Reading Capital: Part I Continued (The Effectivity of a Structure)

Marx too, then, will be subjected to just such a symptomatic reading. Althusser finds one such symptomatic answer without a question in Marx: the answer seems to be “the ‘Darstellung’ and its avatars,” which I take to mean the presentation of a concept in historical forms (production relations). This may seem an ill-digested Hegelian holdover, but Althusser says it points to an unexpressed concept in Marx: “the concept of the effectivity of a structure on its elements.” This concept is “the invisible/visible, absent/present keystone of [Marx’s] whole work” (29).

How do we understand the effectivity of a structure on its elements? There seems to be an unresolved tension between the ontological and the epistemological in Althusser's discourse, and this will be a central question as we proceed. Is the structure simply the structure of a discourse, or of a system of knowledge? In that case, are the "elements" the raw material of the real that are worked up by that knowledge as it produces itself? Or does the question take place entirely in the terrain of knowledge? But if that is the case, is this not an idealism--are we faced with an immanent dialectic of discourse? Or are we already talking about social production as a whole, the production of social forms as the effectivity of a structure? In that case, is the structure the discourse of knowledge, or is it a tacit structure of production-relations which is reflected in the structure of discourse?

These are questions to keep in mind as we go forward, and some of them may be answered by Althusser. Perhaps Althusser's formulation of Marx's question is itself a symptomatic answer that points to these questions. But Althusser seems to recognize the question himself when he asks later about the relation of knowledge to its real object. But as we read the rest of this section, we will have to consider whether he arrives at an answer to this question.

In any event, let me just suggest that these are perplexities that arise when we maintain a rigid distinction between the ontological and the epistemological--when we forget that we live our ontology, we do not just invent it when first we come to philosophize. But this would also suggest a questioning of the base-superstructure distinction, not, as is often done, simply to recognize the effectivity of the superstructure on the base, but rather to see knowledge and interpretation as enacted in a pre-theoretical appropriation of the world.

But let us see what Althusser has to say.