universe of manto be effected through work.”^30 Indeed, he focuses
on man’s animality as years before he attended to the “coefficient
of adversity” that the laborer experienced in overcoming the resistance
of physical nature via his labor. On Sartre’s reading, even inBN,
this led the worker to visualize his freedom in the sense of liberation
from oppressive work as a matter of counterviolence. That figures
centrally in his analyses of the capitalist and colonialist “systems,”^31
which he takes to be practico-inert phenomena based on violence
and racism.
But Sartre’s position here differs from “orthodox” Marxism in at least
two ways. It denies that the base/superstructure model is applicable to
morality. Admittedly, what he calls “inauthentic ethical systems,” such as
those of imperatives and values, count as “ideologies” in accordance with
that model. But we saw that he would later insist to his “Maoist” friends
that morality (la moralite ́) is not limited to the ideological “superstruc-
ture,” but exists “at the very level of production” (ORR 45 ). He is
obviously talking of a “true morality,” one that opens a pure future for
creative praxis.
The second way in which this dialectical ethic differs from “ortho-
dox” Marxism is only implicit in these lectures, but was stated in a
previous lecture on “Marxism and Subjectivity” that Sartre delivered
at the Gramsci Institute on December 12 , 1961.^32 Broadly speaking,
Sartre had elsewhere insisted that a concept of subjectivity could
be found in the works of Marx, and this lecture was his attempt
to make good on that claim. Without pursuing his interesting argu-
ment in detail, suffice it to note that he relies on a concept of
subjectivity (not a substantial subject) that builds on his earlier
notions of the prereflective consciousness and purifying reflection as
(^30) Bowman and Stone, “Making the Human,” 274.
(^31) See “Le Colonialisme est un syste`me,”Sitv: 25 – 48 and other writings in that volume;
“Colonialism is a System,” inColonialism and Neocolonialism, trans. Azzedine Haddour,
32 Steve Brewer and Terry McWilliams (London: Routledge,^2001 ),^30 –^47.
Jean-Paul Sartre, “Marxism and Subjectivity,” La Conference de Rome, 1961 , ed. Michel
Kail,LTMno. 560 ( 1993 ), 11 – 39 ; hereafter MS.
It should be admitted that this lecture, consisting of notes recorded at the conference, typed
and revised for stylistic purposes by Kail, was not reviewed by Sartre and so should be
considered unpublished (ine ́dit). Still, it does build on and expand claims made earlier in his
work or in the next Gramsci (Rome) lecture that we are now discussing.
The Rome lecture: “Morality and Society” 365