Comparing the Two “Cold Wars” Through Gramsci, Althusser and Mao

Abstract

There are three overlapping objectives in the article. The first objective is to present three different Marxist perspectives, while focusing on the interpretation of the base/superstructure dialectic which is the key to the understanding of Marxian political economy. The second objective is to make sense of the first and second “Cold Wars” based on the different interpretations of the base/superstructure dialectic. The last objective is to reassert the materialist essence of the base/superstructure dialectic by evoking Marx and his concepts of “Labor” and “Capital”. The three different perspectives are analyzed based on this reassertion. Through these three objectives, two deductions were made: the first deduction is that scientific Marxism requires the acknowledgement of the overdetermination of the economic base (its dominance in the last instance) in the analysis of abstractions, empirical and historical data. The “totality of the relations of production” within the economic base appears abstract in nature, but it represents the ontological category of “Labor” that defines human history since its beginning. It has a transhistorical essence. Human beings work together to produce their basic needs, according to historically specific (abstract) relations of production. The superstructure determines the specificity of the relations of production; it defines the “historical” side of the relations of production in the economic base. In the era of capitalism, “Capital” (the private appropriation of social wealth) is the dominant relation that comes to dictate the “totality of the relations of the production” within the economic base, through the superstructure. Total capital is then the real “subject” of history, and all abstractions gain purpose and practicality based on the class struggle between Labor and Capital. The second deduction relates to real history explained on the basis of the first deduction. Looking at the historical development of the class struggle against monopoly-finance capital (the centralized and concentrated capital) in the 20th century, the First Cold War never truly ended even though the global socialist ideology became weak and the ideological struggle against the imperialist superstructure watered down.