Althusser concludes by turning his attention to the question of "survivals" (114), the existence of which cannot be disputed even within the Russian Communist party of Lenin’s day. What is a survival, what is its "theoretical status" (114), he asks? Are we talking about retained "economic structures" (114) or does the term refer to "other structures, political, ideological structures, etc.: customs, habits, even ‘traditions’ such as the ‘national tradition’" (114)? Althusser argues that we need to reconceptualise ‘retentions’ in terms other than a "vague Hegelianism such as ‘supersession’--the-maintenance-of-what-has-been-negated-in-its-very-negation (that is, the negation of the negation)" (115). From a Hegelian perspective, the "survival of the past" (115) as the ‘superseded’ . . . is simply reduced to the modality of a memory" (115): the "past survives in the form of a memory of what it has been; that is, as the whispered promise of its present" (115). From this perspective, "Rome lived happily in a world impregnated by Greece: Greece ‘superseded’ survived as objective memories: its reproduced temples, assimilated religion, its rethought philosophy" (115). "Without knowing it" (115), by the same token, Greece "was already Rome" (115). Althusser contends that "Marx’s conception of ‘supersession’ has nothing to do with this dialectic of historical comfort" (115). Rather, survivals are explained by reference to (i.e. determined by) the multiplicity of world-historical forces which he terms ‘overdetermination’ at any given historical conjuncture, that is, synchronically rather than diachronically. At any moment, the process of overdetermination has an uneven effect, he argues, as a result of which a "revolution in the structure does not ipso facto modify the existing superstructure and particularly the ideologies at one blow (as it would if the economic was the sole determinant factor), for they have sufficient of their own consistency to survive beyond their immediate life context, even to recreate, to ‘secrete’ substitute conditions of existence temporarily" (116). In other words, because change is produced within one sector of society, this does not mean that all sectors are equally affected. Secondly, Althusser argues, it is also true that the "new society produced by the Revolution may itself ensure the survival, that is, the reactivation, of older elements through both the forms of its new superstructures and specific (national and international) ‘circumstances’" (116). In other words, a given configuration of circumstances (overdetermination) in the present may be responsible for and may even seek out the reactivation of particular patterns of belief, activity, etc. (survivals) for its own purposes. This explains why the

proud and generous Russian people bore Stalin’s crimes and repression with such resignation; how the Bolshevik party could tolerate them; not to speak of the final question--how a Communist leader could have ordered them. (116)

Althusser needs to argue that the excesses and even brutalities which marked Stalin’s reign of terror are not explicable by reference to some Hegelian notion of essence manifesting itself historically through variable phenomena which retain within themselves the marks, for good or bad, of their previous incarnations. To argue this would be in effect to admit that there is a tradition of violence and even brutality within Marxism which, although manifest in the Russian Communist party is latent in other manifestations of Marxism, and ultimately reducible to some taint within the very essence of the philosophy. Althusser argues that this is where the Hegelian line of argument leads: to collusion with the critics of communism in the view that Marxism is inherently autocratic and totalitarian. However, the application of the notion of overdetermination leads in a different direction: Stalin’s excesses is perfectly explicable with reference to the specific configuration of historical forces pertinent to a particular place and time alone. Marxism in other socio-historical contexts may not and probably would not take the same path.