Poverty of Theory: An Orrery of Errors [Paperback]

"The Poverty of Theory" is a collection of essays by E.P. Thompson, the famous British socialist historian. It contains four essays, of which the first one, for which the collection is named, spans about half the book.

This essay, "The Poverty of Theory: Or an Orrery of Errors", is a 200-ish page demolishing of Althusser and the Althusserian tendency within socialist theory. With excellent wit, insight and a clear writing style Thompson shows how Althusser has fallen into every possible idealist trap while trying to maintain a Marxism of the kind that Marx himself constantly warned against. The theses and claims of Althusser, with all their philosophical posturing and word-games, are revealed as being mostly meaningless and if not that, quite dangerously wrong. Especially Althusser's total failure to understand the procedures of historical science is brilliantly demonstrated. This essay should be required reading for any Marxist interested in philosophy and in particular those sympathetic to structuralism.

The second essay is called "Outside the Whale", and is a general critique of the conservative, apathetic political stance of intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s, ranging from Orwell to Kingsley Amis. Thompson uses the likes of Wordsworth and Blake to defend the possibility of progress and the importance of being politically engaged. This essay is short, but effective, and contains many memorable phrases.

Next comes "The Peculiarities of the English", which is, despite what one would expect from an essay with that title, not a discussion of the peculiarities of the English but a rebuttal of Perry Anderson and Tom Nairn. These had, in different articles, denigrated British history and the British classes as not conforming to their expectations of societal progress. Thompson both refutes this and criticizes the 'platonist' tendency to use concepts like "the Revolution" and "the Bourgeoisie" as models to which real history should aspire and conform. This essay has been used now and then to accuse E.P. Thompson of petty nationalism for Britain, but considering the real content that makes one wonder whether those accusers have actually read it. In any case the debate between Thompson and Anderson is a little passé now, but it may be of some interest to Marxist historians and historiographers.

The last essay is probably the most famous, and infamous, one Thompson has written: his "Open Letter to Leszek Kolakowski". The 'letter' is a response to Kolakowski's justified anger at socialists and their stance towards Soviet society, published as "Responsibility and History" in the literary magazine Nowa Kultura. E.P. Thompson agrees fully with Kolakowski's polemics against the Soviet state and society, but tries at the same time to defend socialism in general and Marxism in particular as an intellectual 'approach', one that should not in his view be permanently tainted with the blood of Stalin's (and others') victims. The essay itself is difficult to judge on its merits, so the reader had better decide for herself. In any case Kolakowski was not at all pleased with it and wrote an angry rebuttal, to which Thompson never responded, saying that he felt it did not address what he had meant. The debate between the two has had some renewed interest recently, with Tony Judt writing about it in the New York Review of Books (because of the new one-volume edition of Kolakowski's "Main Currents of Marxism") of last month, obviously supporting Kolakowski. Judt's article is quite silly but may be a good introduction to this essay for the novice.

Altogether, this essay collection is very worthwhile, both because of its content and because of the highly entertaining and stimulating writing style of the author. A must-have for socialists.

E P Thompson liked to associate himself with "reason", although it took a combination of Stalinism in the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and tanks on the streets of Budapest before he deserted the former and presented the anti-democratic impulse of the latter as unrepresentative of Marxism. Shortly after Khrushchev admitted Stalin's crimes against the Soviet people Thompson and John Saville published "The Reasoner " for discussion within the ranks of the CPGB, retaining membership in the mistaken belief that reason and Communism were compatible. He became part of the Marxist movement which claimed, despite evidence to the contrary, that humanism lay at the heart of Marxist philosophy.

Acknowledging the British Labour movement never cared much for theory, Thompson bemoaned the sense of isolation experienced by Marxist intellectuals which he attributed to the suppression of reason. He never considered that his commitment to Marxism represented the subjection of reason to error. His reputation amongst Marxists "as the greatest English historian of the twentieth century, a dedicated peace activist, superb polemicist and radical visionary" depends on an acceptance of the Marxist analysis of history which has proved to be the enemy of rational thought. The claim that Thompson, "restored the exploited and oppressed to their rightful place as makers of history" sits alongside Jack and the Beanstalk in the annals of fairy tales.

Thompson's perception of the real world was skewed by his irrationality. His belief that the 1968 student uprisings provided an opportunity for socialism to succeed, which was lost because of the failure of the Communist Parties to join the over-privileged immature radicals on the barricades, was considered ludicrous at the time and appears even more so today. He resigned from Warwick University in 1971 claiming it functioned for the benefit of British industry. Forty years on Warwick remains, Thompson's ideas have ossified along with those of Marcuse, Debray and Fromm amongst others. So too have the structuralist ideas of the mentally unstable Louis Althusser.

The debates between Marxists on the subject became - and remain - matters of historical curiosity devoid of intellectual substance. While accusing Althusser of reconstructing Stalinism "at the level of theory" Thompson reveals an inability to renounce his own faith in Marxism which he presents as reason. Having abandoned reason he deludes himself into believing that Marx's humanism was interrupted - not destroyed - by his later studies of modes of production and that freedom was the ultimate purpose of revolutionary action. Marxist humanists emphasised the role of human agency in the process of change, opposing Althusser's structuralism and claiming the choice within the Marxist tradition was, ""between idealist irrationalism and the operative and active reason."

Thompson made no pretence that "The Poverty of Theory" was anything other than a polemic. His purpose was to caricature his opponents but the final product was a crude burlesque. A striking feature of Thompson's writing is his over-developed sense of his own importance, reflecting his erroneous belief that he was articulating a rational analysis of the real world. He argued that the humanism he found in Marx's early writing remained integral to Marx's later output. This was at odds with Althusser's claim that there was a clean break between the two. Thompson accused Althusser of rejecting "the entire tradition of substantive historical and political analysis, and its accumulating (if provisional) knowledge....... Althusserian Marxism is not only an idealism but has many of the attributes of a theology."

Yet the same can be said of Thompson. Marx's early writings refer to the idea of alienation which, essentially, is a secular version of the Christian doctrine of man's fall from grace. While Feuerbach had attributed alienation to the idea of God, Marx attributed alienation to the capitalist mode of production. Thompson's adherence to the supposedly humanistic Marx provided him with an unquestioning article of faith in the inevitability of social change. The myth of historical materialism simply served to identify that the weakness of his argument lay in empirical evidence. Marxist humanism is an oxymoron untouched by Marxist historiography. Yet this underpinned Thompson's erroneous belief that Britain was ready for socialism, notwithstanding the political reality of Labour in power and the futility of regarding university students as a Communist revolutionary vanguard.

Thompson's relationship with the New Left quickly soured once Perry Anderson took editorial control of the New Left Review. Displaying the irrationality of the Marxist viewpoint Anderson argued the reason for the non-revolutionary traditions in the British Labour movement could be traced to the failure of the bourgeoisie to fulfill its historic role. Thompson replied with his essay "The Peculiarities of the English" in which he accused Anderson of fitting history into a pre-conceived model of economic development inapplicable to English conditions. That he was doing the same thing escaped Thompson's notice. Thompson's emphasis on the activism of the British working classes did not stretch to an evaluation of the utility of the term "bourgeoisie" in a society which did not recognise it. Thompson's irrationality blinded him to political realism as the monolithic Marxist control of Eastern Europe collapsed around him. Thompson was not the intellectual giant Marxists claim but an idol with feet of clay.

Marxist irrationality remains, often schismatically, amongst those who claim historical materialism is valid, that socialism is workable within a democratic framework and that academic discussion, anarchistic action and armchair revolution are engines of change. Ignoring empirical evidence they produce theories to claim revolution is round the corner - and the next corner - ad infinitum. As an exponent of an inherently incoherent theory incapable of creating a "revolutionary consciousness" Thompson showed himself to be as irrelevant to the real world as the socialist humanism he proclaimed. For anyone interested in the contortions of Marxist theory this is worth four stars.