The Literary Importance of E. P. Thompson's Marxism Author(s): Michael Fischer Reviewed work(s): Source: ELH, Vol. 50, No.

4 (Winter, 1983), pp. 811-829 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2872928 . Accessed: 05/03/2013 11:20
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ELH.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

THE LITERARY IMPORTANCE OF E. P. THOMPSON'S MARXISM

BY MICHAEL FISCHER

Marxism is one of the manypathsnot takenby contemporary criticism.There are a fewwidelyread Marxistcritics literary (Fredric Jameson comes mostimmediately to mind).And nearly everyone agreesthatMarxism has something to contribute to our understanding ofliterature. Butmost contemporary critics tendto tolerate Marxism rather thanembraceit. Marxist ideas, it seems, are useful so longas theystaymarginal. Toreaders Marxism thethicket whoapproach of(mostly through negative) commentary thatstillkeeps it peripheral, it maycome as a surprise E. P. Thompson, makes that a self-described Marxist, Marxism many ofthe same pointsagainst say,in thework found, of Northrop workhas its Frye and J. Hillis Miller.Thompson's in this limitations, as I shallpointout later paper.Nevertheless, he remains ifneglected, in current an important, figure thinking Ata timewhentheattack has aboutliterary criticism. on Marxism become a dubious apology for despair, Thompson corrects Marxism without surrendering itstrust in historical understanding and political action.He challenges critics to earn contemporary their their fear-that is a flux confidence-really history which we can neither understand norcontrol. In whatfollows, I after recent criticisms ofMarxism, reviewing showthatThompson, and of the political too, is critical cruelty philosophical naiveteof some Marxists. Even so, he remains a disMarxist, forreasonsI go on to explainin partthree.After in the nextsection cussing whatI see-as the shortcomings ofhis his importance I concludeby defending forcontemporary work, criticism. literary
I INTRODUCTION: RECENT CRITICISMS OF MARXISM

the uneasiness Northrop Frye'scritiqueof Marxism expresses ofmany the extent thatMarxists critics. To contemporary literary speakoftheend ofcapitalism as a historically inevitable event,in Frye's view, theyconfusedesire withnecessity.They tryto 811

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

prove-and hope to live-what they can only imagine. They must resort to force, either because they are blindly convinced that they are right (hence they do not need the opinions of others), or because they unconsciously sense that they are wrong (hence they fear disagreement). When they are not self-deceived, they are hypocritical. Frye sounds like some Marxists when he says that "'the ethical purpose of a liberal education is to liberate, which can only mean to make one capable of conceiving society as free, classless, and urbane." But, he adds, "no such society exists" no such society can exist-so he describes history as "bondage" and concludes that "revolutionary action, of whatever kind, leads to the dictatorshipof one class and the record of historyseems clear that there is no quicker way of destroyingthe benefits of culture."1 The attempt to institutionalize the liberating benefits of culture squelches them: the revolutionaries end up expelling the poets, who won't sing hymns to any state, even one that is now "free." Commenting on Blake's disenchantment with the French Revo"it becomes manifestthat lution, Frye writes in Fearful Symmetry, the world is so constituted that no cause can triumphwithin it and still preserve its imaginative integrity.. . . The word 'revolution' itself contains a tragic irony: it is itself a part of the revolving of life and death in a circle of pain."2 Deconstructionists have taken the attack on Marxism even further. In a recent article J. Hillis Miller says that "the conservative aspect of deconstruction needs to be stressed": Its difference fromMarxism,which is likelyto become more visibleas timegoes on, is thatit viewsas naive the milsharply lennialor revolutionary hopes stillin one wayor another present Marxism. This millenarianism believesthat even in sophisticated a changein thematerial wouldtransbase or in theclassstructure in relation form to languageor changethe human our situation condition on the otherhand,sees the generally. Deconstruction, material notionof a determining base as one elementin the trait wantsto put in question.. .. Deditional metaphysical system thatfamous construction does notpromiseliberation from prison within it.3 house oflanguage, onlya different wayofliving Trapped in the prison house of language, we are helpless to study the world, much less to affectit. Whereas Frye allows for knowledge (ofthe "record of history"and so on) and forprogress (through the lessening of intolerance), Miller and Paul de Man turn even these windows into illusions created by the sequential, referential 812 E. P. Thompson

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

driftof words, which use us even as we claim to use them. Nevertheless, even deconstructionists try to plan for the future and learn fromthe past. But for them the tragic irony that Frye sees in revolution ruins all our attempts to master history, from "[changing] the human condition generally" to arranging to meet someone forlunch. As de Man observes in "Shelley Disfigured," deed, word, whether ofLzfewarnsus thatnothing, The Triumph to or negative, positive or text,everhappensin relation, thought butonlyas a or exists thatprecedes,follows, anything elsewhere, eventwhosepower,likethepowerofdeath,is due to the random us whyand howthese It also warns ofitsoccurrence. randomness system and aesthetic in a historical have to be reintegrated events ofits ofthe exposure regardless thatrepeatsitself ofrecuperation 4 fallacy. By reintegrating events in our various "historical and aesthetic system[s] of recuperation -among which de Man would surely include Marxism-we satisfythe need forcoherence in our lives, even though we presumably know thatnothingin lifeever happens in relation to anythingelse. There are nineteenth-centuryprecedents for each of these critiques of Marxism. Not only literarycritics, moreover, hold such views, as influential books by Robert Tucker, Leszek Kolakowski, Karl Popper, and many others indicate. As I said earlier, it may come as a shock that E. P. Thompson, a professed Marxist, makes many of these same points, against his fellow Marxists and even his own early work. Some Marxists, Thompson argues, deserve the reproach that Frye and others make of them-but not all Marxists,and certainlynot revolutionaryaction of any kind, much less our ability to make sense of history.
It THOMPSON'S CRITICISMS OF MARXISM

Of the many Marxist texts Thompson has criticized in the 1960s and 1970s, one is the first edition of his own William Morris, published in 1955 when he was still a member of the Communist Party.Thompson's tone changed-or, at least, his criticismof tendencies in Marxism became more pronounced-after 1956, when the Soviet invasion of Hungary made many reappraise (to put it mildly) the humanitarian claims of socialism. The firstedition of William Morris, Thompson notes in a 1976 postscript,was disfigured by unspecified "Stalinist pieties" and "hectoring political moralisms," by which I thinkhe means reassurances to the faithful Michael Fischer 813

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

the end ofcapguaranteed who stillheld thatthe laws ofhistory Thompsonmeantto stressthe moralcase thatMorris italism.5 But he ended up protecting capitalism. makesforoverthrowing confiMorris's Morris'sdeterminism; and possiblyexaggerating accordingly reasons) historical has to end (for dencethat capitalism that thatit oughtto end-the conviction eclipsedhis conviction place. in the first madehima socialist in William he endorsed he thinks that hardon theassumption very
of society is Morris, namely, that the economic infrastructure In The Povertyof Theoryand Other Essays (1978) Thompsonis

lawsthat to unbending future according a socialist toward moving firm Upon the supposedly withscientific precision. Marxcharted erect opposes Thompson Marxists whom the history, of foundation ofart,law,and so on. Some, superstructure a moreor less rickety suggest he favored, realists the socialist and Stalin mostnotably to communism, ofhistory ridetheprogress theartspassively that forinOthers an escalator. goingup like mannequins (Althusser, develop they relative autonomy: allowtheartsin particular stance) conventions, obey special ratethantherestofsociety, ata different Even so, "'in history. thatdrives theclass struggle and even affect phrase "ultimately"-the or "thelastinstance," thefinal analysis," them. varies-economicsdetermines condescension, is as hardas anyoneon the cruelty, Thompson needs of theimmediate thatresult.Put simply, and reductionism
individuals and, in Althusser, experience itselfbecome irrelevant because, in the long run, they are irrelevant. Appeals to the past seem especially futile: they collide with the progress of historyand leave not so much as a dent. Power becomes the right of those who have history on their side, and obedience or ineffectualresistance the lot of everyone else. Stalinism took this obsession with power to a ruthless extreme:

it bredcrimes.In aboutcrimes; was notabsent-minded Stalinism it rhetoric, "humanist" emitted Stalinism moment that the same modeofresas partofits necessary occludedthe humanfaculties beofinhumanity, (and stillstinks) Its verybreathstank piration. people as the bearersof cause it has founda way of regarding a subject.It is as a processwithout and history structures (kulaks) it is a heresyagainst flawedby errors; not an admirabletheory, in a can be summated reason,whichproposesthatall knowledge It is not and guardian. ofwhichit is thesole arbiter singleTheory, the good name suborning an imperfect "science,"but an ideology and authenticity rights ofsciencein orderto denyall independent

814

E. P. Thompson

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

It is notonlya compendium faculties. and imaginative tothemoral ceaselessly out of whichnew errors it is a cornucopia of errors, a mode of thought, ideological is a distinct, flow. . . . Stalinism forthe reproduction of"error" organization theoretical systematic "6 ofmore"error. tragically- Stalinism dismisses the "<moraland Ironically -and imaginative faculties" out of weakness, not strength. Its conviction that historyassures socialism is, at best, unverifiableand, at worst, highlyimprobable. Stalinism cannot stand the critical inquiry that it avoids. I agree with this indictment of Stalinism and would only add that Stalinism endangers literature in theory as well as in practice. In determinist versions of Marxism, literaryworks are "true" and "effective" when they correspond to the vision of history I have been discussing. When this vision turns out to be "<a systematic theoretical organization of 'error' " (to use Thompson's phrase) not science-then the literaryworks that this vision protects also suffer.The "support" that this kind of Marxism gives literature embrace, or kiss of death. Literature is true ends up a suffocating to . . . an anxious, unverifiable set of airy promises. Thompson is as blunt about the origins of such determinism as he is about its consequences. In mechanizing Marx-or in emlike Althusser have, phasizing his mechanism -interpreters among other things, mistaken metaphors for literal assertions. So much of Marxism has centered on the interpretationof metaphors, many of them mechanical, like the comment of Marx and Engels that the class struggle is "<theimmediate driving power of history" and the conflictbetween the bourgeoisie and proletariat"the great lever of the modern social revolution." While Althusser and others have tinkered with these metaphors-loosening the superstructure here, while making sure that is bolted to the infrastructure there-they have not realized that they are dealing with metaphors. And when Marx's levers, drive shafts,and so on are taken literally, they turn history into a remarkable machine, self-propelled by the class struggle to an end that can be known in advance. For Thompson, the metaphor finallydoes not work; history proves too tangled and uncertain to resemble even the most complicated machine. But the costly effortto mechanize history can succeed, though only to a point. Exceptions to the laws of history like Solzhenitsyn always threaten to jam the works.

Michael Fischer

815

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Closed or mechanical versions of Marxism have of course appealed to Western intellectuals for reasons that go beyond a few unhelpful metaphors in Marx. Thompson argues in The Poverty of Theory that the split between theory and practice, radical intellectuals and political action, to which he devotes so much of The Making of the English Working Class and William Morris has not disappeared; ifanything,it has widened. A disregard forthe needs and perceptions of the working class accordingly appeals to theorists who are already sequestered in academic institutionswhere "'their knowledge of the world is composed, increasingly, within their heads or their theories by non-observational means" (PT, 109). A long view of historythat daily experience can neither confirm nor refute is similarly attractive when the news-Hungary 1956, Prague 1968, Afghanistan1980-is mostlybad. "Mechanical materialism ('economism') must, when every evidence from the real world disproves its theories, when every socialist expectation is abjectly falsified, stop up its ears and eyes" (PT, 183). Uncompromising commitments to revolution also come easily to intellectuals who would like to be revolutionaries but can't, who consequently outdo each other's dedication to qualitative change and contempt for piecemeal reform,knowing, but of course never admitting, that their rhetoric remains just that-rhetoric. "There has never," Thompson thinks, of socialist intellectuals in the West withless been a generation . . . withless sense of whatthe of practical experience struggle menandwomen ofpractical intellectual can learnfrom experience, whichthe intellect mustowe and of the properdues of humility to this. . . . Isolated withinintellectual enclaves,the dramaof ".theoretical practice"maybecome a substitute formoredifficult thisdramacan assumeincreaspractical engagements. Moreover, inglytheatrical forms, a matter of grimaces and attitudinising, a strivesto be "more game of "chicken,"in which each theorist relations are involved, revolutionary thanthou."Since no political withand learn and no steady, to communicate enduring struggle froma public whichjudges, cautiously, by actionsratherthan thepressesmayreekwith terror professions, ideological andblood. (PT, 184-85) Unable to carry out their assertions, these theorists feel no need to take responsibility for them. Still, in Thompson's view, their ideas have consequences. If this kind of Marxism were "no more than one of the successive fashions by which the revolting Western intelligentsia can do their thing 816 E. P. Thompson

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

without practicalpain" (PT, 186), or onlyanotherway ofallowing

"<theaspirant academic to engage in a harmless revolutionary psycho-drama, while at the same time pursuing a reputable and conventional intellectual career" (PT, 186), then it would not be than that: worth repudiating. But it is more significant

It is enforcing the rupture It is dibetweentheory and practice. . . and activetheoretical verting good mindsfrom engagement comfort andarguments tothemost conservative elements affording Like all within the mostconservative Communist apparatuses. it arose. thisone confirms thesituation outofwhich ideologies, (PT, 187) Mechanistic Marxism reinforces the conditions -isolation, doubt, paralysis-that produce it.
III THOMPSON'S MARXISM

self-

While Thompson's criticisms of the socialist left are powerful and, in my opinion, accurate, they are not particularlyoriginal. But Thompson, as I have said, criticizes Marxism as a Marxist, which is why I have cited him so extensively(and sympathetically). His position is lonely. In much recent writing,as suggested earlier, the apparent failure of historyto live up to Marx's aspirations discredits them. In the absence of any hope of changing the human condition, to use Miller's phrase, we are leftwith what we have. In Thompson's words, in revolutionary The reactive pattern, by whichdisenchantment leads on, after creative difficulties and conflicts, to ulaspirations withthe pre-existent statusquo-or even timatereconciliation on behalfof the statusquo-is zealous ideological partisanship within culture. Andit has, within capdeeplyinscribed Western italist and legitiideologytoday,a veryimportant confirmatory function. because it can thenbe shown not mating Confirmatory, works is unworkable. butthatthealternative onlythatcapitalism because it can be shownnot onlythatcapitalism Legitimating, conforms to humannaturebut thatthe alternative is dangerous, and unnatural. immoral (PT, 394) Thompson himself is left with "the paradox that many of those whom 'reality' has proved to be wrong"-Marx, forexample, and William Morris, and the poets and radical craftsmencommemorated in Working Class-'<still seem to me to have been better people than those who were, with a facile and conformist realism, Michael Fischer 817

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

ever, contesting their necessity (Miller, de Man). Literature, for these critics, always seems to be warding offpressures that originate fromwithout, pressures that persist despite its influence. For Thompson, literature can say yes as well as no; it has a voice in the dictates that other critics regard as implacable and external. Thompson, to be sure, is describing the potential of literature, not its present importance. And for literature to be all that it can be, socialism must replace capitalism. By socialism Thompson, again like Morris, means a system in which "<moneyvalues" give way to "life values," to borrow a phrase he quotes from D. H. Lawrence. Socialism stands for self-determinationand equality, that is, for the freedom to do things for reasons that transcend economics. Necessity does not disappear in a socialist society: Thompson does not imagine eradicating work, for example, or death, or needs like hunger. But if we cannot do as we please, we still do not have to do everythingout of economic necessity (much less do we have to go hungry). Literature can have a say in our choices. Thompson is suggesting that capitalism hampers the arts, not that it represses them with the same severity as, say, a modern "socialist"> state. In capitalist societies, we write poems, attend plays, and take literature courses when we can. But we define CCcan" economically: we position our artistic interests around our other ones, like gettingor keeping a job that has littlevalue besides the money that it brings in (and the noneconomic benefits of work are fringe benefits). The pattern of reacting to pressures from without, which I have observed in Frye and others, originates 818 E. P. Thompson

right. I would stillwishto justify the aspirations ofthosewhom 'history,' at thispointin time,appearsto have refuted" (PT, 396). These aspirations includeallowing greater powerto literature thaneithermechanical Marxists or theorists like Fryecan countenance.Thompson, like Morris, wantsto makeliterature an authority thathas a vetopowerovereverything else in our lives,or at leastan equal say.Literature can notonlystimulate desirebut educateit,directing thelonging for changethatit inspires toward ends thatare feasibleand right. Thompson's aggressive view of literature clasheswiththedefensive postures ofFryeand the deconstructionists, forwhomliterature is reacting to circumstances thatit cannot control, providing individuals a measure offreedom thatno society can takeaway(Frye),or exposing thearbitrariness of our legal, ethical,and educational conventions howwithout,

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

here,in the peripheral importance thatcapitalism assigns to the arts(whichis not, again, to say thatthe artsare powerless). wantsto put literature in the centerof Thompson, like Morris, things, organizing workas well as leisurearound thevaluesthat literature a vocational cansanction. for literature Claiming function entails it an end in nothing less thanhumanizing work,making itself, nota meansto a weekendthatsupposedly legitimizes the five other days. I almost saidearlier that wants toputliterature back Thompson in the centerof things, so greatis his sense ofloss in Working and other and Hunters, books.ButThompson aims Class,Whigs at goingthrough lifeto something modern which forhim better, with thevaluesoftheprecapitalist doesmeansomething consonant past-with memories ofemployer offair obligations, wagesand flexible prices,of pridein craftsmanship, of self-imposed, work ofwork with and especially oftheintegration intellecschedules, life.Learning thepastdoes not tual,family, and community from it. necessitate trying (vainly) to duplicate willunderstandably Manyreaders (I am one ofthem) wantto intends to do all this. Humanizing work knowhow Thompson soundsgood,but what,in practice, wouldit mean-machinists reading or an autoworker Shelley on their breaks, creatively puttingtogether his own car? I am reminded of RobertSouthey's thePantisocracy andI aresawing hopesfor down ("<when Coleridge a treewe shalldiscuss criticize whenhunting metaphysics, poetry a buffalo, and writesonnets whilst following the plough")7 and under Marx'sfamous comment on labor communism ("in communist wherenobody has an exclusive area of society, however, himself he wishes, andeachcantrain inanybranch activity society it possible regulates thegeneral production, making forme to do one thing to huntin the morning, todayand another tomorrow, fish in the afternoon, breedcattlein the evening, criticize after everbecoming a hunter, a fisherman, dinner, justas I like,without a herdsman, or a critic").8 intellectuals Manycontemporary doubt thata society and survive-thatthe fields could be so flexible wouldstillgetplowed, thecattle taken careof,and so on.9Intimidatedby specialists, we find thecomplexity ofdifferent activities so overwhelming thatwe cannotimagine them(discombining at thesametime seemshardenough without cussing metaphysics
sawing down a tree, or runninga computer). Most literarycritics consequently have settled for more modest defenses of the use-

Michael Fischer

819

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

fulness of the arts to work,when we have thought about such things at all. Insteadofarguing thata literary education, forexample,equips students forwork,we suggest thatit does not irrevocably incapacitate them.Withpropertraining (in law school, say,or in a bank),even Englishmajorscan tailorsome of their skills intosomething thatbusinesses need. The weaknessof the socialist movement adds to doubtsabout it. Thompson has not escaped the isolation, and demoralization, thatplague the left;ifanything his unfashionable powerlessness mixof Marxism has made him even more of a and humanism maverick thanthe Althusserian Marxists he criticizes. Thompson admits thathis socialism has no moremerged himwiththe proletarian massesthanMorris's did. His own
commitment has been to an "International" ofthe imagination, in realmovements, which hashadonly defleeting embodiment with tached from Stalinism andfrom unequivocally both complicity thereasons has ofcapitalist To maintain that commitment power. within this beentobe an "alien" notonly butwithin country great itself. sections ofthepurported socialist andMarxist movement (PT,iii)

By Thompson's own admission, "the readetaching oneself from sons of capitalistpower" is itselfan ambiguous,ifformidable, achievement in a society as "greasily accommodating" (to borrow a phraseofAlfred all as America. Kazin's) Englandor For Thompson'sfierce determination to endorse"'anunmistakable anti-capitaliststandpoint -"no word of minewill wittingly be added to the comforts of thatold bitchgone in the teeth,consumer capitalism" 392)-he realizes that a "certain style of intellectual (PT, revolt"> also has its "subsidiary to the niche, as ornamentation" status prevailing quo.
So thattheproblem intellectual is twofold: ofa socialist (a) the near-impossibility ofnotselling himself, ofnotbeing"taken up" in certain ofcomsecondary and (b) thenear-impossibility ways, municating atall inprimary anddeeply serious ways... . Forone in this to survive asmust, as an unassimilated socialist infinitely One similative into ofawkwardness. culture, putoneself a school must all knobbly-all knees andelbows of makeone'ssensibility the andrefusal-if oneis nottobe pressed susceptibility through ofthereceived of grid intotheuniversal mish-mash assumptions theintellectual culture.
(PT, 393-94)

The awkward measures one takesto stay clearofcapitalism-doing

820

E. P. Thompson

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

in socialist publishing corporate without presses,blasting grants, has doneThompson of which all on everyoccasion, capitalism work). (ifthesemeasures thecauseone is espousing isolate further impossible. themseemsalmost compromising ideaswithout cialist he contribevery Insteadofsolving nothis master. ally, problem, giveal"One may on. carries Thompson that a tradition uted to reminds Thompson to a tradition," legiance us, not and islargely expression codified its that while holding wrong, must go (which wrong were ideas ofthemaster's that some only can ofGod)but-andthis we areservants unless saying without right were that ideas profoundly certain be more significant-that falsified an expression that setoutas system) given were (when ways. them inperceptible
(PT, 328-29)

soassimilative culture," communicating In such an "infinitely

Still, Thompsonis a Marxist.Marx, to be sure, is Thompson's

Marx with another is siding Thompson a Marxist, himself In calling with iron necessity of "<working history the one who spoke besides and the one canonizedby Althusser inevitable toward results," Stalin. Thompson'sMarx valued experience,even thoughhe especially otherdisciplines, it. He respected misread sometimes by the ambitions revolutionary testing thearts,and he advocated the Marxdid not alwayspractice ofhistory. conditions objective his Butfor Thompson, he preached. that thefacts before openness hismisindicts to dailylifeoutweighs responsiveness and,in fact, takes. than however, Marxhas moreto offer, According to Thompson, broke.If Marxwas sometimes wrong, a set ofrulesthathe often In Thompson's he was also right. view,thereis, forexample,a thatrests on thepursuit is a system capitalism logicto capitalism: tendstoward and therefore self-interest waste,conofeconomic preThis is notto say thatMarxaccurately and inequality. flict, capitalist or thata particular ofcapitalism dictedthedevelopment in every detailtoevery letaloneidentical is homogeneous, society classes,naBecause individuals, regions, other society. capitalist ofthe we do notfeelthe pressures and occupations differ, tions, we do, but in everything the samewayeverywhere marketplace we feelthem. earthquake, likea moreor less distant thathistory too,to assert In Thompson's view,Marxwas right, the we meanto emphasize ifby dialectically movesdialectically, harwithin any apparently static, and possibilities contradictions MichaelFischer 821

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

monious, or uniformwhole. "Any historical moment," Thompson writes, "is both a result of prior process and an index toward the direction of its futureflow" (PT, 47). Thompson can also say, with Marx, that conflicts between classes generate change, although Thompson emphasizes that numerous choices-not all of them economic-affect the ways in which classes are formed. Change, moreover, is lawful,ifonly in the sense that the past limits,without ever determining, what follows. Finally, while "'the project of sonot by 'Science', cialism is guaranteed BY NOTHING-certainly or by Marxism-Leninism" (PT, 171)-socialism forThompson is a possible outcome of present day capitalism (one of many). He speaks of grafting socialism onto existing resources, like the working-classand literarytraditionshe analyzes in Working Class and William Morris (if socialism is to come about, he stresses, we must build on what we have. The future"<will not be made out of some Theorist's head" [PT, iv]). He even suggests that "'a capitalist society with mature democratic traditionscould be nearer to becoming a democratic classless society than a backward socialist country,with a corrupt and authoritarianruling parasitism" (PT, 381). But he prefers socialism because he morally approves of it, not only because he thinks it is possible. He concedes, however, that we cannot be rightabout the possibility or desirability of socialism if we construe correctness according to the scientificnorm that Karl Popper and others invoke in their well-known critiques of Marx. Marx may have thoughthe was a scientist, but Thompson agrees with Popper that he wasn't. From a scientificviewpoint-as both Popper and Thompson define science-Marx's writings mingle economics with personal value judgments, vague categories, hypotheticallaws, and imprecise metaphors, none of which a scientist can verifythrough observation and experiment, all of which Marx mistook for"positive science." With their stylized characters (the working class, for instance, or the bourgeoisie), contrived plots (capitalism giving birth to the class that will be its gravedigger), makeshiftimages (superstructure, infrastructure, and so on), and authorial intrusions, Marx's writingsresemble nineteenth-century novels, not scientific reports. Thompson goes further than tolerating or even enjoying the literaryside of Marx. He says that we cannot write historywithout everythingthat makes Marx unscientific. Because in Thompson's view the phenomena we study are always changing, our categories

822

E. P. Thompson

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

have to be tentative. Insofar as the wholeofsociety eludesour grasp, ourhistories must be selective. We aredescribing a process that is notfinished, so ournarratives willalways be inconclusive. We haveto speakin terms and pressures oftendencies thatunforeseeable contingencies mayqualify or evendiscredit. The process we are trying to explain-no matterhow remote-has created us; we cannot be neutral aboutit. Andtherelationships we are dealing with are so fluid that only metaphors (like"fluid") can beginto describethem.No value-free, literal, or scientific is possible. history Or desirable. ForThompson claims that canstill history be true, despiteits unscientific status.Here is wherehe separates from Althusser, deconstructionists Popper,and Frye,not to mention likeMiller. He argues that we can testmetaphors andvaluejudg10 ments theevidence that aimat clarifying. against The base/ they superstructure metaphor, for is misleading when instance, we take it literally, and organic metaphors thatroottheartsand so on in their socialcontext are notmuchbetter, eventhough theseallow forgrowth artists and their (unlike plants, think, affect thoughts their growth as wellas their surroundings). Still, thesemetaphors moreor less adequately, as metaphors. work, Thompson (metaphorically) compares thebase/superstructure to a signmetaphor in thewrong post"pointing theone-way toward direction," generation ofideological effects from economic causes. He accepts, theplacetoward however, themetaphor which that "mis-points," is, thesymbiotic interaction (another between thearts metaphor) andtherest ofsocial life.Historical is a succession discourse, then, of metaphors thatapproach, but neverreach,whattheytryto describe. Whereas deconstructionists thegap thatreemphasize mains-the metaphors arestill notliteral metaphors, copiesofthe inaccessible realthing-Thompson thetentative emphasizes progressthat we make.Instead ofcancelling eachother ina futile effort to gethistory thehistorian's right, buildon eachother metaphors without ofcourse, ceasing, to be metaphors. instead ofavoiding valuejudgments, Similarly, tries Thompson to makeresponsible ones. It is extremely difficult to say what in this In sympathizing means context. "responsible" with theradical craftsmen in Working in sidingwith Class-more bluntly, them against the"exploitive andoppressive intrinsic relationships to industrial is relying on the workers' capitalism"-Thompson ownqualitative as wellas on datameasuring theincijudgments
MichaelFischer 823

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

It wouldbe easyfor and so on.11 dence ofdisease,costofliving, as interests, thatvalues maskeconomic Thompson ifhe thought thenhe couldcalculate ofMarxism havesuggested: someversions off under capitalism, classwasbetter orworse whether theworking it. ButThompson in opposing shortsighted orastute and therefore on valuesforits "bourgeois outlook criticizes such a reductionist towards the philistinism utilitarian notionof 'need,'" its "paltry arts,"and its failure to see that"whatcannotbe measuredhas material consequences" measurable had somevery (PT, 172, 175). history Thompson wouldalso have it easierifhe let subsequent and the be thejudge, thewinner ofcoursebeingright (capitalism) refuses thisway out, too, in part loserswrong.But Thompson thejury,which because history has not yetdeclaredits verdict; includes us, is stillout.
IV CRITIQUE
AND CONCLUSION

is vindication of Marxism As I said at the outset,Thompson's has shown limited.I cannotclaim,forexample,thatThompson thata more humane societyis possible thatlife values can ofproduccontrol valueswithout corporate triumph overmoney or selfbureaucracy way to an even moreinflexible tiongiving righteous set of commissars-althoughothershave picked up in greatdetail Williams has shown wherehe leavesoff. Raymond howwe can go "beyond socialism" (suchas it is) actually existing Lasch has in EasternEurope and in the West. And Christopher capthatwe can predict the demiseofconsumer even suggested assurance": italism "with inflaof runaway unemployment, Chronic energy, rising shortages have undermined the of western colonialism andthe decline tion, have deeconomic foundations of hedonistic self-expression. They oftwentieth-century capitalism, thehistoric compromise stroyed for inwhich ofwork the conditions degrading people exchanged leisure-the cultiofconsumption andcommercialized pleasures new appetite for its unappeasable of the self, with vation products, new It isnow clear that the Western new taste treats. sensations, this a culture andI mean world afford of narcissism, cannolonger butas a description statement as a form exhortation ofmoral not crisis of fact. economic andecological crisis-the Ourimpending now toanend-willdeofuninhibited coming capitalist growth, and mand but not narcissistic collective discipline self-exploration theonly There be any doubt about this; sacrifice. cannolonger will iswhether the be democratically necessary sacrifices question 824 E. P. Thompson

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

manner or imposed in a democratic decidedupon and distributed state.'2 by an authoritarian Neither Lasch nor Williams, however, can be as sanguine about the possibility of socialism as, say, Marx or Morris. "What now has to be proved," Williams (himself a socialist) notes, "before an informed and sceptical audience, is indeed possibility. . . . [W]e are no longer in any position to cry great names or announce necessary laws, and expect to be believed. The informationand the scepticism are already too thoroughly lodged at the back of our own minds.'"13 Even ifwe concede that socialism is feasible, Thompson still has to show that it is desirable. His problem here is not so much that or equality as that so many a few people oppose self-determination regard value judgments as subjective preferences. Debating values becomes impossible, and we are left with a more or less civil shouting match (to simplify drastically a point I have made at greater length elsewhere).14 Thompson insists that we can argue for certain values and he notes that "the mutually-exclusive epistemological integrities of 'fact' and 'value', once axiomatic within Anglo-Saxon analytical thought, may not, after all, be unbridgeable" (PT, 359). But his claim that we can reason about values needs more support. Presumably without lapsing into relativism, he disavows any natural basis for morality(much less any theological one). And while he holds out the possibility that "<aninfinitelysubtle, empirically-founded" psychology may be able objectively health fromneurosis, he concedes that such a psyto differentiate chology has yet to be developed. Even if we could say that an methods individual is sick, we would still have to fashion different to say the same of a society. While Thompson says that our moral and political judgments can be rational, he has yet to show that objective norms exist. I am not sure how he supports his own values. Much the same incompleteness limits his discussion of literature. His claims for literature, again, are ambitious: writers can not only assert values; they can substantiate their judgments and help implement them without ceasing to write good literature. The Prelude, for instance, argues for its values in a logical and disciplined way that proves them (PT, 181). News from Nowhere directs, as well as stimulates, dissatisfactionwith the present, and not simply because its conclusions supposedly harmonize with

Michael Fischer

825

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Marxism,as Thompsonimplied when he called the novel a "SciUtopia" in William Morris. "There are disciplinedand unentific disciplinedways of 'dreaming',"he writes,"but the disciplineis and not of science" (WM, 793). ofthe imagination is logical and disciplined, While Thompson says thatliterature he never spells out the logic involved. He is not a close reader of seem limited to literature his references texts.Although extensive, and metaphorsthat, I imagine, stick in his mind to statements because they vividlymake political points. He seems blissfully and othersofthe problemsraisedby deconstructionists ignorant the hetof interpretations, problemsbearingon the verifiability erogeneityof narrative,and so on. He even clouds the logic of thathe wantsto defendwhen he seems to oppose imagliterature inative writingto thinking,faultinganother Morris scholar for art,and to insistthatit can be validated "to intellectualize wanting into termsof knowledge,consciousnessand onlywhen translated concept: art seen, not as an enactmentof values, but as a reenterms of theory"(WM, 798). Thompson is actmentin different to allegorize art (for reactinghere against his earlier inclination he implied "nowhere, in News from Nowhere, read Communism, in William Morris). Out of a laudable desire to protectthe authem of the arts,he warnsrepeatedlyagainst"'translating tonomy into cerebration"(PT, 315). But the disciplinethatvalidates litand so on erature-if not thatofscience, theory, "cerebration," worksearn He has to show how literary still needs identifying. their visions, to borrow a phrase of the New Critics, whom Thompsonresemblesin claimingthatthereis a "disciplineof the a disciplinethathe has not yet made clear. imagination," than be true seems stronger Thompson'slongingthatliterature the case he makes forits truth.He suggests-and I agree-that as we believe them to be true. In us insofar worksaffect literary part, this point rests on an observationthatmimeticcriticsfrom thatpeople have made, namely, to Lionel Trilling Samuel Johnson thoughtheyofcourse differ thanfiction, taketruth more seriously and real. "Seriously"here meain what they regard as fantastic of discourseon actions:we act on advice, instrucsures the effect tions,and so on thatwe believe in, unless we are desperate. Establishing the truthof literature, then, is not just a semantic thatliterature has problembut one thattouches on the authority in our lives. While Thompsonis aware ofthe problem,he has not

solvedit. 15
826

E. P. Thompson

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

the creation of a bourgeois culture, finally separates from it." It "'musteither pass into the ranks of the proletariat or, going quietly into a corner, cut its throat."''6Among other things, Caudwell exaggerates the weakness of humanism and the strengthof the proletariat. Where he sees a choice-proletarian revolution or despair-I see a less clear-cut set of circumstances in which we can make specific gains, short of revolution.'7 Our plight is not so desperate that only socialism will better it. Nevertheless, Caudwell anticipates (if oversimplifies)the self-destructivenessthat has overtaken much recent criticism. In the apparent absence of political hope, critics have been taking back much of what past theorists claimed for literature-much of what our personal experience still tells us is important about it. They no longer feel that literature can clarify,let alone change, our lives. Thompson does not answer these critics-his argument is too open-ended-but he should make us thinktwice about them. For all their skepticism, many contemporary critics are remarkablysuspiciously-assured about their own assumptions. They rarely consider the possibility that their pessimism may be an excuse for inaction, a way of living with what we have, not absolute truthor liberation. Whether the subject is socialism, or the cognitive credentials of literature, ethics, and history,these critics are "<always already" convinced (to use a currently fashionable phrase) that someone like Thompson cannot be right. They knowthat revolutionaryaction of any kind destroys the benefits of culture; that the record of historyvitiates the hope fora free society of equals; that we can never exchange the prison house oflanguage forthe bracing air of fact; that "<nothing, whether deed, word, thought or text, ever happens in relation, positive or negative, to anything" else; that "there is always and only bias, inclination," and prejudice (Harold Bloom);'8 that critical interpretations are "irreducibly," "inexorably," and "necessarily" undecidable (Miller); that "all ethical-political statements" of obligation are arbitrary(Jacques Der-

I think he is on theright track. In linking thefateofliterature to respect foritstruth and, moregenerally, to socialism, Thompson indicates the direction thatothersmustfollow if literature (and thehumanities) are to acquiretheattention thatmany ofus think theydeserve.The differences betweenThompson and, say,the deconstructionists confirm Christopher Caudwell'sacerbic predictionin FurtherStudiesin a DyingCulture(1949): "Humanism,

Still, as quixoticas the suggestionmay sound to some readers,

Michael Fischer

827

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

rida).19 The critics who make such sweeping statements are not skeptical; they are omniscient. By staking out a position detached from Stalinism and from "the reasons of capitalist power," Thompson affirms our ability not only to interpret the world but to change it. At the very least, he challenges recent critics to earn their despair. At most, by showing that social change-more exactly, the triumph of "life values" over "money values" is necessary to the rehabilitation of the humanities, he points the way out of our present problems. Universityof New Mexico
FOOTNOTES 347.
2

1 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957),

Frye, Fearful Symmetry (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1947), 217-18. I comment furtheron this antipolitical tendency in Frye in my "The Legacy of English Romanticism: Northrop Frye and William Blake," Blake An Illustrated Quarterly 11 (1978), 282-83. 3 J.Hillis Miller, "Theory and Practice: Response to Vincent Leitch," Critical Inquiry 6 (1980), 612-13. 4 Paul de Man, "Shelley Disfigured," in Harold Bloom, et al., Deconstruction and Criticism (New York: Seabury, 1979), 69. 3 E. P. Thompson, William Morris (1955; rpt. New York: Pantheon, 1976), 769. Cited in text as WM. 6 E. P Thompson, The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (New Yorkand London: Monthly Review, 1978), 140. Cited in text as PT. Numerous allusions to Althusser ("history as a process without a subject," etc.) inform this passage. In a brilliant statement too long to cite here, Thompson concludes that "Althusserianism is Stalinism reduced to the paradigm of Theory. It is Stalinism at last, theorized as ideology" (182). Thompson's critique of Althusser applies to the literary critics who have been influenced by him (I think especially of Pierre Macherey and Terry Eagleton). On Macherey,see my review ofA Theoryof LiteraryProduction,Applied Linguistics1 (1980), 175-76. 7 Robert Southey to W H. Bedford, 22 August 1974, quoted in Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lectures 1795 on Politics and Religion, ed. Lewis Patton and Peter Mann (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1971), xxiii. 8 Karl Marx, The German Ideology, in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, ed. and trans. Loyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat (Garden City, N. Y: Anchor, 1967), 424-25. 9 Not that the fields and cattle are being taken care of in our own seemingly more efficient society. Mechanization and specialization do not necessarily pay off in increased productivity, much less in high-quality products. Besides, as John Ruskin pointed out, the most important product of labor is the laborer. 10In a spirited defense of the logic of historical inquiry, Thompson argues that facts and evidence do exist, even if not as entities independent of the historian's investigative procedures. Although the facts only speak in response to the historian's questions, they do speak. 11E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963; rpt. New York: Vintage, 1966), 832.

828

E. P. Thompson

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

12 Christopher Lasch, "Politics and Social Theory: Reply to the Critics,"' Salmagundi 46 (Fall, 1979), 200. 13 See Raymond Williams, "Beyond Actually Existing Socialism," New Left Review 120 (March-April, 1980), 3-19. 14 See, for example, "The Imagination as a Sanction of Value: Northrop Frye and the Uses of Literature," Centennial Review 21 (1977), 105-17; and "Is Literature Still Worth Discussing?," my essay-review of Wayne C. Booth, Critical Understanding, Georgia Review 34 (1980), 678-81. 15 This is not to say that the problem is insoluble. For a vigorous defense of the referentialpower of literature, see, forexample, Gerald Graff,Literature Against Itself (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979). 1' Christopher Caudwell, Further Studies in a Dying Culture, quoted in Richard Ohmann, English in America (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1976), 91. 17 In English departments, forexample, we can make improvements by taking many of the steps that The State of the Discipline 1970s-1980s and other recent books have endorsed, like emphasizing teaching in tenure and promotion decisions, expanding our introductory course offerings,shoring up our commitment to writing, and so on. I am not arguing that such measures are worthless, only that we can be more ambitious. While we are taking these small, if important, steps, we should also be thinking about how much furtherwe can go. 8 Harold Bloom, 'The Breaking of Form," in Deconstruction and Criticism, 9. 19Jacques Derrida, "Limited Inc. abc ..," trans. Samuel Weber, Glyph 2 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1977), 240.

Michael Fischer

829

This content downloaded on Tue, 5 Mar 2013 11:20:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions