Individu de classe

Merleau-Ponty's 1947–48 reading of Marx's Idéologie allemande: the individu de classe is the On (impersonal "one") that mediates the historical subject and the historical-economic conditions — "porté à la fois par conditions matérielles et par subjectivités, médium de l'histoire" (PPH 1947–48, p. 186). It replaces three rival conceptions of the historical subject: Marx's individualist proletarian (too subjective), Hegel's Weltgeist (too objective and transcendent), and Durkheim's collective consciousness (too aggregative). MP coins the term as the structural concept that makes the marxist logique de l'histoire coherent: the individu de classe is "la grande trouvaille de Marx" — Marx's defining philosophical contribution to the philosophy of history.

The concept is the direct conceptual predecessor of institution (1954–55). The 1947–48 PPH formulation — "Gestalten qui orientent le développement historique sans le nécessiter" + "logique des situations" + the individu de classe as the On of historical relations — is structurally identical to what the 1954–55 course will systematize as institution. The terminological shift from individu de classe to institution tracks MP's broader move from an explicitly marxist register to an explicitly Husserlian register, but the underlying structural concept is continuous. Cf pph-as-direct-predecessor-of-institution-1955 (candidate).

Key Points

  • Marx's discovery, named by MP: The phrase individu de classe itself comes from Marx's German Ideology (the "Klassen-Individuum" passage). MP isolates it in PPH 1947–48 as the load-bearing concept of Marx's mature philosophy of history — neither the proletarian individual nor the proletariat-in-the-abstract, but the subjectival-objectival mediation that makes either coherent.
  • Three rivals dispatched: The individu de classe is not Hegel's Weltgeist ("un être pour soi devant lequel l'individu ne soit qu'un en soi"), Durkheim's collective consciousness, or the Cartesian-individualist subject. It is "nous-mêmes dès que nous avons une certaine situation physique et interhumaine, dès que nous parlions ou nous échangeons" (PPH p. 188).
  • Logic of situations, not logic of necessity: "Au fond le lieu de l'histoire est une sorte d'on des relations humaines, qui n'est pas pour la conscience une fatalité, mais qui ne lui laisse le choix qu'entre un petit nombre d'attitudes, d'où résultent des conséquences parfaitement déterminées, — bref une logique des situations" (PPH p. 184). The individu de classe makes possible "Gestalten qui orientent le développement historique sans le nécessiter" — the formulation that will be reused as MP's signature thesis through AD 1955.
  • The On is a hinge: the individu de classe is the structure that mediates the personal and the political — the On through which subjective decisions and objective conditions become reciprocally legible. The 1955 Institution course will reformulate this as institution's "hinge"-structure that "exists between others and myself, between me and myself."
  • Conditional, not guaranteed: the marxist optimism (the proletariat will take the historical-mediating role) is conditional on the historical conjuncture allowing it; the Stalinist degeneration (PPH [Aron] segment + Mexico II + NY Pensée politique) shows this conditional is not automatic. The individu de classe is what makes both fidelity to and revision of the marxist philosophy of history possible.

Details

The Marxian source

In Die deutsche Ideologie, Marx distinguishes the "personal individual" from the "class individual" (Klassen-Individuum) — the abstract individual who appears under the bourgeois order's division of labor and is thrown into a class he experiences as an accidental condition. MP's reading isolates the Klassen-Individuum as the structural mediator that the 1844 Manuscripts had already implied (in the Gattungswesen / generic-being formulation) but had not yet named.

"La grande trouvaille de Marx, c'était l'individu de classe, le On porté à la fois par conditions matérielles et par subjectivités, médium de l'histoire" (PPH p. 186).

The PPH course quotes Marx's Idéologie allemande extensively (pp. 178–186) — particularly the passage on "individus ressortissant à l'histoire universelle" and the "extériorisation" of forces of production into the world market. MP reads these as articulating the individu de classe avant la lettre.

The structural function

The individu de classe is a medium — neither pure subject (which would relapse into Cartesian individualism or Sartrean pure-freedom) nor pure object (which would relapse into determinism or fatalism). MP's formulation:

"Donc facteurs indivisiblement subjectifs et objectifs dans l'histoire" (PPH p. 188).

The individu de classe is the place where these factors become indivisible. It is not an aggregate (against Durkheim) or a transcendence (against Hegel) but a structural relation that has both a subjective face (consciousness of class, "prise de conscience") and an objective face (material conditions, "marché mondial"). The proletariat's "mission historique" is what individu de classe is when the structural relation works: "C'est par nous seulement que [l'histoire] a [un sens] à titre définitif" (PPH p. 188).

Logic of situations vs. logic of necessity

The individu de classe makes possible MP's signature reading of logique de l'histoire:

"Logique au sens d'élimination de l'impossible. Structures en histoire, non fatum logique" (PPH p. 192).

History is logical not because it is necessary but because false attitudes are eliminated by the situations themselves — Trotsky's "natural selection" of historical attitudes, MP's reading of the marxist logique de fait. The individu de classe is the structural unit through which this elimination operates: it is the "logique des situations" through which actors are constrained without being determined.

Beyond Sartre's "Gestalten?"

MP corrects Sartre explicitly:

"Sartre disant qu'il n'y a peut-être pas de Gestalten historiques. Refuse le manchon de généralité, cette logique de situation qui entoure l'individu absolu. Il n'y a pas de limites à la liberté, sinon celles qu'elle se donne. Oui mais cela est ne reconnaître que pensée thétique" (PPH p. 191).

Sartre's denial of historical Gestalten is the denial of the individu de classe. MP's response: liberty without situational Gestalt is "thétique" — an abstract pure-freedom that is empty of the historical content that makes liberty meaningful.

The 1949 conjuncture as test

The 1947–48 PPH formulation is tested in the 1949 conferences against the 1947–49 conjuncture. The Mexico II "Antinomie de la vie collective" and the NY "Pensée politique" lectures both ask: in the actual 1949 world (USSR ≠ socialism, USA ≠ classical capitalism, no class consciousness as historically defined), can the individu de classe still play the role MP assigned it in PPH? The answer is qualified: "il y a logique de l'histoire non qu'elle aille toujours à conclusions mais parce qu'elle élimine d'elle-même les fausses solutions" (PPH p. 188). The individu de classe still has a negative function (eliminating impossibilities) but its positive function (carrying the proletarian historical mission) has been suspended by the actual conjuncture. The 1955 letter to Lévi-Strauss caps this trajectory: "société neuve à construire pour le prolétariat, non par lui."

Positions

  • PPH 1947–48 (this source): the individu de classe is the grande trouvaille of Marx; its conditional success (post-1917) is intact in principle.
  • HT 1947: marxism is "la philosophie de l'histoire," cannot be surpassed; the individu de classe is operative without being named.
  • AD 1955: the individu de classe analysis is consolidated and extended via Lukács, Weber, and Trotsky; the 1949 no man's land diagnosis is systematized.
  • Institution 1954–55: the individu de classe is renamed and Husserlianized as institution; the structural concept is continuous, but the marxist register is replaced by a more general phenomenological register.
  • 1955 letter to Lévi-Strauss: MP recognizes that strict marxism's reading of the individu de classe (proletariat as historical actor) is no longer tenable; "société neuve à construire pour le prolétariat, non par lui."

Connections

  • is the direct predecessor of institution — same structural function, different vocabulary (marxist vs Husserlian).
  • is the structural unit of logique-de-fait — the On of class is what makes the logic of facts (rather than necessity or contingency) coherent.
  • extends pente-de-l-histoire — the 1946 "structures-history-presents-for-our-position-taking" is the genesis of the 1947–48 individu de classe formulation.
  • contrasts with two-historicities — the individu de classe anticipates the "historicity of advent" (cumulative, instituting) against Hegel's "historicity of event" (the Museum).
  • grounds the changement-quantite-qualite thesis — the degeneration of stalinism is the individu de classe's positive function being suspended by institutional ossification.
  • is operative in no-mans-land-1949 — the 1949 diagnosis presupposes that the individu de classe has been displaced by topographic factors.

Open Questions

  • The individu de classe concept is named by MP in the PPH course but the underlying mediation-structure is operative as early as the 1946 Brussels lecture's "Gestalt active." Is the 1947–48 naming a substantive innovation, or merely a more explicit articulation of what MP had already operated in 1946?
  • The structural identity with the 1954–55 institution is striking but not absolute: institution is broader (extending to art history, science, biology, animal behavior), where the individu de classe is narrower (focused on the political-economic). At what point in MP's development (1949? 1953? 1954?) does the marxist individu de classe generalize into the Husserlian institution? The Mexico III conferences may be the structural pivot.
  • MP's claim that the individu de classe is "la grande trouvaille de Marx" is partly an interpretive imposition (Marx's own vocabulary uses Klassen-Individuum without making it the architectonic). Is MP reading too much weight into the term?

Sources