Structural Marxism (sometimes called Althusserian Marxism) is an approach to

Marxist philosophy Marxist philosophy or Marxist theory are works in philosophy that are strongly influenced by Karl Marx's Historical materialism, materialist approach to theory, or works written by Marxists. Marxist philosophy may be broadly divided into Wester ...

based on

structuralism Structuralism is an intellectual current and methodological approach, primarily in the social sciences, that interprets elements of human culture by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structural patterns t ...

, primarily associated with the work of the French philosopher

Louis Althusser Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher who studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. Althusser was a long-time member an ...

and his students. It was influential in France during the 1960s and 1970s, and also came to influence philosophers, political theorists and sociologists outside France during the 1970s. Other proponents of structural Marxism were the sociologist

Nicos Poulantzas Nicos Poulantzas ( ; 21 September 1936 – 3 October 1979) was a Greek-French Marxist political sociologist and philosopher. In the 1970s, Poulantzas was known, along with Louis Althusser, as a leading structural Marxist; while at first a Leni ...

and the

anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

Maurice Godelier. Many of Althusser's students broke with structural Marxism in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Overview

Structural Marxism arose in opposition to the instrumental Marxism that dominated many western universities during the 1970s. In contrast to other forms of Marxism, Althusser stressed that Marxism was a

science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

that examined objective structures, and he believed that historicist and phenomenological Marxism, which was based on Marx's early works, was caught in a "pre-scientific ideology". Toward the middle of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Marxist theorists began to develop structuralist Marxist accounts of the state, law, and crime. Structuralist Marxism disputes the instrumentalist view that the state can be viewed as the direct servant of the capitalist or ruling class. Whereas the instrumentalist position is that the institutions of the state are under the direct control of those members of the capitalist class in positions of state power, the structuralist position is that state institutions must function so as to ensure the viability of capitalism more generally. In other words, state institutions must reproduce capitalist society as a whole. The debate between structural and instrumental Marxists was characterized by the Miliband–Poulantzas debate between instrumentalist Ralph Miliband and structuralist

. Structuralists view the state in a capitalist mode of production as taking a specifically capitalist form, not because particular individuals are in powerful positions, but because the state reproduces the logic of capitalist structure in its economic, legal, and political institutions. Hence, from a structuralist perspective one would argue that state institutions (including legal ones) function in the long-term interests of capital and capitalism, rather than in the short-term interests of members of the capitalist class. Thus the state and its institutions have a certain degree of independence from specific elites in the ruling or capitalist class.

Long- versus short-term class interests

Structural Marxism posits that the state functions to serve the long-term interests of the

bourgeoisie The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and aristocracy. They are traditionally contrasted wi ...

. Building upon the works of Engels, structural Marxists posit that the state is a mechanism for regulating

class conflict In political science, the term class conflict, class struggle, or class war refers to the economic antagonism and political tension that exist among social classes because of clashing interests, competition for limited resources, and inequali ...

, the irreconcilable tension between the

proletariat The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian or a . Marxist ph ...

and the bourgeoisie.Lenin, V.I. (2004/1917). ''The State and Revolution''. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing.Offe, Claus (1974). ''Structural Problems of the Capitalist State: Class Rule and the Political System''. In Klaus von Beyme (ed.) ''German Political Studies, vol. 1''. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publishing. By regulating these antagonisms —rather than eliminating them which is thought impossible without violent revolution—the state serves to stabilize the capitalist system as a whole and preserve its existence. Structuralists differentiate between the long-term and short-term interests of the capitalist class in order to describe the necessity of the state to the capitalist system. Short-term interests of the bourgeoisie include policies that affect

capital accumulation Capital accumulation is the dynamic that motivates the pursuit of profit, involving the investment of money or any financial asset with the goal of increasing the initial monetary value of said asset as a financial return whether in the form ...

in the immediate future such as tax breaks, reduced minimum wages, government subsidies, etc. They maintain that when the state does not benefit the bourgeois class' short-term interests, it is acting on the behalf of its future interests. Accordingly, when the state seems to act on behalf of the proletariat rather than the bourgeoisie (raising minimum wage, increasing labor rights, etc.) it is serving capitalist interests by meeting the demands of workers only enough to prevent an uprising that could threaten the system as a whole. Because the interests of the proletariat and the capitalist classes are counter to one another, the state is seen as necessary to regulate the capitalist system and assure its preservation by forcing capitalists to agree to demands of workers to which they otherwise would not succumb.

Criticism

Similar arguments have been made concerning structural theories of the capitalist nature of the state. Claus Offe suggested that the class-character of the state could only be observed in an ''ex post'' perspective. In other words, the class character of the state can only be shown after policies are put in place and the outcome is observed. Because of this, he criticized structural theories which attempted to prove the capitalist character of the state, claiming they do so on an unfounded basis: because outcomes of the state's policies are empirically capitalist, it does not make the State a capitalist enterprise in its nature.Kołakowski, Leszek (1971),
Althusser's Marx
. ''Socialist Register'' 1971, pp. 111–28.

References

{{reflist Continental philosophy Eponymous political ideologies Marxist schools of thought Neo-Marxism Social theories Structuralism