COMMUNICATION 65 cal and woolly attempt to rob revolutionary Marxism-Leninism of its substance, blunting its edge, vulgarizing it and coating it with the 'leftish' rhetoric for which Trotsky is so much admired by his followers. (For a forceful critique of Althusser, see Maurice Cornforth's article, ^Some Comments on Louis Althusser's Reply to John Lewis", in Marxism Today, May 1973.) It is difficult to see how Parcsh Chattopadhyay, or even Utsa Patnaik, can reconcile the crass attacks on Stalin and 'Stalinist dogmatism' by Althusser of the 'Maoist persuasion' with the well-known recognition and defence by the Communist Party of China and by Mao Tse-tung of Stalin's great historical role as a Marxist-Leninist and as a teacher and leader of the working class. Starting from an attack on 'Stalinist dogmatism' and on the 'political distortion' of 'Marxist concepts', Althusser constructs a metaphysic of the relation between theory and life which goes against the grain of Marxism-Leninism. He contrasts the Marxist 'scientific concepts' (which he upholds with all his heart) with the 'ideological concepts' obtaining in practice (which he sees as entirely opposed to science or theory). He denies precisely the Marxist theory of knowledge, the unity that Marxism-Leninism achieves between scientific theory and practice: "we can say that ideology, as a system of representations, is distinguished from science in that in it the practice-social function is more important than the theoretical function (function as knowledge)." (p 231, For Marx). He rejects as 'confusion' and as a 'political trap', the identification and merging of the Marxist political positions, with the theoretical positions: "This distinction is essential if we are to avoid the political trap of confusing Marx's theoretical positions with his political positions, and justifying the former from the latter." (Ibid., pp 159-160). Althusser's whole attempt is, thus, to create a gulf between Marxist theory and practice; between concepts and life; between the theoretical-conceptual position and the class position; between science and theory on the one hand, and ideology and politics on the other. Althusser attempts to install a 'Marxist science' without its working-class and partisan outlook and politics. Utsa Patnaik is, of course, strongly influenced by the Althusserian theory of knowledge which comes trailing clouds of glorious "rigour; a rigorous conception of Marxist concepts, their implications and their development; a rigorous conception and investigation of what appertains to them in particular, that is, what distinguishes them once and for all from their phantoms," (Ibid., pi 16). i3 Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p 195, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1970. 1 * Lenin, "Capitalism in Agriculture", Collected Works, Vol 4, p 111. 15 Marx, Capital, Vol 3, p 802, cited by Utsa Patnaik in her communication in Social Scientist No 13, p 65. 16 See Programme of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), especially the section titled "Balance Sheet of Bourgeois Agrarian Policies," paras 34-36; the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPI (M), "Tasks on the Kisan Front", 1966 and the