Philosophically speaking, I think the idea that things ‘could have happened otherwise’ is in itself pretty much meaningless, pace modal logic. I mean, you can say, if x hadn’t happened, y wouldn’t have happened, or at least not in the same way at the same time as it did - I understand that, and I understand that this kind of conjecture has an heuristic value. What concerns me is if you say, ‘everything could have happened exactly as it did an the outcome could have been different’. In a sense, that’s a reasonable conclusion to draw from the evidence for quanum indeterminacy, but I’m not sure what it really means. I suspect it is meaningless, unless you take the David Lewis line on it, i.e. say that it in a real sense both did and did not happen by quantifying across possible worlds. I take it that that is just crazy, because you’ve just posited the existence of an infinity of universes just to preserve a way of speaking for which there is no necessity or evidence.

I’m still not clear on this. In one sense the past is determined - things happened. But, I think you mean another sense of determined, one in which the past could not have been otherwise (necessary, as you put it). Have I misunderstood, or is that right?

If so then I don’t think you can get away from an implied pre-determination of the future. If the past is the first two dominoes in a series of ten falling over (and necessarily so) then the future will be the next eight following suit.

We don’t have to agree on this, but I am still puzzled as to why you’d want to argue that the past was determined and necessary. It doesn’t seem to be anything verifiable (not that possibility is either, but accompanying my views on possibility is also a claim about the relativity of certain knowledges, whereas the view of determined-ness you’re positing requires stronger views about what is and isn’t knowable). I also fail to see what useful rhetorical or analytic work the idea of determined-ness does, particularly in the area of politics and society. It just seems to reiterate that things have happened, only with some additional affective charge.

All of that aside, I agree that the end of capitalism doesn’t seem to be on the horizon any time soon. Regarding revolutionary situations, I think it’s important to note that they’re made (though of course not by the sheer force of will or activity of would-be revolutionaries), and that doing the sorts of things that, in some circumstances, lead to revolutionary situations are among the only options we’ve got anyway.

take care,
Nate

Still, I think all this analytical guff about counterfcatuals and possible worlds really depends on a simple misunderstanding of the fact that possibility is really about the future, not the past or present. If I say ‘it was possible that things had happened differently’, then I’m really just making a statement about the perspective before it happened. Or something.

Where’s this from in Althusser’s work? I’d like to have a look as it’s interesting.

That said, I’m completley unconvinced. Particularly so given your (to my mind rather mystifying) attachment to one type of epistemic uncertainty (future is unknown, probably unknowable) but not another (there is at least one single predicate of the future which is knowable, which is that it is pre-determined).

I don’t see how overdetermination explains much at all. If events are either over-determined or they do not happen then over-determination seems to essentially a synonym for ‘having happened’ or for ‘having been caused to happen’. To say ‘events are overdetermined or they are non-existent’ seems to just be paraphrasing ‘effects result from causes’.

This also seems to only function retro-actively: we look upon some effect/event and apply after the fact a cause/overdetermining factor. We might, in a particular moment, speculate that this or that will be a cause/overdetermining factor. If the effect/event happens then we will have been right. If not, then we were wrong.

How does that add anything whatsoever to idea of ‘possibility’, other than a retroactive self-congratulation (we were on the side of history, we managed to act in line with the future despite epistemic uncertainty) or re-affirmation of our inability to predict (we wrongly identified the cause/overdetermining factor, epistemic uncertainty frustrates our ability to predict)?

“Why didn’t X effect/event which we believe desirable happen?” “There was no cause/overdetermining factor for X.” That simply restates that X didn’t happen, with the additional implication that X couldn’t have happened. I see no reason to find that a satisfying answer on any grounds other than argument.

Quite frankly, I suspect that the impulse or motivation here is a consolatory one, it was for me when I used to believe similar ideas and I think this is precisely one of the things at stake in determinist version of Marxism, of the “wait and see” or “internal contradiction” variety. “Why did we or X group we like lose Y conflict?” “Because they could not do other than lose. The time was not yet ripe.” This seems to be what this all boils down to. I can see the appeal: “the time was not yet ripe” implies that the time will be ripe some day. It keeps hope alive etc. But that’s not an argument for why anyone else should agree, and strikes me as being no more justifiable in argument than simply repeating “because they lost”.

More questions… why is retaining a term and idea like possibility an abandoment of materialism in favor an ideal schema? (I suspect you have a different sense or version of materialism than I do.) And, even if it is so, what’s wrong with an ideal schema? The epithet of idealism doesn’t convince me, particularly given that the materialism I think you’re using probably has all of the same problems translated into a different idiom (as Althusser has commented, there’s an idealism hidden in much of materialism), with the additional problematic premise of predetermination. What utility do you see in / what makes recommendable this materialism you favor?

take care,
Nate

‘Overdetermination’ is when an event has multiple causes, any one of which in itself is sufficient to determine the event. Althusser thinks that in history as in psychology, this is generally how things work.

A. is attacking ‘dialectics’, which is what he sees as an incorrect, Hegelian Marxism which unlike Marx himself tried to understand history according to an abstraction.

The points here are that:
1. events not possible, but overdetermined or non-existent;
2. to say that they are possible is to abandon materialism in favour of an ideal schema.

Overdetermination is where an effect is produced by more causes than it in fact needs. This occurs all the time in mental events, where there are simply loads of concatenating reasons for things that happen in your head, which are simply more than are needed to produce that effect. The idea is that in history as in psychology, the existence of multiple sufficient causes is why things happen, rather than indicative of competing explanations only one of which can be correct.

By “‘dialectical’ schema”, A. is just attacking Hegelian Marxism, which predicts results that never obtain in its abstraction (I think).

My point with this is that:
1. things are not ontologically ‘possible’. They are overdetermined or non-existent.
2. the idea that revolution is always possible is based on abstraction not materialism.

“If it is true, as Leninist practice and reflection prove, that the revolutionary situation in Russia was precisely a result of the intense overdetermination of the basic class contradiction, we should perhaps ask what is exceptional about this ‘exceptional situation’, and whether, like all exceptions, this one does not clarify its rule – is not, unbeknown to the rule, the rule itself. For, after all, are we not always in exceptional situations? The failure of the 1849 Revolution in Germany was an exception, the failure in Paris in 1871 was an exception, the German Social-Democratic failure at the beginning of the twentieth century pending the chauvinist betrayal of 1914 was an exception . . . exceptions, but with respect to what? To nothing but the ‘dialectical’ schema, which in its very simplicity seems to have retained a memory (or rediscovered the style) of the Hegelian model and its faith in the resolving ‘power’ of the abstract contradiction as such: in particular, the ‘beautiful’ contradiction between Capital and Labour.”

Sorry, I’m too lazy and busy to really attend to this issue right now!