Principal Condition (Economic Determinism, MP's Reading)

Merleau-Ponty's exact formula for the relation between economy and history in his sympathetic-from-the-inside reading of Marx: economic conditions are the principal condition of historical progress, but principal-condition is not cause-of-everything. Developed in Sense and Non-Sense's "Concerning Marxism" (Chapter 8, Fontaine Nos. 48-9, February 1946) and "Marxism and Philosophy" (Chapter 9, Revue internationale June-July 1946). The defining formula: "no progress can be made in the cultural order, no historical step can be taken unless the economy, which is like its schema and material symbol, is organized in a certain way" (Concerning Marxism p. 108). The concept is the structural underpinning of MP's open-Marxism position and is preserved (in critically modified form) in Humanism and Terror (1947) and Adventures of the Dialectic (1955).

Key Points

  • The defining formula again, with emphasis: "not that they explain everything that happens but that no progress can be made in the cultural order... unless the economy, which is like its schema and material symbol, is organized in a certain way" — economy is the condition (sine qua non) of historical change, not the cause of all of it.
  • The analogical move: economy is to history as the body is to the personality. "Just as in the understanding of a person, all factors — although interdependent — are not equally important (bodily behavior being more reliable than fleeting feelings), so in the understanding of history the economic perspective, the way men set up their relation with nature and with each other, is of fundamental importance" (Translators' Introduction p. xv).
  • Greatness of Marxism is structurally located: "the greatness of Marxism lies not in its having treated economics as the principal or unique cause of history but in its treating cultural history and economic history as two abstract aspects of a single process" (Concerning Marxism p. 105).
  • The polemical edge: monocausal economic determinism is attributed to "current accounts" of Marxism (Plekhanov, Engels-late, Lefebvre), not to Marx himself.
  • The reformulation in Marxism and Philosophy: "It is the idea that economy and ideology have interior ties within the totality of history, like matter and form in a work of art or a perceptual thing" (p. 130).

What the Concept Does

  1. It positions MP between orthodox Marxism and anti-Marxist liberalism. Orthodox Marxism (Plekhanov, late Engels, the "current accounts" Maulnier criticizes) reduces history to economic determinism. Anti-Marxist liberalism rejects economic determinism by treating economy as one factor among many, equally weighted. MP's principal-condition formula carves a third path: economy is uniquely fundamental without being uniquely causal.

  2. It justifies MP's 1945-46 political stance. The "policy of the Communist Party" position MP recommends in For the Sake of Truth is internally consistent with the principal-condition reading: if economic structure is the precondition of all cultural-political change, then the political party that addresses economic structure has a privileged claim — but only as the political instrument of an analysis that retains its philosophical openness.

  3. It generalizes from political economy to a phenomenology of historical existence. MP's analogy — economy is the "schema and material symbol" of history — is borrowed from his own phenomenology: "the meaning of a picture or a poem cannot be separated from the materiality of the colors or the words" (Marxism and Philosophy p. 130). The economy carries social meaning the way the painted canvas carries pictorial meaning — not as the cause of meaning but as the body of it.

  4. It is the structural ancestor of pente-de-l-histoire. The principal-condition formula presupposes that history has a slope (a direction in which it can progress or fail to progress) without claiming that the slope guarantees a destination. This is the seed of the pente-de-l-histoire doctrine MP will name explicitly at his Brussels conference of 14 March 1946.

What It Rejects

  • Reductionist economic determinism (the "current accounts" of Marxism — Lefebvre, Plekhanov, late Engels).
  • Idealist anti-Marxism that treats ideas / culture / spirit as independent forces (Croce, the Action française tradition).
  • Epiphenomenalist treatments of economy as superstructural decoration on a more fundamental cultural-spiritual reality.
  • Maulnier's "Beyond-Marxism" position (the immediate target of Concerning Marxism).

Stakes

If accepted:

  • Marxism is preserved as a philosophical position (open, dialectical, phenomenologically-anchored) while orthodox Marxism is rejected.
  • The political conclusion follows: one can recommend "the policy of the Communist Party" without endorsing the philosophy of orthodox Marxism — the structure of MP's 1945-46 position.
  • The formula prefigures Humanism and Terror (1947) and Adventures of the Dialectic (1955) — both work out the principal-condition doctrine in different political conjunctures.

Problem-Space

The concept addresses the problem of what kind of grip the economy has on history. The classical positions are: (a) economic determinism (economy is the cause); (b) idealist anti-determinism (ideas are independent); (c) "all factors are equal" pluralism. None of these match what Marx (read carefully, on MP's view) actually held. The principal-condition formula tries to capture: economy is the necessary condition of cultural-historical change, even when it is not the sufficient explanation of any particular event.

Connections

  • structural ancestor of pente-de-l-histoire — the slope of history is the meta-level claim that the principal-condition is consistent with.
  • applied in politics-mp — MP's 1945-46 political stance is the principal-condition formula's political conclusion.
  • applied in Humanism and Terror — HT's analysis of Soviet practice presupposes this reading of economic primacy.
  • applied in Adventures of the Dialectic — AdV's "non-philosophy" position retains the principal-condition while abandoning the political conclusion.
  • contrasts with monocausal economic determinism (the orthodox-Marxist reading).
  • connects to capital-as-phenomenology — Marx's Das Kapital read as concrete Phenomenology of Mind presupposes the principal-condition structure.
  • connects to human-object — the human object (street, field, house carrying social meaning) is the phenomenological correlate of economic principal-condition.

Open Questions

  • The "no true Scotsman" problem: MP attributes monocausal determinism to "current accounts" rather than to Marx himself. Whether Marx's actual texts support MP's reading or the orthodox reading is itself a textual-interpretation question; MP does not resolve it. The 1945-46 essays presuppose without arguing that the principal-condition reading is Marx's own.
  • The relation between principal condition and the late-MP doctrine of institution (1954-55): both name the way a structure organizes possibility without determining outcomes; the genealogy is implicit but not yet developed.

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-1948-sense-and-non-sense — Chapter 8 (Concerning Marxism) gives the locus classicus formula at p. 108; Chapter 9 (Marxism and Philosophy) gives the matter-form analogy at p. 130.