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Althusser's Catholic MarxismRoland Boer

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Althusser’s Catholic Marxism

Roland Boer

What role do Louis Althusser’s early theological essays play in his later work? Quite alot, I argue in this article. By following through the shift in four key essays from 1946to 1951, we can trace not only Althusser’s reluctant abandonment of the RomanCatholic Church, but also the emergence of patterns of thought that would stay withhim in his later, fully Marxist period. On the one hand, he would continue touniversalize in a fashion he picked up from the Catholic Church’s own practice ofuniversalizing, especially in his arguments concerning ideology. On the other hand,the Church would become the ‘absent cause’ of his later work, permeating it throughallusions, examples, and longer arguments, especially the effort to historicize it andthen recast it as idealism.

Key Words: Louis Althusser, Ideology, Theology, Roman Catholic Church, Marxism

Only a religion can pretend to ‘‘say everything.’’*/Althusser, Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists

More than one critic has passed over Louis Althusser’s early theological texts in

embarrassed silence.1 They have only followed Althusser’s lead for, after his break

with the Church, his rejection of religion seemed complete. I want to argue that such

an assumption leaves critical appreciation of Althusser stunted, as the relationship

between his early theological phase and his later Marxism is far more complex.

In what follows I pursue three lines of argument. The first is to trace the gradual

breakdown of Althusser’s attempted alliance between progressive Roman Catholicism

and Marxism, a breakdown that led to his opting for Marxism over against the Church.

Second, across this break, some of the formal elements of his theological writings

made their way into his later work. In fact, the break smoothed their passage,

displacing and reshaping them for service in Althusser’s Marxism. The most glaring

example is the shift from Catholic to Marxist universalism. In fact, the Church is like

ISSN 0893-5696 print/1475-8059 online/07/040469-18– 2007 Association for Economic and Social AnalysisDOI: 10.1080/08935690701571128

1. See, among others, Callinicos (1976), Elliott (1987), and Clarke et al. (1980). MargaretMajumbar (1995) passes by this phase with embarrassed brevity, preferring to begin with themoment he joined the Parti communiste francais (PCF).

RETHINKING MARXISM VOLUME 19 NUMBER 4 (OCTOBER 2007)

Downloaded By: [Duke University] At: 03:28 20 February 2010

Althusser’s famous absent cause: the expulsion of the Church from his life and work

enabled the Church to permeate all his work in a new form. This is the source of what

I will call his ‘‘Catholic blind spot,’’ the inability to see the specificity of his particular

form of universalizing. Finally, the religious content*/allusions, examples, and longer

arguments*/of Althusser’s later works begins to make much more sense in light of the

theological texts. At the level of content, I focus on the science-versus-idealism

distinction that he develops after his break from the Church, and the theory of

ideology in his essay ‘‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.’’

End of an Alliance

I remember this period as a time when perhaps I had a religious vocationwhich fizzled out and a certain predisposition to ecclesiastical eloquence(pour l’eloquence ecclesiastique ).

*/Althusser, The Future Lasts a Long Time

Over four crucial essays between 1946 and 1951, when he was in the process of

joining the Communist party, we can trace Althusser’s increasingly despairing efforts

to build an alliance between progressive Catholicism and Marxism.2 In these essays we

find an Althusser whose thoughts flow within the theoretical, social, and historical

context of a Catholic France. Thus, his theology is overtly institutional, so much so

that at the moment of apostasy he does not reject Christianity, or God, or cease to

believe in what the Bible says to him: he rejects the Church. And Althusser could

never quite escape one institution or another, whether church, university (Catholic or

the Sorbonne), mental hospital, or the Communist party, with its overwhelming

concern for orthodoxy and orthopraxis (1990, 63; 1996, 32).

But let me look more closely at these four essays and follow the path of the failed

alliance as well as some hints of his later Marxist concerns. The first is ‘‘The

International of Decent Feelings’’ (Althusser 1997, 21�/35; 1994a, 35�/57), written for

and rejected by the Catholic journal Cahiers de notre jeunesse . Here already is a bold

and lucid Althusser, but one who brings together Christian and Communist arguments

in an effort at alliance. At the same time, the alliance between the two enacts a

slippage of certain key elements from Althusser’s Christianity to his Communism.

I will identify these elements as I proceed.

Thus, in ‘‘The International of Decent Feelings,’’ Althusser polemicizes against the

Christian apocalyptic habit of reading for the ‘‘signs of the times’’ in World War II and

2. They are ‘‘The International of Decent Feelings’’ (1997, 21�/35; 1994a, 35�/57), ‘‘A Matter ofFact’’ (1997, 185�/96; 1994a, 261�/75), ‘‘On Conjugal Obscenity’’ (1997, 231�/40; 1994a, 327�/39),and his letter to Jean Lacroix (1997, 197�/230; 1994a, 277�/325). ‘‘On Conjugal Obscenity’’remained unpublished until after his death, and is found in the first volume of Ecritsphilosophiques et politiques (1994a). The letter to Lacroix was also unpublished until this 1994collection.

470 BOER


the cold war. The war itself becomes both sin and God’s wrathful punishment, the

concentration camps are the Last Judgment, the Moscow trials are the Passion, the

atomic bomb is the will of God, and the equality of death before the bomb is

equivalent to equality before God. Against these moves Althusser makes both Marxist

and theological arguments. But first, he makes sure that progressive Christians and

Communists stand shoulder to shoulder. There are both the ‘‘the man who is not a

Christian (l’homme non Chretien )’’ and ‘‘the Christian who does not usurp God’s

place (le chretien qui n’usurpe pas la place de Dieu) ’’ (1994a, 42�/3). Later we have

‘‘non-Christians and, occasionally, Christians as well (non-chretiens et de chretiens

parfois )’’ (43). I hardly need to point out who is the Communist here and who the

desirable Christian.

Although they stand together, their arguments are a little different. A Marxist will

criticize the popular postwar notions of the ‘‘proletariat of fear’’ and the ‘‘proletariat

of the human condition’’ in terms of class. Both phrases refer to the effort by some in

the churches to claim that everybody was exploited by the fear of the atomic bomb

and, therefore, they were all like Marx’s proletariat. However, Althusser’s Marxist

point is that such a generalizing of class difference, taking up the term proletariat in

order to speak of humanity as a whole, serves to deny the specific political content of

the proletariat. For them, the threat of war or the atomic bomb does not change the

exploitation and poverty of their everyday lives (1997, 31; 1994a, 49).

The rather orthodox Christian side of Althusser argues a little differently. Here he

resorts to a theological critique of idolatry. Thus, he reads the apocalyptic postwar

mood in terms of the New Testament warnings against false prophets. He takes the

paradoxical biblical warnings of Mark 13 (especially verse 22) and Matthew 24/Luke

21 to heart: the false prophets themselves are a mark of the Last Days although they

themselves are false precisely because they predict the long awaited End (1997, 28;

1994a, 44). But this is only the first step, for the real problem with idolatry is that it

replaces God with idols. For the New Testament, argues Althusser, the ultimate form

of idolatry is the elevation of oneself in God’s place: ‘‘When we merely invoke the

Lord, we serve, not the Lord we invoke, but another whom we do not’’ (1997, 30;

1994a, 47).

But just when we suspect that Marxism and theology in this essay*/one concerned

with class and the other with idolatry*/are beginning to separate, Althusser brings

them together again. Now he argues that these false prophets, these men who

elevate themselves into God’s place, do not see the real problem: namely,

exploitation of the proletariat under capitalism. What they miss is the nature of

socialism. They seek ‘‘socialism without class struggle,’’ ‘‘a verbal, moralizing

socialism’’ (1997, 30; 1994a, 48). There is, however, a tension between Marxist and

Christian positions in Althusser’s argument. This tension shows up in his focus on the

proletariat and class struggle: is not Althusser’s Marxist argument (concern with

the proletariat) in conflict with his Christian argument (idolatry must be avoided)?

The problem is that, although he says his position is a properly Christian one free from

idolatry, putting one’s trust in the proletariat become precisely the idolatry he

identified earlier. The tension between class and idolatry in this essay is a specific

example of the deeper one between Christian and Marxist positions. If his theological

concerns come from what may be called an ‘‘ontological reserve,’’ refusing to

ALTHUSSER’S CATHOLIC MARXISM 471


identify fully with any human cause for fear of idolatry, then his Marxist focus takes

the political plunge and identifies with the proletariat. Althusser could hold onto an

alliance between the two only by denying the tension*/by arguing from what he feels

is a united position.

By the time of the next essay, ‘‘A Matter of Fact’’ (1997, 185�/96; 1994a, 261�/75), he

would still hold to an alliance, but now only on the basis of a reformed Church. Three

months after he joined the Communist party in November 1948, this essay was

published by the religious community Jeunesse de l’Eglise, with whom he stayed in

close touch, in a cahier entitled The Captive Gospel . In it, Althusser argues that the

Church is in a woeful state: it requires far-reaching reform if it is ever to

communicate the Gospel in a language understood by the people of today. The

problem: the Church hangs on to feudal and early capitalist structures and an

obsolete conceptual universe without which it cannot imagine its existence (1997,

186; 1994a, 263; see the detail in 1997, 187�/93; 1994a, 263�/72). The solution: the

emancipation of the Church from feudal and capitalist structures, which will lead to a

revived, authentic religious life. Here the alliance is still strong, for Althusser looks

for the external liberation of the Church through alliance with the world-changing

force of the proletariat, while the reclamation of religious life must take place

through the isolated and far-flung radical cells within the Church: groups like

Jeunesse de l’Eglise, the later base communities of Latin America, and some of

the elements of the Catholic Action movement*/rural and urban youth, students,

workers, managers, bosses, and so on. These are two arms of a broad, emancipatory

program, but one that now has the proletariat at its center, and, in this world-

historical movement, the socially progressive Christian must play an active part.

Since he is still open to authentic renewal within the Church, Althusser holds that

‘‘religion is not, a priori, a form of alienation’’ (1997, 194�/5; 1994a, 274). Here we

find extraordinary statements, at least in light of the well-known later Althusser:

‘‘The Church will live thanks to those who, through struggle and in struggle, are once

again discovering that the Word was born among men and dwelt among them*/and

who are already preparing a humane place for it amongst men’’ (1997, 195; 1994a,

275).

Yet there are some changes. The proletariat becomes central for any change, and

he begins speaking of theology as ideology. Ultimately this will be to the detriment of

the former but, in an intriguing paragraph (1997, 188�/9; 1994a, 265�/6), we already

see the complexity of Althusser’s developing theory of ideology: the medieval

structures at the heart of the Church enable people within it to hold to outmoded

ideological (that is, theological) formations, but those structures only continue to

exist because that outmoded ideology (again, theology) keeps the structures in place.

Many of the arguments from ‘‘A Matter of Fact’’ will return in his famous essay on

ideological state apparatuses, including the medieval nature of the Church, the

complex dialectic of ideology, and its distinctive, theological stamp.

Another feature that will return in his later work is what might be termed

Althusser’s catholic blind spot. He writes of ‘‘universal form,’’ ‘‘all men,’’ ‘‘policies

on a global scale,’’ ‘‘the immense world of the Church,’’ and so on (1997, 186, 191,

195; 1994a, 262, 269, 275). There is, in other words, a single, global Christian Church

and its problems are global problems. But Althusser does not seem to realize that he

472 BOER


follows the deep logic of the Catholic Church, which is to universalize in a pattern of

exclusion and absorption. The Church maintains the claim to be ‘‘catholic’’ by

absorbing what is mildly unorthodox and by excluding as heretical what does not fit its

definition of ‘‘catholic.’’ Further, in Althusser’s case, such universalizing comes from

the very specific base of the French Roman Catholic Church. The following

description is a dead giveaway: ‘‘the Church’s conceptual universe, theology, and

moral system, its theory of the family, of education, of Catholic action, of the parish,

etc.’’ (1997, 194). The items on this list are by no means universal to Christian

churches, but are limited to a specific part of the Church*/the Roman Catholic one.

Thus, the major Protestant and Orthodox branches do not share Catholic action, nor

do they agree in terms of church government (parish), or education, or family, or

indeed moral systems or theology. In short, the ‘‘conceptual universe’’ of which he

speaks is a distinctly Roman Catholic one. Even more, it is a list from a particular time

and place*/namely, France in the mid-twentieth century. The giveaway is Catholic

action, which developed in the early twentieth century and took on different forms in

different countries. While in Italy Catholic action was far more political, in France,

where the Roman Catholic Church was not sanctioned by the state, Catholic action

focused on inner, spiritual well-being. In Althusser’s thought, this specifically French

Catholic combination becomes all too swiftly the universal Church.

So far, Althusser’s early theological essays work for a fragile Socialist-Christian

alliance, although it is really an alliance that calls on the fringe and experimental

groups of the Catholic left. If he calls upon such groups in ‘‘A Matter of Fact’’ to join

with the Communists and the proletariat to effect social change as well as an internal

transformation of the Church, in the extraordinary ‘‘On Conjugal Obscenity’’ (1997,

231�/40; 1994a, 327�/39) another such group comes in for unrelenting criticism.

In this essay he tracks the ambivalence and hypocrisy of the public theology of

marriage in the French Roman Catholic Church. What seemed to be a radical move

from the 1930s onward*/dragging marriage and sex out into the open and stressing

mutual pleasure and enjoyment*/was actually viciously reactionary. In response to

social and cultural effects of the 1920s, this public theology of marriage seemed to be

radical in its efforts both to talk about sex openly and to stress the pleasure of

conjugal sex over against traditional Roman Catholic doctrine’s stress on procreation.

The problem is that such a valorization of sex also valued large broods of children and

the domestic sphere. Althusser is no prude: the ‘‘obscenity’’ in question was not the

public nature of the movement or even the conjunction of sex and the spirit, but the

way its apparently radical edge served to reinforce the most reactionary aspects of

Roman Catholic positions on marriage. Bearing and raising children is no longer a duty

of Roman Catholic families; it now becomes part of the public sacrament of marriage.

Women, who had begun to have other options, found themselves tied to the long

labor of pregnancy, birth, and care for endless numbers of offspring, precisely

through an ideology of sexual and spiritual equality. A glimpse of liberation, now

channeled into the public affront (for traditional Catholics) of the sacramentalization

of sex, folds back to reinforce the most reactionary of Catholic positions on the family

and the subjugation of women, except that now the women in question acted in the

misguided belief that theirs was a radical path. Emancipation is a new form of

servitude, except that now it is public. The Church still holds sway: ‘‘the power that



lifted the interdict is the one that established it: the authority that makes the laws

can also unmake them’’ (1997, 239; 1994a 338).

There is little that redeems the Church here. The alliance, it seems, is slipping. But

what Althusser has done is to highlight, perhaps for the first time, a complex pattern

of oppression that takes on the appearance of freedom from oppression. He would

use such an insight on more than one occasion later on, especially with regard to the

enemy: Church, idealism, liberalism, and so on. But here Althusser’s concern is still

the Church, and there is no salvation outside that institution. However critical, he is

still within. His intellectual departure, however, is marked by the long, legendary

letter to his former teacher, Jean Lacroix. Here we find that the alliance he long

sought to hold together finally falls apart when he is forced to deal directly with the

relationship between Roman Catholicism and Marxism.

Mainly a response to Lacroix’s book Marxisme, Existentialisme, Personnalisme

(1950), the interesting parts come toward the close (Althusser 1997, 211�/20; 1994a,

295�/308). Here theology and Marxism finally take their separate paths but, in this

process, he makes two points on which I want to dwell. First, he argues himself to the

point where Marxism and theology are incompatible for both theological and

institutional reasons. The argument goes as follows: Theology is the ideology of the

institution of the Church. That Church is fundamentally medieval in world-view, as he

had pointed out in ‘‘A Matter of Fact,’’ and the mark of that world-view is

scholasticism. Scholastic theology is characterized by the tendency to blend theology

with philosophy. For Althusser, however, the only way forward for the Church is a deep

reform that sheds such a medieval world-view. The implication is that it would also

then shed scholastic theology, a shedding that would mean a separation of theology

and philosophy.

In the letter to Lacroix, Althusser berates Lacroix for attempting to reform

theology within the heritage of scholasticism; that is, he tried to do so with the blend

of philosophy and theology intact. For Althusser, this is unacceptable. Stop being such

a scholastic, Althusser suggests, and stop mixing theology and philosophy (1997, 206;

1994a, 288). For instance, if Lacroix is going to be a proud theologian, then he should

openly register both the absolute transcendence and immanence of God (1997, 216;

1994a, 302�/3). In short, Althusser wants a theology that asserts key positions without

the taint of philosophy*/(divine) judgment, history and eternity, transcendence and

immanence, and truth itself.

The problem with such a radical separation of theology and philosophy is that by

this stage Althusser has already hitched himself to philosophy: a Marxist philosophy

that elaborates the truths of the proletariat. The reformed theology that he calls on

Lacroix to produce is one he can no longer follow, for such a theology will reform

itself by separating from philosophy. By definition, if theology can proceed only by

breaking with philosophy, then Althusser the philosopher can no longer have anything

to do with it. Nor for that matter can he hold to the institution for which that

theology is the world-view, no matter how reformed. In other words, the only

possibility for keeping Marxism (philosophy) and theology together is by means of

some form of scholasticism. But once he works through the implications of reform of

the Church, which also means reform from scholasticism, the possibility of such an

alliance passes.

474 BOER


Second, Althusser signals to his former teacher the ‘‘catholic’’ paradox of his own

move from the Church and into the PCF.

[I]n actively rallying to the working class, we have not only notrepudiated what had been our reasons for living, but have liberatedthem by fully realizing them. I think we deserve our future, even fromWilde’s point of view, in that we have not disregarded our past: We havewatched our past grow inside us and bear fruit in a manner beyond thehopes of our youth. The Christian I once was has in no way abjured hisChristian ‘‘values,’’ but now I live them (this is an . . . ‘‘historical,’’ not adivine judgement!), whereas earlier I aspired to live them. (1997, 221;1994a, 308�/9)

This marks a decisive moment in the long transition from Christian to Marxist

commitment, and it is more astute than the obvious point that Catholic Action

provided the path for so many from Church to PCF.3 However, there is more here

than meets the eye for, despite himself, Althusser provides us not merely with an

unwitting recognition of his own inescapable (small-c) catholicism, but also its

mechanism. And he does so by means of the blind spot I have been tracking in

these early writings. The ‘‘values’’ of which he writes are those of love, hope, and

faith, the radical political and moral code of the Beatitudes and the rest of the

Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5�/7). But what Althusser’s comments obscure is

what is so persistent in his thought*/namely, the catholicism that remained. In

other words, what Althusser regards as the realization of Christian ‘‘values’’ in his

Communism*/those that could not be realized when he was a Christian*/includes

the Catholic context he imbibed. In fact, I want to go further than this: the notion

of Christian ‘‘values’’ is a sleight of hand for ‘‘catholicism’’ itself.

Over these early writings then, I have tracked the gradual collapse of the

troubled alliance Althusser sought to establish between radical Catholicism and

Marxism*/the shift from someone comfortable with theological arguments to

someone highly critical, preferring in the end that theology and philosophy keep to

their own spheres. But I have also been on the lookout for elements that he could

not so easily forget along with his youthful enthusiasm for the Church. And these

are his inescapable catholicity (his ‘‘catholic blind spot’’), characterized by an

assumed universalism from very particular concerns, a historicizing of the

influence of the Church, a theory of ideology that is stamped with theology,

and an awareness of the complex patterns by which a political and ideological

enemy maintains control by managing opposition.

3. ‘‘In fact the Church, via its chaplains and encyclicals, made their own militants aware of the‘social question,’ of which most of us were totally ignorant. Of course, once we recognized thatthere was a ‘social question’ and that the remedies proposed were ridiculous, it did not takemuch, in my case the profound political vision of ‘‘Pere Hours,’’ for us to explore what lay behindthe wooly-minded slogans of the Catholic Church and rapidly convert to Marxism before joiningthe Communist Party!’’ (Althusser 1994b, 205; 1992, 197).



Shadow Boxing: History and Idealism

Despite the signs of the first fully Marxist essay of a couple of years later (see ‘‘On

Marxism’’ from 1953 [Althusser 1997, 241�/57]), the Church would hardly disappear

from Althusser’s writings. He would make two moves to deal with it: historicize, or see

it in a new guise as idealism. First, he would continue to historicize the Church as a

medieval institution. However, in attempting to account for the decline of the Church

in capitalism (its ideological role was taken over by education), Althusser is also

historicizing a particular theoretical element of his thought. Second, in his later work,

the Church’s place is also taken by idealism, which becomes the real enemy of Marxism.

As the world outlook of liberalism, idealism provides the only context within which

religion is essential. In both these arguments we find the division between theology and

Marxism, now in terms of idealism versus science, and the insight that first arose in his

analysis of the Church: namely, the complex patterns of managing opposition.

Let me focus first on his modes of historicizing the Church, particularly in the

famous essay ‘‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an

Investigation)’’ (1971, 121�/73). Althusser’s historicizing of the Church may be read

as an allegory for his own departure from the Church, modeled on the way Marx broke

with his humanist reliance on Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity to become properly

scientific (1990, 233). What strikes me about the ‘‘Ideology’’ essay is the way he

concentrates on the Church and education out of the longer list of Ideological State

Apparatuses (ISAs)*/religious, educational, family, legal, political, trade union,

communications, and cultural.

Thus, he argues that the educational ISA (rather than the more obvious political

ISA), with its system of public and private schools, is the dominant form under

capitalism (1971, 152). A devastating demystification of the nature of education, the

significance of Althusser’s concern with this ISA is in what it replaces: the Church. He

argues that under feudalism the Church was as ‘‘natural,’’ indispensable, and

generous as the school is today. In the same way that the school is now coupled

with the family, so the Church once made a highly effective ideological force with the

family.

Here lies the historicizing move Althusser makes with regard to the Church. In the

Middle Ages, when the various ISAs were fewer, the religious ISA (the Church)

undertook a variety of functions that have separated into different ISAs under

capitalism, especially education and culture. Other ISAs operated, such as the

political, proto�/trade union (guilds and associations), publishing, and communica-

tions, although these were developing out of the Church. Yet, by concentrating within

itself the religious, educational, communications, and cultural functions, the Church

was dominant.

However, the historical narrative of the usurpation of the Church is also Althusser’s

strategy for quarantining and distancing the Church from his own life. ‘‘It is no

accident that all ideological struggle, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century,

starting with the first shocks of the Reformation, was concentrated in an anti-clerical

and anti-religious struggle; rather this is the function precisely of the dominant

position of the religious ideological State apparatus’’ (1997, 151). The process he

476 BOER


describes of the attack on the Church, the reduction of its power, dissolution of its

functions after the French Revolution, and replacement with another dominant ISA

implicitly takes on a positive role in his analysis. The long struggle, with its advances

and setbacks, was directed at taking over the Church’s functions. This struggle was

necessary for the political hegemony of the bourgeoisie as well as the ‘‘ideological

hegemony indispensable to the reproduction of capitalist relations of production’’

(1971, 152). This then brings him to the educational ISA, the successful bourgeois

replacement of the Church. Having removed the Church as a dominant ISA, the

bourgeoisie has performed a distinctly useful task for Althusser. That he is also hostile

to the bourgeoisie puts the Church at a double remove. And all of this Althusser casts in

a historical narrative.4 As far as he is concerned, the Church is well past its dominance,

both historically and personally.

Or perhaps not, for he cannot desist from speaking about the Church: it is surprising

how often the militant pioneer of a scientific Marxist philosophy returns to speak of

the Church. It turns up again in his analyses of idealism. In fact, in this analysis, two

items from Althusser’s early work appear: first, the division between theology and

Marxism in the letter to Lacroix, but now as the opposition of idealism-cum-religion

to science; and second, the subtle patterns of ideological control by the Church in his

essay ‘‘On Conjugal Obscenity’’ (1997, 231�/40; 1994a, 327�/39) (in the very act of

appearing to provide emancipation, it actually asserts its domination more strongly).

The Church is, in short, all-pervasive. Althusser developed a similar analysis of

idealism, the world outlook of liberalism. In the same way that his criticism in ‘‘On

Conjugal Obscenity’’ is an effort both to exorcise a demon and understand the enemy,

so also in his effort to understand idealism he seeks both to expunge liberalism from

Marxism and to gain a strategic advantage.

I am interested at this point in a specific argument to be found in the lectures

entitled ‘‘Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists’’ (1990,

69�/165), one of his most sustained analyses of idealism. What he ends up with in

this text is a great conflict between the small cohort of true science and vast army of

religion, for religion will turn out to be the underlying logic of idealism. What we

thought was a humanistic tradition that eschewed religion turns out to be another

form of religion*/‘‘religion’’ being a code for Christianity in a universalizing move.

Let us see how he gets there.

He begins by identifying the ‘‘spiritual complement’’ of the world outlook of

idealism. For Althusser, this bourgeois world outlook is economism or technocracy;

the spiritual complement is ethical idealism or humanism. Neither is necessarily

religious and indeed both, springing from the Enlightenment, carry a strong

nonreligious component. (In taking on humanism we are also in the territory of

exorcising the humanist demon from Marx and the bane of Utopian socialism.)5 But

4. Other comments carry on the same pattern. For instance, see his distancing of the Church asa medieval institution in his discussions of Montesquieu (1977, 21; 1959, 10) and Machiavelli(1999, 69).5. For Althusser, Utopian socialist doctrine ‘‘proposes socialist goals for human action . . . basedon non-scientific principles, deriving from religious, moral or juridical, i.e. ideologicalprinciples’’ (1990, 3; see further 1977, 225 n. 6; 1965, 231� 2 n. 6).



my interest here is how such a spiritual complement becomes explicitly religious in

the face of scientific crises.

According to Althusser, scientific crises (for instance, Greek mathematics or

modern physics) produce three characteristic responses. First, science keeps its

head and treats the crisis as a test or episode, well within the perimeters of science

(this will later become ‘‘Element One’’). Or second, science goes off the deep end

and sees a huge crisis that brings out either a religious response, discerning a ‘‘divine

surprise’’ in the crisis, or a spiritualist response that appears more tempered. And

third, there are those who unwittingly engage in the philosophy of science, attacking

the ‘‘bad philosophy’’ of materialism in the name of a better idealist philosophy, such

as British empiricism (both these second and third responses will become ‘‘Element

Two’’). The first option is the minority response, the second the extreme, and the

third appears moderate, although it brings out the truth of the conflict between

materialist and idealist positions.

But Althusser’s main concern is with the second response: ‘‘we have known since

Pascal and Kant that behind the borders assigned science by philosophy there lurks

religion’’ (1990, 111). Science itself comes into question, and the crisis is read as a

timely warning that science should remain within its boundaries. Beyond those

boundaries, religion holds sway. As his discussion moves on, we get a series of shuffles

and moves. Initially, the second, extreme response was the territory of both

spiritualists and religion, but before long the spiritualists take over the third

response, which used to be idealist. Subsequently, this slippage will allow Althusser

to subsume the spiritualists under religion for, in the end, spiritualism is merely a

variation on religion. The spiritualists are, after all, the historical successors to the

religious philosophers of science. Among the spiritualists are Bergson, Bruschvicg, and

Ricoeur, as well as humanist Marxists like Garaudy, with their variations on the

ultimate categories of freedom and the human spirit, as the successors to religious

philosophers of science. In other words, the fallback position of moral philosophy, the

preferred mode of the spiritualist philosophers of science, is in fact religion (1990,

126).

What, then, is the function of distinguishing three responses to scientific crises:

intrascientific, religious/spiritualist, and idealist? In an extraordinary process of

shifting allegiances and realignments, Althusser has had the spiritualists occupy the

territory of the idealists, then subsumed these spiritualist philosophers under

religion. What we end up with is science versus religion. When he moves on to

identify what he calls ‘‘Element One’’ and ‘‘Element Two’’*/the great philosophical

class divide between materialist and idealist philosophies of science*/they can be

nothing other than science versus religion. Both are ‘‘spontaneous’’ philosophies of

the scientists. One, characteristic of a smaller group of scientists, holds to the

material existence of the object of scientific knowledge, the objectivity of the

knowledge produced and the validity of the scientific method. The other comes from

outside, imposing spiritualist or idealist and thereby, ultimately, religious categories

on science. Not only is this the great theoretical class struggle of philosophy, but it is

also a signal of the subtle means by which religion is still a potent force. Science

versus religion is but a reworking of his old distinction in the letter to Jean Lacroix

between Marxism and theology.

478 BOER


The Absent Cause of the Church

Thus far I have been tracing the persistence of references and allusions to the Church

in Althusser’s later writing, along with some of the deeper patterns of thinking that he

first developed in his theological writings. All this comes to a climax, however, in the

essay I have already touched upon, ‘‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.’’

Here we have nothing less than, to use Althusser’s own terms, the absent cause of the

Church itself. He will perpetually try to contain the Church, or religion, here as a

‘‘practical ideology,’’ but it always breaks its bonds.6 Let us look at three elements:

the argument that ideology is eternal; the thesis that ideology has a material

existence; and the interpellation narrative.7

The argument that ideology is eternal is glaringly obvious, although Althusser makes

the effort to connect his argument with Freud’s assumption of an eternal unconscious:

‘‘If eternal means, not transcendent to all (temporal) history, but omnipresent, trans-

historical and therefore immutable in form throughout the extent of history, I shall

adopt Freud’s expression word for word, and write ideology is eternal, exactly like the

unconscious’’ (1971, 161; emphasis in original). But there is more than meets the eye

here. The implicit logic of such an appropriation is not the smuggling in of theology but

the realization of an internal logic about theology itself: deliberations on the nature of

God actually speak of something else. And that ‘‘something else’’ is the ideology of

which God is a feature: it is not God himself who is omnipresent, transhistorical, and

immutable, but rather the ideology in which God has a place. But this is to favor

religious ideology over all other forms, and indeed, Althusser himself will do that soon

enough.

The general definition of this eternal ideology is the famous ‘‘ideology

represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of

existence’’ (1971, 162; see also 1990, 24�/5). Yet, this is merely the first thesis on

the structure and functioning of ideology. With the second thesis*/‘‘ideology has a

material existence’’*/we find theology at the forefront. This section of the essay

has drawn the occasional commentator to point to the extremely Spinozist form of

his argument (Montag 1995) for, as Althusser comments only a few pages later, ‘‘to

be a Spinozist or a Marxist . . . is to be exactly the same thing’’ (1971, 175). In

particular, Althusser echoes Spinoza’s argument that the cause can exist only in its

effects, that God cannot be an external force, a creator who acts on the basis of

an intention and plan. Rather, God is an immanent cause, inconceivable without

his creation, whose intentions and decrees can exist only as they are actualized in

6. Along with ethics, law, politics, and aesthetics, religion is one of the ‘‘practical ideologies’’(1971, 18; 1998, 152�/3). As for practical ideologies, they ‘‘are complex formations which shapenotions-representations-images into behaviour-conduct-attitude-gestures. The ensemblefunctions as practical norms that govern the attitude and concrete positions men adopttowards the real objects and real problems of their social and individual existence, and towardstheir history’’ (1990, 83).7. The contrast with the ‘‘Ideological State Apparatuses’’ essay and the discussion of ideology in‘‘Marxism and Humanism’’ (1969, 221� 47; 1965, 225� 49) couldn’t be sharper, for in the latteressay the pages devoted to ideology (1969, 231� 6; 1965 238� 43) mention most of his mainpoints without any reference to the Church.



that creation: ‘‘God could not have been prior to his decrees nor can he be

without them’’ (Spinoza’s proposition 33, scholium 2, quoted by Montag 1995, 63).

So also with ideology, which is immanent in its practices and apparatuses and

cannot exist apart from them. It is hardly a coincidence, then, that the explication

of this thesis on the material existence of ideology should move all too readily into

theological language.

Thus, in arguing for the material, rather than spiritual, existence of ideology, he

moves to particular or practical ideologies (religious, ethical, aesthetic, etc.), each of

which not only has a history but a location in an apparatus, an ISA and its practices. But

Althusser takes his general definition*/the representation of the imaginary relations

to real conditions*/into this specific realm and gives the example of the Church. This

reversion is almost inevitable given the Spinozist roots of this thesis. The individual

belief in God*/an ‘‘ideological ‘conceptual’ device’’ (1971, 167)*/ produces the

material attitude of the subject: mass, kneeling, praying, confession, penance,

repentance, and so on. Here Althusser locates ideology in the ideological State

apparatus. ‘‘This ideology talks of actions; I shall talk of actions inserted into

practices . And I shall point out that these practices are governed by the rituals in

which these practices are inscribed, within the material existence of an ideological

apparatus, be it only a small part of that apparatus: a small mass in a small church, a

funeral, a minor match at a sports’ club, a school day, a political party meeting, etc.’’

(1971, 168).

His final move is to take a materialist slant on Pascal’s formula, whereby the

practices themselves */ kneeling, praying, etc */ generate belief. Thus, a ‘‘religious

ideology can exist with rules, rites, etc., but without a systematic theology; the

advent of theology represents a degree of theoretical systematization of religious

ideology’’ (1990, 27). Yet even this materialist move requires yet another religious

example: over against Pascal’s scandalous response to the libertine (namely, that

belief will follow practice), Althusser misreads Pascal in a Spinozist fashion to point to

the impossibility of separating ideas and beliefs from their material actions and

rituals, so that they are always already inserted into practices and cannot exist

without them (Montag 1995, 67�/9).

It seems as though Althusser cannot get rid of the Church. Or rather, what he has

rejected leaves its marks all over him. In the case of the ideology essay,

the recurring ‘‘example’’ is the Church, yet it is not mere example for it recurs

too often in the essay to remain in that category. Rather, I would suggest that the

form of the two theses on ideology*/representations of imaginary relations and

material existence*/is analogous to the theological distinction between belief

and practice, especially in the Roman Catholic Church with its emphasis on ritual

and practice. In other words, the favored example of the Church hints at a deeper

connection with his theory: the range and complexities of theological thought

provide Althusser with the conceptual tools necessary for recasting the theory of

ideology.

The final part of the ideology essay, the famous and much used interpellation

section, maintains the focus on religious questions. What is almost always neglected

by those who discuss this section of the essay is the extended example from Christian

religious ideology. This final ‘‘example’’ has languished, even in the critical

480 BOER


literature, in singular obscurity.8 Yet the two sections*/the interpellation narrative

and the religious example*/belong inextricably together, for the interpellation

narrative begins a final argument that is incomplete without the misnamed

‘‘example.’’

Thus, the interpellation narrative attempts to deal with the dialectical interplay of

ideology and the subject: ideology constitutes the subject, but cannot exist without

the subject. The metaphor Althusser selects is that of interpellation or hailing. Yet

the narrative is also an endeavor at understanding ideology in the context of the

all-pervasive presence of ideology, the inability to escape ideology even in an analysis

of ideology. Thus, the interpellation narrative is not an effort at escape but one that

recognizes that pervasiveness.

I shall then suggest that ideology ‘‘acts’’ or ‘‘functions’’ in such a way that it‘‘recruits’’ subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or ‘‘trans-forms’’ the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by that veryprecise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing, and whichcan be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police(or other) hailing: ‘‘Hey, you there!’’

Assuming that the theoretical scene I have imagined takes place in thestreet, the hailed individual will turn around. By this one-hundred-and-eighty-degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject . Why? Because hehas recognized that the hail was ‘‘really’’ addressed to him, and ‘‘that wasreally him who was hailed’’ (and not someone else). Experience shows thatthe practical telecommunication of hailing is such that they hardly ever misstheir man: verbal call or whistle, the one hailed always recognizes that it isreally him who is being hailed. And yet it is a strange phenomenon, and onewhich cannot be explained solely by ‘‘guilt feelings,’’ despite the largenumbers who ‘‘have something on their consciences.’’ (1971, 174)

Althusser is keen to stress that the narrative sequence gives a false before-and-

after effect, for ideology is the same thing as the hailing of individuals as subjects.

That is, individuals are always already interpellated by ideology as subjects, and so

individuals are always already subjects.

However, the argument does not stop here for, in the ‘‘example,’’ he takes up

religious ideology to develop the argument further. Despite appearances, it is not a

specific example with its own variations for ‘‘the formal structure of all ideology is

always the same’’ (177).9 Although the call of Moses appears as the biblical exemplar,

Althusser takes up a distinctly Roman Catholic instance of ideology hailing individuals.

The implicitly ‘‘catholic’’ tone of the well-known text I quoted above emerges clearly

in the following, which deserves fuller quotation precisely because it is less well

known.

8. See, for instance, the glancing comments of Ricoeur (1994, 64), Barrett (1991, 101), Pepper(1995), Montag (1995), Rushdy (1992), and Albiac (1998).9. In fact, in ‘‘Theory, Theoretical Practice and Theoretical Formation: Ideology and IdeologicalStruggle’’ (1990, 1� 42), Althusser argues that religion is the first form of ideology (25), afterwhich moral, juridical, aesthetic, political, and philosophical forms appear.



The Christian religious ideology says something like I address myself to you, ahuman individual called Peter (every individual is called by his name, in thepassive sense, it is never he who provides his own name), in order to tell youthat God exists and that you are answerable to Him. It adds: God addressesHimself to you through my voice . . . It says: this is who you are: you arePeter! This is your origin, you were created by God for all eternity, althoughyou were born in the 1920th year of Our Lord! This is your place in the world!This is what you must do! By these means, if you observe the ‘‘law of love’’you will be saved, you, Peter, and will become part of the Glorious Body ofChrist! Etc.

Althusser continues:

Now this is quite a familiar and banal discourse, but at the same time asurprising one.

Surprising because if we consider that religious ideology is indeedaddressed to individuals, in order to ‘‘transform them into subjects,’’ byinterpellating the individual, Peter, in order to make him a subject, free toobey or disobey the appeal, i.e. God’s commandments; if it calls theseindividuals by their names, thus recognizing that they are always-alreadyinterpellated as subjects with a personal identity (to the extent that Pascal’sChrist says: ‘‘It is for you that I have shed this drop of my blood!’’); if itinterpellates them in such a way that the subject responds: ‘‘Yes, it is reallyme!’’ if it obtains from them the recognition that they really do occupy theplace it designates for them as theirs in the world, a fixed residence: ‘‘Itreally is me; I am here, a worker, a boss or a soldier!’’ in this vale of tears; ifit obtains from them the recognition of a destination (eternal life ordamnation) according to the respect or contempt they show to ‘‘God’sCommandments,’’ Law become Love*/if everything does happen in this way(in the practices of the well-known rituals of baptism, confirmation,communion, confession and extreme unction, etc. ), we should note thatall this ‘‘procedure’’ to set up Christian religious subjects is dominated by astrange phenomenon: the fact that there can only be such a multitude ofpossible religious subjects on the absolute condition that there is a Unique,Absolute, Other Subject, i.e. God. (177�/8)

Might not the second passage be read as a commentary on the first? Either on the

street or kneeling in Church, the second instance fills in much of the detail that the

cryptic first passage leaves open. Apart from their both being narratives of

interpellation, at the center of the first is the ‘‘physical conversion,’’ the turning

around of the subject at the moment of interpellation, a redirection that runs at so

many levels: turning around in the street, religious conversion, the awareness upon

such a ‘‘conversion’’ that it has always been so and that one’s former direction was

‘‘mistaken.’’ The second passage assumes such a ‘‘conversion,’’ now explicating it

in terms of the address by God to an individual. Or rather, it is the address of

‘‘Christian religious ideology’’ to an individual, claiming that God speaks to him

through such an ideology, constituting God and the individual as subjects in the

process itself.

482 BOER


I cannot stress the Catholic saturation of the second passage enough. God addresses

the individual through ‘‘religious ideology’’*/that is, the Church; the sample name is

none other than ‘‘Peter.’’ There is the implicit liturgical moment of confirmation

when a new name is given and the person consciously recognizes the call of the

Church; there are the rituals or sacraments themselves*/baptism, confirmation,

communion, confession and especially extreme unction. There is the emphasis on

obeying the commandments, the ‘‘Law of Love’’; and there is the quotation from

Pascal, who had already appeared earlier.

Althusser has made it rather easy for me here, for the Christian religious ideology

in question is none other than Roman Catholic. But in order to see how this translates

all too readily into Althusser’s ‘‘catholicity,’’ let me trace the rest of the argument.

This ‘‘religious ideology’’ calls a particular person who, created by God, must

respond to this call. God speaks to this person through the Bible and Church and, if

this subject responds to the law of love, he will have eternal life and so on. However,

religious ideology has many subjects that all relate to or mirror God, a singular

Subject (capital S). These then relate to each other except that, in Christian

ideology, the Subject also becomes the small-s subject*/Christ*/in order to present

an example of ‘‘salvation’’ for the many subjects. The point here is that all ideology

has a mirror structure*/duplication of Subject into subjects and Subject into subject-

Subject*/that is centered in the Absolute Subject. Since religious ideology has

multiple subjects, a single Subject (God), and a relationship posited between the

two, Althusser argues that all ideology has the following features:

1. the interpellation of ‘‘individuals’’ as subjects;

2. their subjection to the Subject;

3. the mutual recognition of subjects and Subject, the subjects’ recognition of

each other, and finally the subject’s recognition of himself;

4. the absolute guarantee that everything really is so, and that on condition

that the subjects recognize what they are and behave accordingly, every-

thing will be all right: Amen*/‘‘so be it.’’ (1971, 181)

The universal claim (all ideology), along with the final ‘‘Amen’’ and its translation,

the rush of the paragraph-long sentence in the previous quotation, but above all the

identification of the one, absolutely other Subject at the center of any ideology*/all

these suggest a desire to say everything about ideology. Far from being an example,

the final catholic section of the essay takes the discussion of interpellation to its

conclusion: the famous hailing in the street example gets us only as far as point one in

the preceding quotation. Althusser can only draw the remaining points from the

discussion of religion.

When this quadruple system is in play, subjects can operate perfectly well, without

supervision. Through ideology and the rituals of the ISAs, subjects recognize the

existing state of affairs and operate within them. All of which leads Althusser to his

final formulation: ‘‘the individual is interpellated as a (free) subject in order that he

shall submit freely to the commandments of the Subject, i.e. in order that he shall

(freely) accept his subjection’’ (182).



Only through the religious ‘‘example,’’ which is absolutely necessary to Athusser’s

argument, can he reach an answer to a question he posed somewhat earlier: why do

people seek to represent their imaginary relationship with their real conditions of

existence? The answer comes only at the end: so that they can work and live

‘‘normally’’*/that is, freely subject themselves to the Subject. Even here Althusser

draws on a paradox from the tradition of Christian theology: namely, the tension

between free will and determinism, cast in a specifically Roman Catholic form.

Although most traditions attempt to hold the relation in some balance, however

paradoxical, the emphasis tends to fall on one or the other. Thus, the Jansenists

tended toward a position similar to Calvin, that free will could be possible only within

the doctrine of predestination. It seems to me that Althusser follows a Jansenist line

here: ideology operates successfully when subjects believe they are submitting of

their own free will, even though ideology predetermines them to arrive at precisely

this position.

In the end, Althusser can develop his theory of ideology only by passing through

ecclesiological and theological arguments. In other words, the intricacies of

theological materials, particularly in their Roman Catholic form, provide the

breakthrough and depth that his theory provides. He can then extrapolate from the

Christian form of ideology to argue that ‘‘Subject’’ can also designate State, Duty,

Justice, and so on. In all this, Althusser has taken his universalizing logic even further:

not content to move from Roman Catholic Church to Church universal, he takes

another step toward ideology as universal and eternal in itself. But he can do so only

through theology.

Conclusion

Althusser is a ‘‘catholic’’ Marxist, sliding between the catholicity of the Church itself,

especially the Roman Catholic Church, and the internationalism of Marxism that

worked itself out in the specific dynamics of a particular nation-state. In other words,

as I have argued, Althusser’s Marxist ‘‘catholicity’’ becomes the necessary feature of

his rejection of the Roman Catholic Church. Although he perpetually tried to reject or

contain the Church as an item of feudal history, as an item of practical ideology, and

so on, the repressed kept returning.

But let me close on the vexed question of (auto)biography. I have left this until last

since biography looms so large in the critical literature, from the murder of his wife

Helene, to depression and the manic productivity of a bipolar psychological state. At

first sight, biography everywhere confirms the continued presence of the Church in

his work, all the way from his training by such Catholic intellectuals as Jean Guitton,

Jean Lacroix, and Joseph Hours (Pere Hours) at the Lycee du Parc at Lyons through his

involvement in and continued connections with the Catholic left to statements such

as ‘‘I kept my ‘faith’ for a long time, until 1947 or thereabouts’’ (1994b, 205; 1992,

198; see further 1994b, 92�/6, 123, 162, 205�/6, 305�/6, 315, 346; 1992, 83�/8, 144,

154�/8, 197, 299, 309, 338; Matheron 1997; Breton 1993).

Autobiography is, of course, the most treacherous ground upon which to base an

argument for Althusser’s ‘‘Catholic’’ Marxism, even though Douglas Johnson does his

484 BOER


best in the introduction to The Future Lasts a Long Time (Johnson 1994). Rather than

playing the game of determining the fantasy from the ‘‘facts’’ of his life,10 let me use

an incident Althusser represents from his time at the lycee in Lyons under the highly

influential Jean Guitton, with whom he maintained contact. After failing his first

assignment, he learned to write on the vaguest of topics with clarity and conviction.

Guitton had given us the subject: ‘‘Reality and fiction .’’ I was struggling invain to get a few vague ideas into my head and again feeling completely lostwhen one of the older boys came up with some sheets of paper in his hand.‘‘Here, have these. They might help you. Anyway, they’re on the samesubject.’’

It was true; Guitton must have set the same subject the previous yearand the older boy mischievously gave me Guitton’s own fair copy. I wascertainly filled with shame but my despair was even greater. Without amoment’s hesitation I took the teacher’s fair copy, retained most of it (theoverall plan, the development of the ideas, and the conclusion), andreworked it as best I could in my own way*/in other words, what I hadmanaged to grasp of Guitton’s approach, including his style of writing. WhenGuitton gave the essays back to us in class, he seemed quite amazed andshowered me with sincere praise. How had I made such progress in such ashort time! I came top with seventeen out of twenty. (1994b, 92; 1992, 84;emphasis mine)

The result: Althusser became the prize pupil, Guitton’s favorite, one of the few to

gain access to the Ecole normale superieure, all through a ‘‘supreme act of deception

and artifice’’ (1994b, 93; 1992, 85). An allegory for the Church in Althusser’s work and

life, reworked as best he could in his own way?

References

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______. 1965. Pour Marx . Paris: Editions Francois Maspero.______. 1969. For Marx . Trans. B. Brewster. London: New Left Books.______. 1971. Lenin and philosophy and other essays . Trans. B. Brewster. New York:

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Y. Moulier Boutang. Paris: STOCK/IMEC.

10. In this respect, I would merely be replicating the detailed biography of Moulier Boutang(1992, especially 99�/171).



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time, trans. R. Veasey, ed. O. Corpet and Y. Moulier Boutang, vi�/xviii. New York:Vintage.

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