humans has been to make sense of that mess, to theorize it and

its complex impact on them in many different, inventive ways. They theorize in their

prose, equations, art, music, poetry, screams, giggles and laughter, wink of an eye,

and so forth. In these diverse acts of theorizing, they bring order to the mess. Yet it

nonetheless still remains a mess in our view. Ordering it is what ‘‘knowledge of it’’means. That ordering is the power and excitement of and stimulus provided by

theorizing.

Consider, for example, theorizing the so-called economy. Economists pick what

are merely a few (always still overdetermined) processes as the way to begin to

understand the mess that the economy is. Indeed, they have no choice but to

pick, if they are to communicate their sense or understanding of the economy out

there to themselves and to others. Hence, in contrast to Silverman’s claim, this is

not so much ability but rather a need we have to ‘‘formulate hypotheses . . . for

predicting events’’ (Silverman 2013, 312) so as to communicate whatever it is that

strikes us.

There are always particular economic or other processes that economists pick as

their discursive tools (initial concepts used to formulate hypotheses). Those concepts

comprise what we called their ‘‘entry point’’ (of theorizing) in Knowledge and Class.

Once chosen, an entry point arrests overdetermination because it privileges some

processes/conditions over others, thereby allowing observers to conquer *to make a

particular sense of *what nonetheless remains the assumed mess. In other words, an

entry point is a discursive ordering of processes: out of the infinity of codetermining

processes, some are asserted to be (Silverman’s) initial conditions. That is the power

of but also the risk posed by an entry point. Once chosen, one can use it to predict the

behavior of other aspects of society. That prediction is really a story *a thought-

concrete *we tell about the nature of being. However, that power is also an illusion,

for the mess that is being has not disappeared because we as humans invoke/invent

an ordering of it in our thinking (produced story).

To think otherwise runs the risk of forgetting the difference between theorizing and

the object of theorizing. The importance of recognizing that difference struck

Nietzsche forcefully:

One should not wrongly reify ‘‘cause’’ and ‘‘effect,’’ as the natural scientistsdo (and whoever, like them, now ‘‘naturalizes’’ in his thinking), according tothe mechanical doltishness in which the cause presses and pushes until it

‘‘effects’’ its end; one should use ‘‘cause’’ and ‘‘effect’’ only as pureconcepts, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of

designation and communication *not for explanation. In the ‘‘in itself’’


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there is nothing of ‘‘causal connections,’’ of ‘‘necessity’’ . . . there is no ruleof ‘‘law.’’ It is we alone who have devised cause, sequence. (Nietzsche 1968,219)1

For Nietzsche as for us, prediction is but another form of what humans do in the

logic of our theorizing: we choose one or a few processes of some importance to us as

our entry point. That importance and the resulting choice are themselves over-

determined. But the moment we engage in that choice, we endow the chosen

process(es) with the status of (our) thesis on which basis we can then predict some

discursive outcome with some certainty. That is, we predict that B will have a

likelihood of occurring once we specify A as initial condition. We alone, as Nietzsche

claims, devise this sequencing (and probabilistic assumption). In this sense and from

an overdeterminist perspective, prediction is an integral part of what we do when we

theorize, irrespective of whether our object is said to exist in the past, present, or

future.

The theoretical act of prediction has everything to do with the nature of our

thinking about being and nothing to do with the nature of being itself. Of course,

similar to any of our thoughts, prediction too will impact being in contradictory ways.

Let us now turn to Park’s critique of our formulation of Althusser’s argument. Much

of our response to Silverman applies here as well, particularly the inability to order

processes once the concept of overdetermination is assumed. In fact, Park writes an

especially revealing sentence that not only conveys what he thinks about the nature

of being but also enables us sharply to underscore his difference from our view. ‘‘In a

word, without the structure in dominance or the determination in the last instance,

the totality would be completely chaotic, in which case it would be no totality from

the outset *whether Hegelian or Marxist *since totality is an organic system’’ (Park

2013, 332). We thoroughly agree with the first part of this sentence: (for us) being,

society, or whatever may be the referred-to totality is ‘‘completely chaotic.’’ That is

what we mean by ‘‘mess’’ in our response to Silverman. We think the concept of

overdetermination rejects the possibility of order, certainty, and control in both the

epistemological and ontological realms.In the case of Park’s different, but nonetheless methodologically similar claim to

that of Silverman, last instance determinism by the economic requires knowers to be

able to order an infinity of processes (or practices) such that some are more

1. We agree with Silverman that reference to and use of Nietzsche is useful in arguing for

overdetermination. That we did not do so in Knowledge and Class had more to do with our

central purpose there: namely, to argue against determinisms and for overdetermination within

the Marxian tradition. We were more concerned with analyzing the writings of Lenin, Lukács,

Gramsci, Althusser, and so forth than non-Marxian writers. Richard Rorty did receive prominence

because we read his 1979 book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature after writing our firstarticle, in 1982, rejecting economic determinism (see Resnick and Wolff 2006). We then were

struck and encouraged by the parallel search for antiessentialism both within and without the

Marxian tradition. While Rorty focused only on the latter, we saw a similar struggle within

Marxism, and that was what we tried to argue later in our 1987 book. David Ruccio and Jack

Amariglio (2003) do give the writings of Nietzsche a prominent place in their brilliantly insightful

analysis of modern economic reasoning.


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important, weighty, or determining than others are. In turn, that ordering presumes

independence among (at least some) processes, and that is what overdetermination

denies. We read this rejection of independence among processes as the link to Hegel ’s

Logic: each and every process only exists (is constituted) by its connection to theother processes. Without that connection, a process has no impact, for it is empty. In

this sense, overdetermination is a fully relational concept of causation. To have the

economic serving as the ultimate arbitrator of contradictions is the same move as

asserting that one aspect of the totality *namely, what Park refers to as economic

practice *is immune from codetermination: the economic determines (in the last

instance) but is itself not determined (in that last instance).

In its rejection of ordering, the concept of overdetermination becomes difficult for

all of us to affirm and internalize. For Park, the phrases ‘‘determination in the last

instance’’ and ‘‘structure in dominance,’’ and for Silverman, the term ‘‘prediction’’

all operate, despite their differences, as common ‘‘anchors’’ (Park’s word) to rescue

us from the danger of chaos. Neither writer can take that last step of letting go of

determinism. We likewise fault Althusser for hesitating at that last step, even though

he affirms, deploys, and extends the concept of overdetermination that he

appropriated from Freud’s initial and Lukács’s subsequent usages.

In this regard, we recall a wonderful passage in Dewey’s (1980, 114) Quest for

Certainty where he critically examines Newton’s motive (and implicitly the motive of

many other theorists): ‘‘There was needed some guarantee that Nature would not go

to pieces and be displaced or revert to chaos. How could the unity of anything be

secure unless there was something persistent and unchangeable behind all change?

Without such fixed indissoluble unities, no final certainty was possible. Everything

was put in peril of dissolution.’’ We think that the guarantee in nature that Dewey

criticized is precisely what Park offers with ‘‘determination in the last instance’’ and

‘‘structure in dominance.’’ Park seeks to escape from what he too sees as ‘‘chaos.’’

Park’s well-researched article does not persuade us that Althusser escaped the

tension in his work between, on the one hand, affirming an economic determinist

anchor and the certainty that follows from its use and, on the other hand, rejecting

that same anchor and certainty. Ironically, Park’s quotations suggest that there may

have been more to the determinist Althusser than we argued in our book. But then werecalled our previous struggles with Althusser: the tension between the two

contending positions is what we meant and still mean by essentialist and non-

essentialist moments present in his discourse.

This tension has absolutely nothing to do with Park’s claim that Althusser was ‘‘too

serious and consistent’’ a scholar to not escape the contradiction we posed (Park

2013, 340). Rather, it arises from what a discourse is: like everything else, it too exists

in contradiction, pushed here and there by the infinity of its overdeterminants. We

assume that Althusser, like most authors, is serious *whatever that might mean *and

aims to be logically ‘‘consistent.’’ However, in applying the notion of overdetermina-tion to the process of writing, the claim of achieving logical consistency is impossible

to sustain. Every text contains problems, inconsistencies, and unworked-out

hypotheses as a result of its overdetermined production. Writing occurs across

time. Newly introduced concepts conflict with and upset old ones. Only some of the

many tensions and inconsistencies ever get recognized and worked on by the


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author(s), while most remain to be worked on, possibly, at another time. Even then,

no author (or anyone else) could ever figure out the myriad interconnections among

all the ideas comprising a text. The very process of any author’s ‘‘figuring out’’ will

yield still new interconnections and inconsistencies to be analyzed.It is impossible for any author to control all of this. Indeed, the problems of

Althusser’s work on overdetermination present the conditions of existence for others,

like us and Park, who only recognize, pick up, and work on some of the many tensions.

In this regard, we might add that the texts of Marx provide ample evidence of

problems and inconsistencies that have helped to fuel 150 years of research, including

that of Althusser’s work on how to understand society from a Marxian perspective.

One last word: we are struck by Silverman’s and Park’s common need to reintroduce

some degree of stability *and the control it implies *to an otherwise radically

unstable (chaotic) world. It seems to us that every time some author poses being in

terms of what we have called a ‘‘mess’’ (and we think many have, both within and

without the Marxian tradition), it deeply worries and upsets others. Why is that?

What we have learned from reactions to our work over the years is that one set of

critics associates a set of negativities as necessarily following from our use of

overdetermination. These include nihilism, in which no meaning or purpose attaches

to life; radical relativism, in which statements are merely different from one

another; ‘‘everythingism,’’ in which no one can say anything definite about something

without saying something about everything, which is an impossible task; and so on.

The worry about chaos thus runs deep. Sometimes authors who invoke a concept of

overdetermination then quickly negate it by reintroducing determinism, whether

consciously or not. We think Park and Silverman are in good company with Althusser

when they fall into that determinist trap. Ironically, in the case of Althusser, he tried

mightily to rescue Marxism from those theoretical and political disasters across the

twentieth century that he believed had been fostered in part by its economic

determinism. Yet he invoked the same determinism when affirming the economically

structured totality of societal contradictions.

The strategy we offered to confront this Marxian dilemma in Knowledge and Class

has been repeated many times since. Marxists should choose an economic concept of

class as their entry point without making that entry point a determining essence,either in the first or last instance, in their conceptualization/theorization of social

being. Our focus on not making class the determining essence of Marxist social theory

follows from our affirming a notion and logic of overdetermination along with class as

entry point. That causal logic allows us to argue that class as entry point (thesis) only

takes on meaning, concreteness, and determination in connection to that which it is

not (antithesis): namely, all the nonclass processes constituting society. This kind of

reasoning (representing our debt to Hegel’s Logic) might help Park hold on to

economics (class as entry point) without making it a determining cause (class both

causes and is caused). This formulation also might help Silverman’s quest forprediction without the need to invoke an order existing in what is out there.

Class and overdetermination represent the Marxian discursive tools enabling us to

make what we called above a ‘‘practiced prediction,’’ namely to tell a particular kind of

story about society without making class (or any other process) more (or less) important

or determinant. Yet we do and must tell a story *a so-called thought-concrete *if we


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are to communicate. As such, we must focus necessarily on only a subset of the infinity

of interacting processes. That intervention or ‘‘practiced prediction,’’ necessary as it is

if we hope to effect society in a particular way, also necessarily conflicts with the idea

of society as a mess. We think the latter difference between theorizing and its object isprecisely what Nietzsche had in mind.

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On Overdetermination and Althusser Our Response to Silverman and Park

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Transcript of On Overdetermination and Althusser Our Response to Silverman and Park