Abstract

In his theory of fetishism, Marx argues that social structures reproduce themselves by way of their occultation. I suggest that this occultation is not susceptible to epistemological strategies generally employed in Western Marxism, and go on to argue that Althusser's interpretation of Marx provides the framework for a superior practice of demystification. ;To this end, I undertake an analysis of Althusser's theory of structural causality, showing how Althusser supplies us with a compelling account of social determination that heeds the difficulties attending Marx's theory of fetishism while laying the groundwork for a strategy that overcomes these difficulties. I argue for a species of functional explanation that permits us to delineate the features through which the experience of social subjects tends to further the maintenance requirements of social formations. ;Borrowing from the work of Wittgenstein and Lacan, I go on to argue that the ways in which individuals recognize and define themselves and their world is a function of these maintenance requirements, such that we cannot think consciousness apart from social reproduction. The interruption of reproduction grants us some purchase on the nature of those social determinations that first structure the consciousness of the subject. ;I conclude that there is no spontaneous dialectic to human thought and action capable of outstripping the effects of social occultation, such that Marxist political practice must rely, in the end, on the importation of class consciousness to the proletariat from without. In this respect, I suggest that Althusser's Leninism flows consistently from his epistemology