Castoriadis vs Marx

[eremon]

In his book "The Imaginary Institution of Society" Castoriadis came to reject the Marx's theory of history. Is there any Marxist response to Castoriadis critique?

[eremon]

I put this quote from Castoriadi's book:

"if in antiquity, the dominant categories under which social and historical relations are grasped are essentially political categories (power in the city-state, relations between city- states, the relation between force and right, etc.), and if the economic receives only marginal attention, this is neither because understanding or reflection was less 'advanced', nor because the economic material was absent or neglected. The reason is that, in the reality of the ancient world, the economy was not yet constituted as a separate, 'autonomous' moment (as Marx would say), 'for itself', of human activity. A genuine analysis of the economy itself and of its importance for society could occur only after the seventeenth, and in particular, after the eighteenth century, that is with the birth of capitalism, which in fact set up the economy as the dominant moment of social life."

[Jimmie Higgins]

I put this quote from Castoriadi's book:

"if in antiquity, the dominant categories under which social and historical relations are grasped are essentially political categories (power in the city-state, relations between city- states, the relation between force and right, etc.), and if the economic receives only marginal attention, this is neither because understanding or reflection was less 'advanced', nor because the economic material was absent or neglected. The reason is that, in the reality of the ancient world, the economy was not yet constituted as a separate, 'autonomous' moment (as Marx would say), 'for itself', of human activity. A genuine analysis of the economy itself and of its importance for society could occur only after the seventeenth, and in particular, after the eighteenth century, that is with the birth of capitalism, which in fact set up the economy as the dominant moment of social life."I don't know that much about him, but I think, like many Marxist intellectuals at his time, he was trying to "think" his way out of the post-WWII situation in regards to class struggle.

Many of these thinkers saw the decline in struggle and increases in working-class gains as some kind of signal that capitalism had changed and workers were no longer a revolutionary class in the West. I think we can see now - and could have seen by the late 60s and early 70s, that this was a circumstantial impression, not an actual transformation of the system.

So I think the idea that economic conditions were secondary to social changes in pre-capitalist societies may come from him grappling with some of these questions. I think his thinking may have been (crudely) : if social change comes from new innovations and novelties in society or other social issues, then not all is lost in the post-war era of Stalinist dominance on one side and US dominance on the other with a passive international (first world) working class.

Here's a discussion and critique of some of his ideas:
http://libcom.org/library/illusion-solidarity-david-brown

And here's Alex Callinicos' critique, though not that in-depth:
http://www.marxists.de/trotism/callinicos/4-3_heresies.htm

[citizen of industry]

So is Castoriadi denying that economic forms existed in antiquity? That people didn't produce, and hence didn't have a mode of production? That those political structures rose up in a vacuum? Whether or not the people were conscious of it, those political categories were the product of the economic conditions.

For example, clans fighting over territory. There are 7 billion people in the world today. In antiquity, small groups of humans fought over large tracts of land, due to "overpopulation." Overpopulation, because as nomadic societies they required huge areas of land for that form of society to exist. That is economics, their mode of production. Whatever chieftans or war councils that sprang up, whatever gods of war they imagined, were the result of those economic conditions. It isn't a question of whether or not they were conscious of that fact.