Parker, I. (1999) ‘Psychology and Marxism: Dialectical Opposites?’, In W. Maiers , B. Bayer,
B. Duarte Esgalhado, R. Jorna, and E. Schraube (eds) Challenges to Theoretical Psychology
(isbn: 1-896691-75-7), Toronto: Captus University Publications, pp. 477-484
PSYCHOLOGY AND MARXISM: DIALECTICAL OPPOSITES?
Ian Parker
SUMMARY: If we are doing critical psychology must we necessarily be Marxist? Marxism
is a scientific theoretical research programme and political movement. However, the attempt
to construct a ‘Marxist psychology’ has so often come to grief, for two reasons: (i) Marxist
psychologists are caught in the paradox of trying to produce an account of the way the kind of
subject that we are now works as a self-regulating individual (with the kind of second nature
that binds it to capitalism) while trying to imagine a time when even the Marxist theory they
use will be outmoded; (ii) Marxism’s attempt to escape, or to work askew or in diametric
opposition to this kind of subject is doomed to failure, for those attempts will still be mapping
themselves into one of the fantasy spaces that bourgeois culture constructs as the ‘other’ to
itself. We may not be able to combine scientific psychology and scientific Marxism, but we
do need a Marxist account to understand why that is so and to construct a practice able to
negotiate the terms of the debate.
Introduction
A space has opened up in recent years for the development of what we might call ‘critical
psychology’ (eg, Fox and Prilleltensky, 1997; Ibañez and Iñiguez, 1997). This broad umbrella
term includes feminist critiques of malestream accounts of experience, post-structuralist
deconstruction of the rational unified subject and, of course, the strand of work elaborating a
Marxist account called Kritische Psychologie (Tolman, 1994; Tolman and Maiers, 1991). The
mass of people who think of themselves as ‘critical psychologists’ in the broadest sense of the
term do not think of themselves as Marxists. Some of us do, but the activity of critical
psychology is a disparate contradictory exercise which often cuts against what some would
hope for as a future ‘Marxist Psychology’ as well as against the existing discipline of
scientific psychology.
Critical Psychology and Marxism
This critical psychology runs in two parallel tracks. One track is where we undo scientific
psychology. That may involve internal critique of theoretical frameworks to reveal the way
their objects are socially constructed rather than being scientific truths, or action research with
the subjects of psychological knowledge to expose the oppressive practices which make
theories become true. Examples here would be the interrogation of lesbian-feminist therapy to
show how it still reproduces hetero-normative views of sexuality (Kitzinger and Perkins,
1993), or research with people who hear voices so that they might stop psychiatry
pathologising non-normative experience (Parker et al., 1995).
The other track is where we do unscientific psychology. That may involve developing
theoretical frameworks from postmodernism or Wittgenstein which deconstruct and disrupt
the conceptual architecture of the discipline, or playfully working up varieties of activity and
experience that cannot be contained by any psychology which tries to know and regulate its
domain. Examples here would be discussions of the ‘end of knowing’ in post-epistemological
, therapeutic-performative practice (Newman and Holzman, 1997), or the elaboration of
cyberpsychology in electronic-virtual environments (Gordo-López and Parker, in press).
Although some critical psychologists would like to be merely curious about how theories
work and remain cautious about action against them, critical psychology often entails some
direct engagement with practice and involvement with groups which link psychologists with
those they usually practice upon, groups such as Psychology Politics Resistance.
So where does Marxism, as a practice which is usually thought of by its adherents as a
scientific theoretical research programme and political movement, fit in this picture?
Marxism is a theoretical research programme and political movement devoted simultaneously
to comprehending the historical development and dynamics of society through an attention to
underlying structures of economic exploitation and to revolutionising social relations through
the praxis of the oppressed and their allies. While the central category is that of class,
capitalist society in the over-industrialised world, the bureaucratic remnants of the Stalinist
states in some countries, and the colonised Third World, are also locked into place by
structures of patriarchal and racist domination (cf. Bhavnani and Phoenix, 1994; Walkerdine,
1996). The theoretical framework of Marxism for radical psychologists includes, as
interconnected sets of analysis, an account of commodification (the transformation of human
powers into the powers of objects in the marketplace), alienation (the enforced separation of
human potential from work which must create things as the property of others) and
individualisation (the simultaneous sense of responsibility and powerlessness for the person
experiencing themselves as the owner or the dispossessed of things instead of as a participant
in social relations).
This means that there is some stake in the activity of understanding the world through
some kind of practical rational systematic method. This also means that much of the activity
of seriously undoing science or playfully doing unscientific things would seem to be
anathema to Marxists. So, how might Marxism and the broader project of critical psychology
come together? There seems to be an enormous gulf between what Marxism might look like
in psychology as a pretender to the most radical practical-theoretical position and what
critical psychology is already doing as an array of radical unruly theoretical practices.
There are other problems standing in the way of an alliance between psychology and
Marxism. Our critical work is structured by a split between Marxism as a tradition of political
practice and research and psychology as a discipline embedded in the practices of class
society committed to research goals set by those with economic power. Furthermore, the very
conditions which made the many varieties of critical psychology possible are conditions of
crisis, crises which have thrown Marxism into disarray as much as psychology.
Let us take psychology first. We do need to locate the crisis in psychology in the
context of the fragmentation and re-articulation of the capitalist economy and in manic-
depressive swings between grandiose claims about the final triumph of liberalism and the end
of history on the one hand and despair at the proliferation of rebellions and inchoate or
fundamentalist refusals of imperialism on the other. Psychology here simply will not work as
part of a grand narrative of self-identity, liberal collectivity and historical progress. Although
some still adhere to the hope that it is possible to unify psychology, research is splintered into
mutually incompatible areas of study, methods and paradigms. That disarray makes
discussions of theoretical psychology interesting, but most of the time it is just a confusing
warring mess.
There is also a deep crisis in Marxism. It is not only burnt-out libertarian ex-Marxists
telling us that we live in a postmodern condition (Lyotard, 1979) or apparatchiks from the US
State Department telling us that history is over (Fukuyama, 1992) that are responsible for the
collapse of Marxist politics. The new world disorder unleashed by the collapse of the soviet
B. Duarte Esgalhado, R. Jorna, and E. Schraube (eds) Challenges to Theoretical Psychology
(isbn: 1-896691-75-7), Toronto: Captus University Publications, pp. 477-484
PSYCHOLOGY AND MARXISM: DIALECTICAL OPPOSITES?
Ian Parker
SUMMARY: If we are doing critical psychology must we necessarily be Marxist? Marxism
is a scientific theoretical research programme and political movement. However, the attempt
to construct a ‘Marxist psychology’ has so often come to grief, for two reasons: (i) Marxist
psychologists are caught in the paradox of trying to produce an account of the way the kind of
subject that we are now works as a self-regulating individual (with the kind of second nature
that binds it to capitalism) while trying to imagine a time when even the Marxist theory they
use will be outmoded; (ii) Marxism’s attempt to escape, or to work askew or in diametric
opposition to this kind of subject is doomed to failure, for those attempts will still be mapping
themselves into one of the fantasy spaces that bourgeois culture constructs as the ‘other’ to
itself. We may not be able to combine scientific psychology and scientific Marxism, but we
do need a Marxist account to understand why that is so and to construct a practice able to
negotiate the terms of the debate.
Introduction
A space has opened up in recent years for the development of what we might call ‘critical
psychology’ (eg, Fox and Prilleltensky, 1997; Ibañez and Iñiguez, 1997). This broad umbrella
term includes feminist critiques of malestream accounts of experience, post-structuralist
deconstruction of the rational unified subject and, of course, the strand of work elaborating a
Marxist account called Kritische Psychologie (Tolman, 1994; Tolman and Maiers, 1991). The
mass of people who think of themselves as ‘critical psychologists’ in the broadest sense of the
term do not think of themselves as Marxists. Some of us do, but the activity of critical
psychology is a disparate contradictory exercise which often cuts against what some would
hope for as a future ‘Marxist Psychology’ as well as against the existing discipline of
scientific psychology.
Critical Psychology and Marxism
This critical psychology runs in two parallel tracks. One track is where we undo scientific
psychology. That may involve internal critique of theoretical frameworks to reveal the way
their objects are socially constructed rather than being scientific truths, or action research with
the subjects of psychological knowledge to expose the oppressive practices which make
theories become true. Examples here would be the interrogation of lesbian-feminist therapy to
show how it still reproduces hetero-normative views of sexuality (Kitzinger and Perkins,
1993), or research with people who hear voices so that they might stop psychiatry
pathologising non-normative experience (Parker et al., 1995).
The other track is where we do unscientific psychology. That may involve developing
theoretical frameworks from postmodernism or Wittgenstein which deconstruct and disrupt
the conceptual architecture of the discipline, or playfully working up varieties of activity and
experience that cannot be contained by any psychology which tries to know and regulate its
domain. Examples here would be discussions of the ‘end of knowing’ in post-epistemological
, therapeutic-performative practice (Newman and Holzman, 1997), or the elaboration of
cyberpsychology in electronic-virtual environments (Gordo-López and Parker, in press).
Although some critical psychologists would like to be merely curious about how theories
work and remain cautious about action against them, critical psychology often entails some
direct engagement with practice and involvement with groups which link psychologists with
those they usually practice upon, groups such as Psychology Politics Resistance.
So where does Marxism, as a practice which is usually thought of by its adherents as a
scientific theoretical research programme and political movement, fit in this picture?
Marxism is a theoretical research programme and political movement devoted simultaneously
to comprehending the historical development and dynamics of society through an attention to
underlying structures of economic exploitation and to revolutionising social relations through
the praxis of the oppressed and their allies. While the central category is that of class,
capitalist society in the over-industrialised world, the bureaucratic remnants of the Stalinist
states in some countries, and the colonised Third World, are also locked into place by
structures of patriarchal and racist domination (cf. Bhavnani and Phoenix, 1994; Walkerdine,
1996). The theoretical framework of Marxism for radical psychologists includes, as
interconnected sets of analysis, an account of commodification (the transformation of human
powers into the powers of objects in the marketplace), alienation (the enforced separation of
human potential from work which must create things as the property of others) and
individualisation (the simultaneous sense of responsibility and powerlessness for the person
experiencing themselves as the owner or the dispossessed of things instead of as a participant
in social relations).
This means that there is some stake in the activity of understanding the world through
some kind of practical rational systematic method. This also means that much of the activity
of seriously undoing science or playfully doing unscientific things would seem to be
anathema to Marxists. So, how might Marxism and the broader project of critical psychology
come together? There seems to be an enormous gulf between what Marxism might look like
in psychology as a pretender to the most radical practical-theoretical position and what
critical psychology is already doing as an array of radical unruly theoretical practices.
There are other problems standing in the way of an alliance between psychology and
Marxism. Our critical work is structured by a split between Marxism as a tradition of political
practice and research and psychology as a discipline embedded in the practices of class
society committed to research goals set by those with economic power. Furthermore, the very
conditions which made the many varieties of critical psychology possible are conditions of
crisis, crises which have thrown Marxism into disarray as much as psychology.
Let us take psychology first. We do need to locate the crisis in psychology in the
context of the fragmentation and re-articulation of the capitalist economy and in manic-
depressive swings between grandiose claims about the final triumph of liberalism and the end
of history on the one hand and despair at the proliferation of rebellions and inchoate or
fundamentalist refusals of imperialism on the other. Psychology here simply will not work as
part of a grand narrative of self-identity, liberal collectivity and historical progress. Although
some still adhere to the hope that it is possible to unify psychology, research is splintered into
mutually incompatible areas of study, methods and paradigms. That disarray makes
discussions of theoretical psychology interesting, but most of the time it is just a confusing
warring mess.
There is also a deep crisis in Marxism. It is not only burnt-out libertarian ex-Marxists
telling us that we live in a postmodern condition (Lyotard, 1979) or apparatchiks from the US
State Department telling us that history is over (Fukuyama, 1992) that are responsible for the
collapse of Marxist politics. The new world disorder unleashed by the collapse of the soviet
