The hieroglyph of the 'party': Contextualising the agent-structure debate through the works of Trotsky, C. L. R. James and Althusser

International Relations

Volumn 22, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 193-219

  Shilliam, Robbie ^a  

^a VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF WELLINGTON   (New Zealand)

Author keywords

Agent structure debate; Backwardness; C. L. R. James; Communism; Communist Party; International relations; Leon Trotsky; Louis Althusser

Indexed keywords

EID: 44949184433     PISSN: 00471178     EISSN: 17412862     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0047117808089895     Document Type: Article

References (121)

1. My thanks to Justin Rosenberg, Kamran Matin, the editors, and especially Ken Booth, for helping to direct the revision of this article.
2. Alexander Wendt, 'The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory', International Organization, 41(3), 1987, pp. 335-70.
3. David Dessler, 'What's at Stake in the Agent-Structure Debate?', International Organization, 43(3), 1989, p. 443. Examples include the debate on the primacy of ontology or epistemology: Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 41-2, 441-73; Vivienne Jabri and Stephen Chan, 'The Ontologist Always Rings Twice: Two More Stories About Structure and Agency in Reply to Hollis and Smith', Review of International Studies, 22(1), 1996, pp. 107-10; and Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, 'A Response: Why Epistemology Matters in International Theory', Review of International Studies, 22(1), 1996, pp. 111-16. See also the debate on modernist essentialism, Roxanne L. Doty, 'A Critical Exploration of the Agent-Structure Problematique in International Relations', European Journal of International Relations, 3(3), 1997, pp. 365-92, and Colin Wight 'They Shoot Dead Horses Don't They? Locating Agency in the Agent-Structure Problematique', in European Journal of International Relations, 5(1), 1999, pp. 109-12. See also the emphases in Walter Carlsnaes, 'The Agency-Structure Problem in Foreign Policy Analysis', International Studies Quarterly, 36(3), 1992, pp. 245-70; and Heidi Suganami, 'Agents, Structures, Narratives', European Journal of International Relations, 5(3), 1999, 70-91.
4. See, for example, K. O'Neill, J. Balsiger and S. D. VanDeveer, 'Actors, Norms, and Impact: Recent International Cooperation Theory and the Influence of the Agent-Structure Debate', Annual Review of Political Science, 7, 2004, pp. 149-75.
5. See Wendt, 'The Agent-Structure Problem', p. 367. Wendt's 'three cultures of anarchy' in Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) might be considered, in this respect, a weak resolution to this challenge.
6. For example Andreas Bieler and Adam D. Morton, 'The Gordian Knot of Agency-Structure in International Relations: A Neo-Gramscian Perspective', European Journal of International Relations, 7(1), 2001, pp. 5-35. In investigating globalisation some authors combine both philosophy of science and IPE approaches: For example, John Maclean, 'Towards a Political Economy of Agency in Contemporary International Relations', in Martin Shaw (ed.), In Politics and Globalisation: Knowledge, Ethics, and Agency (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 202-25; and Heikki Patomäki, After International Relations: Critical Realism and the (Re-)Construction of World Politics (London: Routledge, 2002).
7. For example, J. Tully, Meaning and Context - Quentin Skinner and his Critics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988).
8. For example (respectively), J. G. A. Pocock, 'The Reconstruction of Discourse: Towards the Historiography of Political Thought', MLN, 96(5), 1981 pp. 959-80; R. Koselleck, 'Begriffsgeschichte and Social History', in Futures Past - On the Semantics of Historical Time (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985); and M. Foucault, 'What is an Author?', in P. Rainbow (ed.), The Foucault Reader (London: Penguin, 1991), pp. 101-20.
9. For example, David McNally, 'Language, History, and Class-Struggle', Monthly Review, 47(3), 1995, pp. 13-30.
10. J. G. Gunnell, The Orders of Discourse (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998).
11. R. Shilliam, 'Morgenthau in Context: German Backwardness, German Intellectuals and the Rise and Fall of a Liberal Project', European Journal of International Relations, 13(3), 2007, pp. 299-328.
12. See Allen Swingewood, A Short History of Sociological Thought, 3rd edn (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000), p. 202; and Tom Bottomore, Sociology and Socialism (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1984), p. 13.
13. This reference exists across methodologically diverse engagements with the agent-structure problem. For example, Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory - Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis (London: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 2, 7, 53; Bottomore, Sociology and Socialism, pp. 18-19; Margaret Archer, 'Structuration versus Morphogenesis', in S. N. Eisenstadt and H. J. Helle (eds), Macro-Sociological Theory - Perspectives on Sociological Theory, vol.1 (London: Sage, 1985), pp. 58-9; and Jon Elster, Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
14. See R. Jenkins, Pierre Bourdieu (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 14; and P. Bourdieu and T. Eagleton, 'Doxa and Common Life', New Left Review, 191, 1992, pp. 111-21.
15. For example, Roy Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science (Leeds: Leeds Books, 1975); and Russell Keat and John Urry, Social Theory as Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975).
16. Perry Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism (London: New Left Books, 1976), pp. 49-55, 68-9.
17. Christopher Norris, 'Interview with Roy Bhaskar', The Philosopher's Magazine, 8, 1999, pp. 34-50. On the Althusserian influence on Bhaskar see Gregory Elliot, Althusser: The Detour of Theory (Leiden: Brill, 2006), p. 307 n. 5.
18. 18 Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory.
19. See Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory, p. 226, which relies on his previous work, The Class Structure of Advanced Societies (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1973), pp. 18-22, 116-17, 282. See also Derek Gregory and John Urry, 'Introduction', in Derek Gregory and John Urry (eds), Social Relations and Spatial Structures (London: Macmillan, 1985), pp. 1-8.
20. See, for example, Gramsci's contemporaneous comment on 1917 in 'The Revolution against "Capital"', in Selections from Political Writings 1910-1920 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1977), pp. 36-8.
21. For an overview of the concept see étienne Balibar, On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (London: New Left Books, 1977).
22. See Michael Waller, Democratic Centralism: An Historical Commentary (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983), pp. 5-17.
23. Richard Pipes, Struve: Liberal on the Left (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 30-3.
24. Mark Bassin, 'Russia Between Europe and Asia: The Ideological Construction of Geographical Space', Slavic Review, 50(1), 1991, p. 9.
25. Pipes, Struve, p. 40.
26. Cited in Geir Flikke, Democracy or Theocracy - Frank, Struve, Berdjaev, Bulgakov and the 1905 Russian Revolution (Oslo: Meddelelser, 1994), pp. 72-3.
27. Alastair Bonnett, 'Communists like Us: Ethnicized Modernity and the Idea of "the West" in the Soviet Union', Ethnicities, 2(4), 2002, p. 446.
28. In general, Leon Trotsky, 'Concerning the Intelligentsia', Partisan Review, 35, 1969, pp. 585-98. See also Baruch Knei-Paz, The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 220-1.
29. Trotsky, 'Concerning the Intelligentsia', p. 588.
30. Leon Trotsky, 1905 (New York: Vintage, 1972), p. 3.
31. Leon Trotsky, 'In Defence of October', available at: www.marxists.org/ archive/trotsky/works/1932/1932-oct.htm (accessed January 2004).
32. For the theory see J. Rosenberg, 'Why Is There No International Historical Sociology?', European Journal of International Relations, 12(3), 2006, pp. 307-40; and K. Matin, 'Uneven and Combined Development in World History: The International Relations of State-formation in Premodern Iran', European Journal of International Relations, 13(3), 2007, pp. 419-47.
33. Leon Trotsky, 'Results and Prospects', in Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution (New York: Merit Publishers, 1969), p. 38.
34. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution (London: Pluto Press, 1997), p. 27.
35. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, p. 26; Trotsky, 'Results and Prospects', p. 42.
36. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, p. 27.
37. Leon Trotsky, 'Permanent Revolution', in Permanent Revolution, p. 240.
38. On this point, see also Knei-Paz, Leon Trotsky, p. 90.
39. Leon Trotsky, 'Thoughts on the Progress of the Proletarian Revolution', in Isaac Deutscher (ed.), The Age of Permanent Revolution (New York: Dell Publishing, 1964), p. 125.
40. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, p. 476.
41. See, for example, Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1954), p.180.
42. See especially Leon Trotsky, 'Literature and Revolution', in The Age of Permanent Revolution, pp. 319, 322-3; Trotsky, 'Concerning the Intelligentsia', pp. 587-8; Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed, pp. 157-76; and Leon Trotsky, Problems of Everyday Life (New York: Monad Press, 1973), pp. 28-9. Hence Trotsky's valorisation of Freud over Pavlov.
43. Leon Trotsky, 'From Literature and Revolution', in Isaac Deutscher (ed.), Art and Revolution (New York: Pathfinder, 1992), p. 58. See also Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), pp. 147-8.
44. Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed, pp. 51, 54.
45. Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed, pp. 94-5.
46. Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed, pp. 245-9.
47. Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed, pp. 254, 275.
48. Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed, p. 98.
49. See especially Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed, pp. 288-9.
50. For example, Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed, p. 47; Leon Trotsky, The Third International after Lenin (London: New Park Publications, 1974), p. 15; and Trotsky, 'Thoughts on the Progress of the Proletarian Revolution', p. 127.
51. Anthony Bogues, Caliban's Freedom: The Early Political Thought of C. L. R. James (London: Pluto, 1997), p. 28.
52. Bogues, Caliban's Freedom, p. 119.
53. C. L. R. James, Notes on Dialectics - Hegel, Marx, Lenin (London: Allison and Busby, 1948), especially p. 175. See also C. L. R. James, 'After Ten Years', in Spheres of Existence (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill and Co., 1980), pp. 60-2.
54. James, 'After Ten Years', pp. 63, 67.
55. See James, 'After Ten Years', pp. 60, 68; James, Notes on Dialectics, pp. 150-5, 172, 175-6, 222.
56. C. L. R. James, American Civilization (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993). This sketch was not published in James's lifetime.
57. James, American Civilization, pp. 30, 40.
58. James, American Civilization, pp. 101, 116.
59. James, American Civilization, pp. 36, 225.
60. James, American Civilization, pp. 121-3. James opposed this function of Hollywood to the bogus popular entertainment of the Stalin show trials; James, American Civilization, p. 161.
61. James, American Civilization, p. 184.
62. See, for example, his effective trivialisation of Trotsky's theory in James, Notes on Dialectics, p. 213.
63. C. L. R. James, 'The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in the USA', in The Future in the Present (London: Allison and Busby, 1977), p. 122.
64. C. L. R. James, 'Black Power', in Spheres of Existence, p. 233.
65. C. L. R. James, 'The Atlantic Slave Trade', in The Future in the Present, p. 249.
66. James, American Civilization, pp. 87, 96.
67. For example, see C. L. R. James, 'The Mighty Sparrow', in The Future in the Present, pp. 191-201. In general see Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (London: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), p. 252.
68. On the colonial intellectual, see especially C. L. R. James, The Case for West Indian Self Government (London: Hogarth Press, 1933); C. L. R. James, A History of Negro Revolt (London: Fact, 1938); and C. L. R. James, 'The West Indian Middle Classes', in Spheres of Existence, pp. 131-40.
69. Especially C. L. R. James, Beyond a Boundary (London: Yellow Jersey Press, 2005), p. 4. See also Bogues, Caliban's Freedom, p. 36; and Keith Worcester, '"A Victorian With the Rebel Seed": C. L. R. James and the Politics of Intellectual Engagement', in A. Hennessy (ed.), Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century Caribbean, vol. 1 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), p. 120.
70. For example, James, American Civilization, p. 171. See especially Bogues, Caliban's Freedom, p. 166. Hill notes that James read Spengler's Decline of the West at the same time as he read Trotsky for the first time; Robert A. Hill, 'Literary Executor's Afterword', in American Civilization, p. 297.
71. For example, James, American Civilization, pp. 148-53; and James, Beyond a Boundary, pp. 200-7.
72. James, Beyond a Boundary, pp. 27-40.
73. James, Beyond a Boundary, pp. 51-53, 124.
74. C. L. R. James, 'Rastafari at Home and Abroad', in At the Rendezvous of Victory (London: Allison and Busby, 1984), pp. 163-5. See also James, History of Negro Revolt, p. 82.
75. Hill, 'Literary Executor's Afterword', pp. 361-4.
76. See Paul Buhle, C. L. R. James - The Artist as Revolutionary (London: Verso, 1989), p. 60.
77. See Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso, 1993).
78. For example, C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins (London: Penguin, 2001), p. 305; C. L. R. James, 'The Making of the Caribbean People', in Spheres of Existence, p. 176.
79. See especially James, 'The Making of the Caribbean People', pp.182-3; and the appendix in James, The Black Jacobins. On this general point see Robinson, Black Marxism, p. 27.
80. See especially James, Black Jacobins, pp. 305-26; and C. L. R. James, 'Introduction', in Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution (London: Allison and Busby, 1977), pp. 23-4.
81. See especially James, History of Negro Revolt; and James, Black Jacobins, appendix.
82. James, 'Introduction', p. 19.
83. James, 'Introduction', p. 20.
84. James, 'Introduction', pp. 20-4.
85. C. L. R. James, 'Lenin and the Problem', in Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, p. 211.
86. C. L. R. James, 'Slippery Descent', in Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, p. 185.
87. For example, James, 'Lenin and the Problem', p. 197.
88. James, 'Lenin and the Problem', pp. 191-205.
89. See James's optimistic comments on Nyerere's Ujamaa in...Always out of Africa', in Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, pp. 214-23.
90. Michael Kelly, Modern French Marxism (Blackwell: London, 1982), p. 71.
91. Daniele Joly, The French Communist Party and the Algerian War (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 145-8; Tony Judt, Marxism and the French Left: Studies on Labour and Politics in France 1830-1981 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 188-91.
92. Arthur Hirsh, The French Left (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1982), p. 161.
93. Louis Althusser, 'On the Young Marx', in For Marx (London: Verso, 2005), pp. 60, 62.
94. Althusser, 'On the Young Marx', p. 64; Louis Althusser, 'From Capital to Marx's Philosophy', in Louis Althusser and Étienne Balibar, Reading Capital (London: New Left Books, 1977), p. 45.
95. Althusser, 'On the Young Marx', pp. 74-81. This view is reinforced later in Louis Althusser, 'Reply to John Lewis', in Essays in Self Criticism (London: New Left Books, 1976), pp. 44-5.
96. Althusser, 'On the Materialist Dialectic: On the Unevenness of Origins', in For Marx, p. 205.
97. Althusser, 'On the Materialist Dialectic', pp. 196-7.
98. Althusser, 'On the Materialist Dialectic', pp. 201-3.
99. Althusser, 'On the Materialist Dialectic', p. 209; and Louis Althusser, 'Contradiction and Overdetermination: Notes for an Investigation', in For Marx, pp. 99-101.
100. Althusser, 'Contradiction and Overdetermination', p. 95; Althusser, 'On the Materialist Dialectic', p. 216.
101. Althusser, 'Contradiction and Overdetermination', p. 113.
102. Althusser, 'Contradiction and Overdetermination', pp. 94-5; Althusser, 'On the Materialist Dialectic', p. 178.
103. See especially Althusser, 'On the Materialist Dialectic', p. 215.
104. Louis Althusser, 'Marxism Today', in Gregory Elliot (ed.), Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists and Other Essays (London: Verso, 1990), p. 276.
105. Althusser, 'Reply to John Lewis', p. 72; and in general, Louis Althusser, 'Lenin and Philosophy', in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (London: Verso, 2001), pp. 11-43.
106. Althusser looked favourably upon Mao's Cultural Revolution as the only concrete critique, so far, of the 'revenge of the Second International'. Louis Althusser, 'Note on "The Critique of the Personality Cult"', in Essays in Self Criticism, p. 92. On the importance of Maoism to Althusser see Gregory Elliot, Althusser, ch. 5.
107. Maria Macciocchi, Letters From inside the Italian Communist Party to Louis Althusser (London: New Left Books, 1973), pp. 4, 309; Louis Althusser, 'Appendix: Letter from Louis Althusser', in Régis Debray (ed.), A Critique of Arms, vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1977), p. 259; Louis Althusser, 'The Crisis of Marxism', in Il Manifesto (ed.), Power and Opposition in Post-Revolutionary Societies (London: Ink Links Ltd., 1979), pp. 230-1.
108. Macciocchi, Letters, p. 300.
109. Louis Althusser, 'What Must Change in the Party', New Left Review, 109, 1978, pp. 28-34.
110. Louis Althusser, 'The Historic Significance of the 22nd Congress', in Étienne Balibar (ed.), On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (London: New Left Books, 1977), pp. 198-9.
111. See Louis Althusser, 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses', in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, pp. 113-25.
112. Louis Althusser, 'Preface to Capital Vol. 1', in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, pp. 49-50.
113. Althusser, 'From Capital to Marx's Philosophy', p. 65.
114. Althusser, 'On the Materialist Dialectic', p. 212.
115. See Althusser, 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses', p. 85.
116. Louis Althusser, Machiavelli and Us (London: Verso, 1999).
117. For example, Louis Althusser, 'Introduction: Today', in For Marx, pp. 19-39.
118. Elliot, Althusser, p. 239.
119. Colin Wight, Agents, Structures and International Relations: Politics as Ontology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 174-6, 296-9.
120. This being said, further investigation into Althusser's Algerian roots could possibly reveal a reason for his curious sensitivity to the problem of 'backwardness'.
121. Heikki Patomäki most directly brings out the politics at stake in philosophy of social science debates in After International Relations. There is little work so far that directly situates the agent-structure problem vis-à-vis issues of moral judgement, but see Catherine Lu, 'Agents, Structures and Evil in World Politics', International Relations, 18(4), 2004, pp. 498-509. However, this seems to be changing. See, for example, the panel on Causation, Responsibility and International Relations in the 2007 British International Studies Association Conference (unpublished).