The Poverty of NeorealismRichard K. AshleyInternational Organization, Vol. 38, No. 2. (Spring, 1984), pp. 225-286.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0020-8183%28198421%2938%3A2%3C225%3ATPON%3E2.0.CO%3B2-QInternational Organization is currently published by The MIT Press.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/mitpress.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academicjournals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]://www.jstor.orgThu Nov 29 09:25:58 2007The poverty of neorealism Richard K. Ashley The theory of knowledge is a dimension of political theory because the specifically symbolic power to impose the principles of the construction of reality-in particular, social reality-is a major dimension of political power. Pierre Bourdieu It is a dangerous thing to be a Machiavelli. It is a disastrous thing to be a Machiavelli without virtu. Hans Morgenthau Almost six years ago, E. P. Thompson fixed his critical sights across the English Channel and let fly with a lengthy polemic entitled The Poverty of Theory. Thompson's immediate target was Louis Althusser. His strategic objective was to rebut the emergent Continental orthodoxy that Althusser championed: structural Marxism, a self-consciously scientific perspective aiming to employ Marxian categories within a structuralist framework to produce theoretical knowledge of the objective structures of capitalist reality. The charges Thompson hurled defy brief summary, but some key themes can be quickly recalled. Althusser and the structuralists, Thompson con- This article develops ideas from a draft paper, "The Hegemony of Hegemony," and "Realist Dialectics" (Presented at the September 1982 meeting of the American Political Science As- sociation, Denver, Colo.). My thinking on this topic has benefited enormously from comments and criticisms generously provided by Gordon Adams, Hayward R. Alker Jr., Albert Bergesen, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Richard Dagger, Felicia Harmer, Robert 0.Keohane, Stephen D. Krasner, Ivy Lang, Dickinson McGaw, George Modelski, Craig Murphy, Robert C. North, Mark Reader, John G. Ruggie, Kenneth N. Waltz, and David Winters, and the editors of IO. The argument here is controversial. It is therefore all the more noteworthy that, despite deep differences, communications with diverse audiences representing allegedly incommensurable points of view have been so intelligent and, for me at least, rewarding. To all concerned I offer thanks-and my exoneration. 1. E. P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978). See also Perry Anderson's rejoinder, Arguments within English Marxism (London: New Left Books, 1980). International Organization 38, 2, Spring 1984 0020-8 183/84/020225-6 1 $1.50 O 1984 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the World Peace Foundation226 International Organization tended, were guilty of an egregiously selective, hopelessly one-sided repre- sentation of the Marxian legacy they claimed to carry forward. In the name of science, Althusser had purged the legacy of its rich dialectical content while imposing a deadening ahistorical finality upon categories stolen from Marx's work. To produce this backhanded hagiography, Thompson charged, Althusser had superimposed a positivist understanding of science upon Marx even as he claimed to surpass the limits of positivism. What is worse, his structural Marxism had to ignore the historical context of Marx's work, subordinate the dialectical "Young Marx" to the objectivist "Mature Marx" of the Grundrisse, cast disrespect on old Engels, "the clown," and system- atically forget much of the Marxist literature since Marx, including Lenin. In Thompson's view, this reading of Marx produced a mechanistic theory of capitalist society-a machine-like model comprised of self-contained, complete entities or parts connected, activated, and synchronized by all manner of apparatuses. It was, Thompson complained, "an orrery of error^."^ Thompson's attack was by no means a plea for fidelity to Marx's original texts. Rather, it was primarily concerned with restoring a respect for practice in history. In Thompson's view, structural Marxism had abolished the role of practice in the constitution of history, including the historical making of social structures. It had produced an ahistorical and depoliticized under- standing of politics in which women and men are the objects, but not the makers, of their circumstances. Ultimately, it presented a totalitarian project, a totalizing antihistorical structure, which defeats the Marxian project for change by replicating the positivist tendency to universalize and naturalize the given order. ~e~eatedin the context of current European and Latin American social theory, non-Marxist as well as Marxist, Thompson's assault might today seem anachronistic. The fortress he attacked is already in ruins. In Europe, at least, the unquestioned intellectual paramountcy of structuralism has seen its day. True, European social theory remains very much indebted to struc- turalist thought -that set of principles and problematics differently reflected in, say, Saussure's linguistics, Durkheim's sociology, Levi-Strauss's cultural anthropology, or Piaget's developmental psychology. Yet today, that debt is honored not by uncritical adherence to