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ished principle of human equality . Obviously, structuralism would satisfy the
contemporary need to do away with the contradictory explanations of the
disturbing differences between " savage " and "civilized " societies . Struc–
turalism thus would find the common human denominator in the inequities
of race, class, wealth , and state of social advance . Many of the French neo–
structuralists , for example, write as though structuralism were an extension of
Marxist libertarian ideas, as though structuralism were a Maoist faction . And
the fact is that in America, some of the simplified and popularized versions, or
misinterpretations, of structuralism are thought to bolster democracy and
egalitarianism more effectively than Constitutional guarantees because social
injustices would represent temporal, or superficial, forms of unchanging and
timeless essences. In the light of structuralism, invidious racial theories , like
those ofHerrnstein orJensen, would be seen as the politicalization of appear–
ances , instead of realities .
Unfortunately, though , structuralist ideas-either in Levi-Strauss's
original context or in its "deviant" forms-have no immediate political
implications ; structuralist theories, in spite of Marxist pronouncements,
cannot really be applied to wipe out racism or other inequalities. For the
assumption of underlying "structural" inequality, like most theories that
postulate human and social constants, inevitably excludes politics as a means
of social advance. Essentially Levi-Strauss doesn't deal with political condi–
tions because, for him, human behavior is preordained by unconscious forces
beyond individual control. The issue of human equality is symbolically solved
before it is ever raised; and structuralism's most radical components are also
its most conservative elements, insofar as the assumption of unconscious–
and unchanging-cultural structures, which puts them beyond the reach of
politics, makes for conservatism. Hence this fusion of radical thought with
political conservatism appeals to those American liberals whose visions of
justice entail a minimum of social change , and who find no great difficulty in
reconciling inequality with equality and war with peace.
II.
Structuralists' disagreements with Marxism focus on politics and on
Levi-Strauss's interpretation of the meaning of history. In spite of attacks on
him by Marxists like Lefebvre and Sartre , Levi-Strauss manages to think of
himself as a Marxist ; he insists that he 's been one since he was seventeen . His
special brand of Marxism is "attached to fundamental notions of exchange
and production, and to production of culture out of nature." But his specific
application of the dialectic ignores some of Marx's central concepts, such as
