Is a Marxist psychology from a first person perspective possible?
Intro
In my daily work as a researcher and teacher in a Danish university I regularly
explains to students and others that I work from a so-called subject scientific
perspective that many refer to as critical psychology. When I do this, a thing that
often puzzle people, is how a psychology can take point of departure in peoples own
perspectives on their own situated practices, and, at the same time, claim to be critical
and related to the writings of Marx? I expect many here properly ask the same
question.
Does the world we live in today not confront so many huge social, cultural, and
environmental problems, that it seems we rather need a psychology, that take point of
departure in an understanding of the overall political, structural and societal workings
of our societies? And is this not exactly what an interest in Marx is all about?
These are certainly valid and obvious questions and concerns. And it is also questions
and concerns that we have been raised numerous times these last couple of days.
Hence it seems rather naive and misconstrued to insist on a critical psychology that
takes point of departure in peoples own first-persons perspectives on their everydaylife activities. And on top of that claim that this could possibly constitute a starting
point for a Marxist psychology.
Never the less, this is what I actually do! And it is this endeavour I will talk about the
next 20 minutes. But I will start up talking a little bit about the concept of
subjectivity.
1.
The last 20 years or so, the ideology of individualism has been growing steadily and
increasingly unchallenged. Hence, today, a lot of scientific work, explanation and
examination take point of departure in ideas about the free individual or some
individual feature or quality in order to explain how our society works, how it is or
should be organised and why. Yet as Marx pointed out, the idea of the autonomous
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individual is actually a lousy starting point for scientific study and explanation, since
the individual, both as a concept and as an acting agent in the world is a historical and
societal entity. In fact, the popular idea of “the free and rational individual, pursuing
its own interests in a free marked” actually takes a gigantic social development to
emerge. Hence: the dominating neoliberal conception of the individual, constitute a
highly elaborate form - not of isolated agency and/or willpower – but of social
cooperation, connectedness and development.
To point this out is also to point out, that atomistic ideas about the “individual” or
other social phenomena, do not constitute good starting points for scientific research,
nor a good basis for scientific understandings and explanations of our reality.
This is of course an argument that has important implications: ontological,
methodological and theoretical.
First it follows from Marx’ argument, that scientific concepts and identifications do
not become strong by abstraction. Somehow this is still a very challenging idea for
many people. A fact that of course has to do with political power-relations, but a fact
that might also have to do with a hugely shared tendency many of us have to relate the
concept of a meaningful life to some kind of “metaphysical need” to place our selves
in a general world-picture or grand narrative. In order words: we seem to think that
abstractions – even though they might be false - are an important and necessary part
of making sense of our lives and the human condition. An idea that in fact most
interestingly resemble the idea within much critical work, that somehow critical
thinking is also in need of some overall general birds-eye picture of social reality to
function.
To me, Marx however presents the contrary idea: namely that we can get a strong
sense of our place in the world simply by being embedded in and participating in
social practice. For example the social practices we happen to part of in our everyday
life. Hence: Whether things make sense to us or not is not a question of theory – but
of practice: of interacting and participating in our life and its practices. This of course
does not mean, that we should (or even could) get rid of abstractions, such as theories
and the like. Of course not. What it does mean, however, is that the meaning of
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abstractions, theoretical, religious and the likes, spring from our participation and
practical engagements in concrete social activities and practices. Not the other way
around. It is therefore these practices and not their more or less arbitrary
representations, that we need to study
Hence Marx’ famous second theses on Feuerbach:
“The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a
question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the
reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice
To my mind, Marx’s most important contribution to scientific thinking is this:
Abstract and general notions of social phenomena are by nature weak notions and on
top of that often equally banal and unimportant – like stating – usually with big
sincerity - that the need for humans to eat is universal and therefore says anything
important about how people actually live our lives. Or saying that everybody in this
room are sexual beings, and that this fact says anything useful and enlightening about
our participation in this specific conference.
Science, to Marx, was all about turning
“abstract” notions into concrete ones,
walking a route of contextualisation, specification, and differentiation. So when Marx
stated, that “all societies must reproduce the conditions of their own existence” – he
did in fact not claim to make a strong scientific point. Instead his aim was to turn this
rather weak point into a strong one by examining the specific dynamic historical, and
societal ways, in which his own current society seemed to reproduce its own
conditions of existence. This was the scientific work that needed to be done in order
to develop strong scientific descriptions of social reality.
The second implication of Marx’s thoughts is therefore both epistemological and
methodological. As pointed out by Graham Hayes two days ago, abstraction easily
distracts our attention from relationships and connections that are important to us,
which is why abstract notion of “the free individual” easily turn structural
contradictions into personal issues and problems. In other words: Methods are not
neutral, but inscribed with politics and ideologies. According to Marx, we therefore
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need to develop new methods as well as new logics to examine our social reality
scientifically. Specific methods and logics. Not of abstraction, but of societal and
practical specification and differentiation.
The questions is how? And it is this question I will now turn to!
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Marx’ thinking led him to talk about a true science. A science, that showed that the
capitalist mode of production depends on social connections and dependencies, that
curiously takes on an “ideological” form of individual independence, dis-connection,
and fragmentation. True science should challenge these ideological representations by
unmasking the “essential” relations behind their mystifying inversions.
Even though this certainly sounds important, and even though Marx’ critic of abstract
notions of the individual is certainly as valid today as in his own time, his clear-cut
distinctions between “essential relations” and ideological representations are actually
very hard to work with. Not just because of strong opposing and dominant claims to
what “true science” is and should be, nor because of politically motivated resistant
and suppression of such “unproductive” perspectives. But more importantly because it
has turned out to be very difficult to unmask the “essential” relations behind peoples
“alienated believes”. First of all because is it usually quite difficult to agree on what
those essential relations are. I could probably just ask this room, to prove this point.
Secondly because people simply tend to stop listening, if you claim to know their
reality or reasons for acting better than themselves. Doing so therefore rarely invites
and results in constructive dialogue and change. And on top of that, often generates
social distance and mistrust, when what you are hoping for and in need of is exactly
the opposite: more openness, shared understanding and cooperation.
Finally there seem to be something quite contradictory in the otherwise impressive
Marxist analysis. Something many might find provocative, but something that it
nevertheless important to address:
Many marxist actually relate the analytical power and legitimity of their analysis to a
proportional ability to generalize. Generalize how capitalist societies works, how they
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develop and to what social effects. Hence to many Marxists the attraction of Marxist
analysis is its ambition to create an overall conception of our social reality and how
we can understand it. As mentioned earlier, this might seem both important and
necessary. However, what actually happens is, that a powerful vision of some
increasingly total demonic system or logic is developed. And the more powerful this
vision become, the more powerless the “reader” comes to feel.
So, insofar as the theorist wins, by constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying
machinery, at the same time he loses, since his analysis tend to paralyze any impulse
of resistance and idea of possible transformation, even though the idea was just the
opposite, namely to inspire hope and invite participation in emancipatory social
transformations.
In other words, the tendency to depict an omnipotent capitalist dynamic, in which all
resistance seems futile, is actually self-disarming.
So what to do instead?
The last 20 years or so a lot of people have come to find Marxist theory both
dogmatic and elitist. For the same reason many have looked for alternative ways to
work critically. Distinctions between “essential” and “ideological” relations have
been left behind and instead met with suspicion. And the focus on materiality,
production and economy, has been turned into a focus on cultural issues, language,
discourse, cognition, gender, ethnicity and so forth.
These new critical perspectives of social constructionism, discourse analyses,
deconstruction, in general depart from Marx in at least two ways. First by leaving
behind any notion of the subject - not just of the worker as the subject of history, but
of any notion of an authentic active subject. Secondly by leaving behind any strong
notion of nature and materiality and hence any understanding of human agency as
constituted and developed in real tensions between the actual and what is actually
possible in concrete situations. Instead the social is absolutized. It is all there is.
Which is why social power-relations turn into an abstract entity that are nowhere and
everywhere; An abstract entity , which is epistemic rather than ontological and
practical, hence can not limit its own relevance and focus, but soon turn on everything
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with no distinctions to offer between what is right or wrong, better or worse, just or
unjust in concrete situations and conflicts.
What I want to get at is that even though I share some of these perspectives criticism
of Marxism, I believe they are in many ways problematic, and I believe this has to do
with the fact that they generally miss out on a important Marxist insights. An Insights
that Marx formulated, but in fact did not himself develop methodologically.
What we should notice, is that even thought many of these critical perspectives are
critical of Marx, they all reformulate one of Marx’s main scientific point: namely that
the concept of the free individual is a social construction, that therefore do not
constitute a good starting point for scientific study or explanation. In fact, the
perspectives mentioned do not oppose this Marxist point at all, but rather take it much
further than Marx did.
What is interesting about this, however, and what is much too easily forgotten, is that
even though Marx criticised any attempt to understand and examine our social reality
from ideas about a free autonomous individual, Marx never said that we could not
study and examine our reality from the standpoint of the active sensuous subject. In
fact – as mentioned in the common introduction - he proclaimed that this is exactly
what we need to do, if we are to overcome the classical problems and dilemmas of
materialism and if we are to avoid weak and abstract notions of our reality.
as Marx proclaimed:
“The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is
that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of
contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively”.
To me, this is a central point if not the central point of Marx’s work. Not least for a
Marxist psychology. To conceive reality, we need to conceive it as sensuous human
activity, practice, subjectively. That is, we need to understand social reality through
people’s actual activities and practices, as well as from their own subjective and
sensuous perspectives on these activities and practices.
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To me a range of insights follow from this idea. And of course an equal number of
new questions and challenges. Unfortunately I have just a few more seconds to talk.
So instead of unfolding some of these questions I will invite you fire away at me in a
minute. And finish with just one point that I think is essential and kind of sums things
up.
Marx notion of human experience of social reality is not epistemological, but rather
ontological. What that means is that human experience is not about the production
and acquisition of knowledge. It is about the dialectic relationship between the subject
and the world and participating in the world. Therefore our experience of social
reality is not reducible to knowledge and cognition; that is: reducible to what we can
describe or are able to think. Human experience and orientation is much richer than
that. It is emotional and sensuous rather than cognitive. And it is anchored in our
actual participation in the world and our orientations towards enhancing this
participation. What follows from this, is that it is simply methodologically insufficient
to try to understand and explain people’s actions and our social reality from a
distance: using for example only quantitative methods, statistics, experiments or fixed
descriptions, conversations or observations. To understand people and their social
reality, we first need to try to participate in their reality: that is in the social practices
they are engaged in. And to understand these practices and the dynamics of for
example social and corporate institutions, we need to see these institutions as
comprised of many different practices that we all the time coordinate. Institutions are
comprises of many different communities of practice that coordinate their activities,
but must do so from very different perspectives and work-conditions. Again these
different perspectives and work-conditions must be studied from the standpoint of the
different participating subjects. And I would like to add, that it is through an
examination of the differences between these subjective perspectives and standpoints,
and how they condition each other and relate to each other in specific social
arrangements, that we should study the political and structural aspects of social life.
Not as some external abstract object or demonic mechanism, but as something we do
and all the time reproduce or change through our own actual activities.
Of course this is a sketch of a scientific ideal, that in actual practice confront a
number of challenges and compromises. Nevertheless it is a scientific ambition that
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makes a difference and has concrete methodological implications. One of them being
that a Marxist psychology, to my mind, should always try to include anthropological
and ethnographic methods and other forms of situated practice research.
Now this does not mean, that I insist on a single “correct way” to do Marxist
psychology. My point is simply this, that whatever theories we prefer to work from,
we should not judge their value from either there ability to generalize, nor from their
ability to create impressive and thought-provoking narratives and ideas. We should
judge their value from their usefulness in developing sensuous, specific and
differentiated notions of our own and other people’s lives and reality. And from how
they enhance our own as well as others possibilities to participate in developing their
own lives in mutually beneficial cooperation with others.
If we consider the growing domination today of methods of abstraction and
knowledge ideal of generalization, it seems to me, that this alternative take on science
might actually be seen to constitute a kind of revolutionary practice and hence qualify
as a legitimate version of a Marxist psychology. Maybe even the basis of a possible
communist future – what ever that might be.
Thank you
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