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For Marx
A milestone in the development of post-war Marxist thought.
This is the work in which Louis Althusser formulated some of his most influential ideas. For Marx, first published in France in 1968, has come to be regarded as the founding text of the school of “structuralist Marxism” which was presided over by the fascinating and enigmatic figure of Louis Althusser. Structuralism constituted an intellectual revolution in the 1960s and 1970s and radically transformed the way philosophy, political and social theory, history, science, and aesthetics were discussed and thought about. For Marx was a key contribution to that process and it fundamentally recast the way in which many people understood Marx and Marxism.
This book contains the classic statements of Althusser's analysis of the young Marx and the importance of Feuerbach during this formative period, of his thesis of the “epistomological break” between the early and the late Marx, and of his conception of dialectics, contradiction and “overdetermination.” Also included is a study of the materialist theater of Bertolazzi and Brecht and the critique of humanist readings of Marxism. Since his death in 1990, Althusser's legacy has come under renewed examination and it is increasingly recognized that the influence of his ideas has been wider and deeper than previously thought: reading For Marx, in its audacity, originality and rigor, will explain why this impact was so significant.
This is the work in which Louis Althusser formulated some of his most influential ideas. For Marx, first published in France in 1968, has come to be regarded as the founding text of the school of “structuralist Marxism” which was presided over by the fascinating and enigmatic figure of Louis Althusser. Structuralism constituted an intellectual revolution in the 1960s and 1970s and radically transformed the way philosophy, political and social theory, history, science, and aesthetics were discussed and thought about. For Marx was a key contribution to that process and it fundamentally recast the way in which many people understood Marx and Marxism.
This book contains the classic statements of Althusser's analysis of the young Marx and the importance of Feuerbach during this formative period, of his thesis of the “epistomological break” between the early and the late Marx, and of his conception of dialectics, contradiction and “overdetermination.” Also included is a study of the materialist theater of Bertolazzi and Brecht and the critique of humanist readings of Marxism. Since his death in 1990, Althusser's legacy has come under renewed examination and it is increasingly recognized that the influence of his ideas has been wider and deeper than previously thought: reading For Marx, in its audacity, originality and rigor, will explain why this impact was so significant.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
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3645 people want to read
About the author
Louis Althusser
179 books515 followersLouis Pierre Althusser (1918–1990) was one of the most influential Marxist philosophers of the 20th Century. As they seemed to offer a renewal of Marxist thought as well as to render Marxism philosophically respectable, the claims he advanced in the 1960s about Marxist philosophy were discussed and debated worldwide. Due to apparent reversals in his theoretical positions, to the ill-fated facts of his life, and to the historical fortunes of Marxism in the late twentieth century, this intense interest in Althusser's reading of Marx did not survive the 1970s. Despite the comparative indifference shown to his work as a whole after these events, the theory of ideology Althusser developed within it has been broadly deployed in the social sciences and humanities and has provided a foundation for much “post-Marxist” philosophy. In addition, aspects of Althusser's project have served as inspiration for Analytic Marxism as well as for Critical Realism. Though this influence is not always explicit, Althusser's work and that of his students continues to inform the research programs of literary studies, political philosophy, history, economics, and sociology. In addition, his autobiography has been subject to much critical attention over the last decade. At present, Althusser's philosophy as a whole is undergoing a critical reevaluation by scholars who have benefited from the anthologization of hard-to-find and previously unpublished texts and who have begun to engage with the great mass of writings that remain in his archives.
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November 21, 2012
The essential task that Louis Althusser devoted his philosophical career, and this book most pointedly, to was rescuing what he understood as the science of Marxism from the philosophical musings of the young Marx, which Althusser believed constituted neither Marxist science nor philosophy. Althusser felt this was an imperative task, as he hoped that what he deemed to be Marxist science could transform humanity's relationship to ideology. Marxism would only be allowed to perform this heroic service, however, if it did not itself devolve into an ideology. When Althusser was writing these essays, in the early 1960s, he was witnessing a self-reassessment on the part of the global communist movement as a response to the revelation of Stalin's crimes. Western Marxists were turning to the work of the young Marx in order to insist that the spirit of Marx's philosophy was ideologically humanist. It was this tendency that Althusser felt the need to counter.
Althusser called for an authentically Marxist study of Marx's early writings which were, Althusser fully acknowledged, indeed humanist. He claimed that the "western Marxists" were enraptured with the idealist notion of the author or philosopher. If humanism haunted the work of the young Marx, then, for the western Marxists, its seed must still be at the root of the mature works such as Capital, because, for them, nothing could transcend the idealist totality of the oeuvre, the ever present, metaphysical "human-ness" of the author's stamp. Rather, insisted Althusser, the work of the young Marx had to be subjected to the Marxist principles of ideological development that stated that the meaning of an ideology does not depend on its relation to "truth" but rather its relation to the social structure in which it developed and therefore, to understand an ideological position, one would have to look at the social conditions facing the thinker, and therefor the context of the thinker's intellectual development, as (s)he was writing any one piece. Texts can, for Althusser, point to a future, but all must be confronted within their singular present. (In this way Althusser, I think, lays the groundwork for Foucault's "death of the author" through the tenants of Marxism and structuralism.)
Althusser called the cultural framework in which a concept exists its "problematic." The problematic of a thought determines what is possible within a system of thought. The problematic of Marx's early thought, when he was still a humanist liberal, was that of nineteenth century Germany, which had never experienced a revolution of any kind, including a bourgeois one. The German bourgeoisie, including Marx, could only think in the codes of servitude, which is to say the religious obscurantism of Hegel. Marx's earliest writings were thus Feurbachian- attempts to free the Hegelian Spirit from alienation through transcending what Marx and his German brethren viewed as its alienated form- religion.
Althusser thought Marx could only escape this line of thought by getting out of Germany, which he luckily did in 1843, leaving for France in the hopes of glimpsing the spirit of the French Revolution. Instead of freedom, equality, and liberty, Marx found only a more intense workers struggle. This radicalized the young Marx, and he began writing about politics and socialism. For Althusser, however, these early socialist writings were still not truly Marxist. Indeed, they remained profoundly Hegelian. They rested on a simplistic notion of the proletariat superseding the bourgeoisie. Hegel viewed History as relentlessly marching towards its completion, the totality of absolute spirit manifested in a society that had evolved to the point of transcending all alienation. Marx's early political writings spoke of worker's struggle, but only as a simplistically messianic displacement of one stage of society by a less alienated stage of society. Marx remained, Althusser claimed, stuck in an essentially religious, idealist line of thinking, not yet truly starting from a materialist foundation. He was commenting on struggle, not partaking in it.
According to Althusser's narrative, as Marx became more involved in activism and organizing, his thinking began to be increasingly based on the reality of the worker's struggle. Marx began, in other words, to develop the materialist dialectic which Althusser argues borrows only terminology from Hegel, but breaks fully with Hegel's philosophy. For Althusser, the materialist dialectic looks for social change to come not as a result of shifts in universal social consciousness but in contradictions in actual social being. Althusser posits, following Lenin and, most directly, Mao, that these contradictions are never universal but are localized and unique. (I must say here that it seems to me that Althusser's reading of the “mature Marx” invests somewhat unfairly in the texts the latter discoveries of Lenin and Mao as if these discoveries were “inherent” to the thought of the materialist dialectic.) Again following Mao, Althusser says that ruptures, be they scientific, political or philosophical are never the result of a simple, predictable dialectic between competing forces (proletariat vs. bourgeoisie) but instead come from complex networks of contradictions that boil into overdeterminations which make change necessary. For example, the Russian Revolution became necessary because Russia was pregnant with two revolutions. It was a feudal society existing in a capitalist world where a working class was already starting to rebel under the banner of socialism.
Althusser defines the role of theory as being an aid to understanding the possibility of an epistemological break- when one kind of thinking turns into another, such as when Hegel's idealism is transformed into dialectical materialism. Such breaks make possible the creation of new types of knowledge. Theory is a specific practice that acts on general concepts. It is the means of production of knowledge. Dialectical materialism, for Althusser, is the mode of theoretical inquiry by which ideologically driven political activity is examined and turned into scientific arguments.
Althusser dissects the theoretical process into three stages, or, in his terms, “generalities.” Generality I is the process by which a theoretician critiques inherited ideological concepts in order to elaborate the theoretician's own concepts. Generality II determines a theoretical approach by determining what will be studied and how it will be studied, and it is imperative that this “study” be carried through in social practice- through tests in social organizing, agriculture, etc. (Again, Mao's influence on Althusser is here apparent.) Generality III arrives at a scientific hypothesis.
Like all new kinds of science, Marxist science had the potential to create new possibilities for philosophy, although Althusser did not think a legitimately Marxist philosophy had yet presented itself. (Later in his career, Althusser would attempt to practice Marxist philosophy with his notion of the capitalist construction of the the individual.) Instead, what passed for Marxist philosophy, the work of Western Marxists such as George Luckaks, was in fact a kind of Hegelian thinking. Western Marxism denies the distinction between Generality I and III. It denies, in other words, that knowledge is a practice. Thought is self-creating knowledge for the Hegelians, for whom the totality of social being is constantly revealing itself.
The Western Marxists threatened, then, to turn Marxism into just another ideology. Althusser never mentions the great irony that the Western Marxists, in trying to “humanize” Marxism, were in fact proclaiming that thought could make itself true- the purest intellectual manifestation of the Stalinist disaster. It was rather Althusser's line of thinking that would, at least potentially, lead humanity to a healthier relationship with ideology.
In the final essay, “Marxism and Humanism” Althusser admits that any society, including a socialist or even communist society will always rely on ideology to frame its world outlook to all of its subjects. Ideology will always function, to some degree, subconsciously. But, Althusser hopes, if the essential nature of ideology is socially acknowledged, then it could be transformed into an instrument of deliberative social action. Ideology could mold humanity towards egalitarian social tasks. If rulers, socialist or otherwise, failed to understand that ideology is inescapable and acts on all, including the ruling strata of any society, then those rulers could fall into the trap of thinking they could simply use ideology as a tool (as Stalin did, though Althusser does not mention this).
Humanism, Althusser finally admits, could have its uses for Marxism, but only if humanism is recognized as an ideology. Marx was able to arrive at a whole new way of thinking only by rejecting humanism for materialism. To understand humanity, we must, presses Althusser, reject “man.” Marxism could, however, healthily adopt aspects of humanist ideology the same way socialist societies adopt aspects of capitalism while critiquing them. Humanist ideology may be able to point to questions for Marxism to tackle, but humanism cannot itself answer those questions.
Althusser called for an authentically Marxist study of Marx's early writings which were, Althusser fully acknowledged, indeed humanist. He claimed that the "western Marxists" were enraptured with the idealist notion of the author or philosopher. If humanism haunted the work of the young Marx, then, for the western Marxists, its seed must still be at the root of the mature works such as Capital, because, for them, nothing could transcend the idealist totality of the oeuvre, the ever present, metaphysical "human-ness" of the author's stamp. Rather, insisted Althusser, the work of the young Marx had to be subjected to the Marxist principles of ideological development that stated that the meaning of an ideology does not depend on its relation to "truth" but rather its relation to the social structure in which it developed and therefore, to understand an ideological position, one would have to look at the social conditions facing the thinker, and therefor the context of the thinker's intellectual development, as (s)he was writing any one piece. Texts can, for Althusser, point to a future, but all must be confronted within their singular present. (In this way Althusser, I think, lays the groundwork for Foucault's "death of the author" through the tenants of Marxism and structuralism.)
Althusser called the cultural framework in which a concept exists its "problematic." The problematic of a thought determines what is possible within a system of thought. The problematic of Marx's early thought, when he was still a humanist liberal, was that of nineteenth century Germany, which had never experienced a revolution of any kind, including a bourgeois one. The German bourgeoisie, including Marx, could only think in the codes of servitude, which is to say the religious obscurantism of Hegel. Marx's earliest writings were thus Feurbachian- attempts to free the Hegelian Spirit from alienation through transcending what Marx and his German brethren viewed as its alienated form- religion.
Althusser thought Marx could only escape this line of thought by getting out of Germany, which he luckily did in 1843, leaving for France in the hopes of glimpsing the spirit of the French Revolution. Instead of freedom, equality, and liberty, Marx found only a more intense workers struggle. This radicalized the young Marx, and he began writing about politics and socialism. For Althusser, however, these early socialist writings were still not truly Marxist. Indeed, they remained profoundly Hegelian. They rested on a simplistic notion of the proletariat superseding the bourgeoisie. Hegel viewed History as relentlessly marching towards its completion, the totality of absolute spirit manifested in a society that had evolved to the point of transcending all alienation. Marx's early political writings spoke of worker's struggle, but only as a simplistically messianic displacement of one stage of society by a less alienated stage of society. Marx remained, Althusser claimed, stuck in an essentially religious, idealist line of thinking, not yet truly starting from a materialist foundation. He was commenting on struggle, not partaking in it.
According to Althusser's narrative, as Marx became more involved in activism and organizing, his thinking began to be increasingly based on the reality of the worker's struggle. Marx began, in other words, to develop the materialist dialectic which Althusser argues borrows only terminology from Hegel, but breaks fully with Hegel's philosophy. For Althusser, the materialist dialectic looks for social change to come not as a result of shifts in universal social consciousness but in contradictions in actual social being. Althusser posits, following Lenin and, most directly, Mao, that these contradictions are never universal but are localized and unique. (I must say here that it seems to me that Althusser's reading of the “mature Marx” invests somewhat unfairly in the texts the latter discoveries of Lenin and Mao as if these discoveries were “inherent” to the thought of the materialist dialectic.) Again following Mao, Althusser says that ruptures, be they scientific, political or philosophical are never the result of a simple, predictable dialectic between competing forces (proletariat vs. bourgeoisie) but instead come from complex networks of contradictions that boil into overdeterminations which make change necessary. For example, the Russian Revolution became necessary because Russia was pregnant with two revolutions. It was a feudal society existing in a capitalist world where a working class was already starting to rebel under the banner of socialism.
Althusser defines the role of theory as being an aid to understanding the possibility of an epistemological break- when one kind of thinking turns into another, such as when Hegel's idealism is transformed into dialectical materialism. Such breaks make possible the creation of new types of knowledge. Theory is a specific practice that acts on general concepts. It is the means of production of knowledge. Dialectical materialism, for Althusser, is the mode of theoretical inquiry by which ideologically driven political activity is examined and turned into scientific arguments.
Althusser dissects the theoretical process into three stages, or, in his terms, “generalities.” Generality I is the process by which a theoretician critiques inherited ideological concepts in order to elaborate the theoretician's own concepts. Generality II determines a theoretical approach by determining what will be studied and how it will be studied, and it is imperative that this “study” be carried through in social practice- through tests in social organizing, agriculture, etc. (Again, Mao's influence on Althusser is here apparent.) Generality III arrives at a scientific hypothesis.
Like all new kinds of science, Marxist science had the potential to create new possibilities for philosophy, although Althusser did not think a legitimately Marxist philosophy had yet presented itself. (Later in his career, Althusser would attempt to practice Marxist philosophy with his notion of the capitalist construction of the the individual.) Instead, what passed for Marxist philosophy, the work of Western Marxists such as George Luckaks, was in fact a kind of Hegelian thinking. Western Marxism denies the distinction between Generality I and III. It denies, in other words, that knowledge is a practice. Thought is self-creating knowledge for the Hegelians, for whom the totality of social being is constantly revealing itself.
The Western Marxists threatened, then, to turn Marxism into just another ideology. Althusser never mentions the great irony that the Western Marxists, in trying to “humanize” Marxism, were in fact proclaiming that thought could make itself true- the purest intellectual manifestation of the Stalinist disaster. It was rather Althusser's line of thinking that would, at least potentially, lead humanity to a healthier relationship with ideology.
In the final essay, “Marxism and Humanism” Althusser admits that any society, including a socialist or even communist society will always rely on ideology to frame its world outlook to all of its subjects. Ideology will always function, to some degree, subconsciously. But, Althusser hopes, if the essential nature of ideology is socially acknowledged, then it could be transformed into an instrument of deliberative social action. Ideology could mold humanity towards egalitarian social tasks. If rulers, socialist or otherwise, failed to understand that ideology is inescapable and acts on all, including the ruling strata of any society, then those rulers could fall into the trap of thinking they could simply use ideology as a tool (as Stalin did, though Althusser does not mention this).
Humanism, Althusser finally admits, could have its uses for Marxism, but only if humanism is recognized as an ideology. Marx was able to arrive at a whole new way of thinking only by rejecting humanism for materialism. To understand humanity, we must, presses Althusser, reject “man.” Marxism could, however, healthily adopt aspects of humanist ideology the same way socialist societies adopt aspects of capitalism while critiquing them. Humanist ideology may be able to point to questions for Marxism to tackle, but humanism cannot itself answer those questions.
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February 7, 2017'Each science, as science, has in advance projected a field of objects such that to know them is to govern them.' - Gadamer, Truth and Method
'If anyone should think he has solved the problem of life and feels like telling himself that everything is quite easy now, he can see that he is wrong just by recalling that there was a time when this "solution" had not been discovered; but it must have been possible to live then too.'- Wittgenstein, stray remarks
Gadamer was not claiming hermeneutics as a science. Just the opposite, he was affirming that it's profoundly misguided to ever expect to find a 'science' of human meaning along the lines of the physical sciences.
By contrast, Althusser is extremely insistent that Marxism is a science. What exactly does he mean by that? At least in this collection he has rather little to say about the actual content of Marxism - history, the economy, the workers' movement, etc. He seems to define 'science' in totally formal, non-empirical terms. Somewhat like Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; but then Kuhn's great book did serious damage to the prestige of science, for suggesting science was more a series of semi-random mutations than cumulative progress towards the truth. Althusser appears to have a similar conception. However, he then wants to have it both ways by insisting on the absolute sanctity of the precious 'epistemological break' in Marx's writing; that is, the point at which Marx passed from ideology to science.
Anyway, my own feeling is that Marxism doesn't stand or fall with being a science. If you do claim it as a science you're setting yourself up to have it called a pseudo-science or one that's already been falsified. Obviously much that Marx wrote did not come to pass in exactly the manner he thought it would. And yet he was probably the greatest western thinker to ever attempt a global critique of capitalism. Given that capitalism surely remains the chief adversary of humanity in the 21st century, his continued relevance should be obvious.
However, I'm not sure the same can be said of Althusser. I enjoyed this book. I'd recommend it to other philosophy nerds, but that's about it. Althusser's concerns seem quite remote from our present situation.
April 1, 2019
Reading the reviews for the book it seems that Althusser has certainly confused a lot of people--I don't particularly think Althusser is a philosopher who is difficult to read, and in fact, he falls on the easier side compared with his French contemporaries (and of course, the ridiculous prose that would be the French post-structuralist movement). It only requires a cursory knowledge both of Marx and Hegel (although some familiarity with traditional Marxist terminology is required, i.e 'base/superstructure), overall it's a very straightforwardly written series of essays that tries to broadly define the science of Marxism via the methodology of dialectical materialism, as being distinct from the Hegelian dialectic. In-between that are some pieces ruminating on various topics from theatre to the evolution of the young Marx.
It is true, as a side note, that Althusser is slightly of the more 'boring' and 'dry' type, but let us remember that a lot of good philosophy is rather boring. We can't all be Nick Land.
It is rather a sceptical claim to say that Marxism, or any social science could be a 'science' in a way, but it's clear that Althusser defines science, or practice in generally, more broadly than something like physics, as the movement from what he defines as Generality I (the raw material) to Generality III(scientific knowledge) through Generality II (the 'theory' of the science at the moment in consideration, i.e the corpus of its concepts), which we do see with Marxism. I think perhaps for the rest of the review I'll write a bit about some key terms and concepts that Althusser employs, particularly overdetermination, since these are the most important ideas he outlines, and also evidently the most confusing ones:
For Althusser, unlike the simple Hegelian contradiction, which is the self-alienation and then the subsequent unification of the Idea, in every existing society there always exists a multitude of contradictions. However, this is not to say that there is no unity, because there is always a ‘principal’ contradiction that exists alongside secondary contradictions. These two are both necessary to one another, and there’s no way of merely ‘deriving’ the secondary contradictions as epiphenomena of the primary contradiction. This is what Althusser means by overdetermination (surdétermination).
Taking off the basic concepts of base and super-structure, Althusser believes that the elements of the super-structure, i.e political, religious, philosophical, ideological, all have an effect on the structuring of society, but that the economic base is ultimately ‘determined in the last instance’(déterminé en le dernière instance)—in turn, this determination in the last instance of the economy determines which element of the super-structure—economic, social, political, cultural, will be dominant in a given society, what can be called the structure in dominance.
Therefore here we have a reciprocal, mutual relation, and this all comprises of what Althusser calls a pre-given complex structured whole (structure complexe-déjà-donnée).
Overdetermination exists according to three various processes, non-antagonism, where the overdetermination of contradictions exists in the form of displacements, that changes a primary contradiction to a secondary one, but where the structure in dominance remains the same. Then to antagonism, where overdetermination is condensed in an acute class conflict or a theoretical crisis, that becomes the basis for an explosion, an entire reconstruction of the entire society.
Overall, however, I'm limiting myself to exclusive one essay in the book ('On the Materialist Dialectic'), but there are six more brilliant essays that deal with a multitude of other topics, and no matter what kind of Marxist you are I'm certain there will be something of interest for you to find here.
It is true, as a side note, that Althusser is slightly of the more 'boring' and 'dry' type, but let us remember that a lot of good philosophy is rather boring. We can't all be Nick Land.
It is rather a sceptical claim to say that Marxism, or any social science could be a 'science' in a way, but it's clear that Althusser defines science, or practice in generally, more broadly than something like physics, as the movement from what he defines as Generality I (the raw material) to Generality III(scientific knowledge) through Generality II (the 'theory' of the science at the moment in consideration, i.e the corpus of its concepts), which we do see with Marxism. I think perhaps for the rest of the review I'll write a bit about some key terms and concepts that Althusser employs, particularly overdetermination, since these are the most important ideas he outlines, and also evidently the most confusing ones:
For Althusser, unlike the simple Hegelian contradiction, which is the self-alienation and then the subsequent unification of the Idea, in every existing society there always exists a multitude of contradictions. However, this is not to say that there is no unity, because there is always a ‘principal’ contradiction that exists alongside secondary contradictions. These two are both necessary to one another, and there’s no way of merely ‘deriving’ the secondary contradictions as epiphenomena of the primary contradiction. This is what Althusser means by overdetermination (surdétermination).
Taking off the basic concepts of base and super-structure, Althusser believes that the elements of the super-structure, i.e political, religious, philosophical, ideological, all have an effect on the structuring of society, but that the economic base is ultimately ‘determined in the last instance’(déterminé en le dernière instance)—in turn, this determination in the last instance of the economy determines which element of the super-structure—economic, social, political, cultural, will be dominant in a given society, what can be called the structure in dominance.
Therefore here we have a reciprocal, mutual relation, and this all comprises of what Althusser calls a pre-given complex structured whole (structure complexe-déjà-donnée).
Overdetermination exists according to three various processes, non-antagonism, where the overdetermination of contradictions exists in the form of displacements, that changes a primary contradiction to a secondary one, but where the structure in dominance remains the same. Then to antagonism, where overdetermination is condensed in an acute class conflict or a theoretical crisis, that becomes the basis for an explosion, an entire reconstruction of the entire society.
Overall, however, I'm limiting myself to exclusive one essay in the book ('On the Materialist Dialectic'), but there are six more brilliant essays that deal with a multitude of other topics, and no matter what kind of Marxist you are I'm certain there will be something of interest for you to find here.
January 29, 2024
Althusser is very anxious to show that Marxism, in particular Historical Materialism, is a Science, as distinct from a mere Ideology. In order to do this, he is compelled by the "humanism" debates raging within the Marxist (and non-Marxist) left to insist that Marx broke fully with both the Hegelian dialectic and Feuerbachian humanism. There are two issues with this:
1) Marx's claim to have "stood Hegel on his head" seems insufficiently distinctive - Althusser suggests that a mere inversion is not a change in "structure" at all.
2) The USSR has proclaimed, by 1965, that the class struggle in the USSR is over and that the time for Socialist Humanism has begun.
Althusser's solution to (1) is to argue that Marx did much more than inverting Hegel's relationship between the real and the ideal, the state and the civil society. Marx, apparently, fundamentally changed the dialectic, replacing the simple unity of being with the structured, complex unity of a social formation, thereby replacing the simple contradiction with what he calls the "overdetermined" or "decentered" contradiction.
I find this pretty implausible, both in its reductive reading of Hegel (insisting on the simplicity of the concept at each stage, not allowing for internal complexity in Hegel's concepts) and its claim to understand Marx's theoretical innovation better than he did himself. It's also really apparent that Althusser's philosophical method is pre-Hegelian, due to his constant reliance on a metaphysics of essence. Even more egregious is the way his argument relies heavily on writings of Lenin and Mao regarding the "weakest link" and the "principal contradiction". This seems to be rather dogmatic, trying to show the harmony between various theorists in a very forced way - you're not gonna overcome the Sino-Soviet split just by saying that Lenin would agree with Mao's "On Contradiction"! Why do these ideas need to have been implicitly within Marx the whole time? Give these guys some credit as being independent thinkers, who may have simply had different ideas of how the dialectic works in history.
Althusser's solution to (2) is to make a rigid distinction between Ideology and Science, and argue that every society, including a communist one, requires Ideology (as opposed to Myth, which he thinks can be done without). Since this Ideology need not be true, merely useful (in a way pretty similar to structural-functionalism in mainstream sociology/anthropology), it's okay for the USSR to propagate pre-Marxian humanist ideology as long as its intellectuals can ensure that it doesn't mystify them.
This seems plausible to me, although the belief in the necessity of ideology clearly risks some incredibly conservative conclusions about the need for the state to mystify the masses, which Althusser does not sufficiently ward off, as his distinction between Myth and Ideology is unclear. Even worse, this clearly undermines, if not entirely, his claims of the essential distinction between pre-scientific Ideology and Science, as it requires that the ideological terminology can correctly point the way to the scientific theory, or at least the the problems that the science needs to solve. However, his argument for Marx's transition from ideology to science was not that the ideology pointed the way, but that Marx *retreated* backwards from Hegel's ideology till he reached its roots in French political theory and English political economy, with the encounter of the actually existing workers movements in these countries allowing him to understand the real experiences behind these bourgeois ideologies.
Even the details of the process of "epistemological break" (Generality I is ideological, Generality II operates on Generality I, to produce Generality III, a science) seems to requires some connection between the ideology and the science, although he tries to deny this too - his argument that I and III are different *in essence* is that even if they reuse the same words sometimes, these words appear in a different relation to each other, a different *structure*, and that structure determines essence. This seems like a reductive form of linguistic structuralism. I wish he had emphasized the psychoanalytic aspects of Bachelard's version of the epistemological break, which would have probably been more interesting than this very simplistic model.
1) Marx's claim to have "stood Hegel on his head" seems insufficiently distinctive - Althusser suggests that a mere inversion is not a change in "structure" at all.
2) The USSR has proclaimed, by 1965, that the class struggle in the USSR is over and that the time for Socialist Humanism has begun.
Althusser's solution to (1) is to argue that Marx did much more than inverting Hegel's relationship between the real and the ideal, the state and the civil society. Marx, apparently, fundamentally changed the dialectic, replacing the simple unity of being with the structured, complex unity of a social formation, thereby replacing the simple contradiction with what he calls the "overdetermined" or "decentered" contradiction.
I find this pretty implausible, both in its reductive reading of Hegel (insisting on the simplicity of the concept at each stage, not allowing for internal complexity in Hegel's concepts) and its claim to understand Marx's theoretical innovation better than he did himself. It's also really apparent that Althusser's philosophical method is pre-Hegelian, due to his constant reliance on a metaphysics of essence. Even more egregious is the way his argument relies heavily on writings of Lenin and Mao regarding the "weakest link" and the "principal contradiction". This seems to be rather dogmatic, trying to show the harmony between various theorists in a very forced way - you're not gonna overcome the Sino-Soviet split just by saying that Lenin would agree with Mao's "On Contradiction"! Why do these ideas need to have been implicitly within Marx the whole time? Give these guys some credit as being independent thinkers, who may have simply had different ideas of how the dialectic works in history.
Althusser's solution to (2) is to make a rigid distinction between Ideology and Science, and argue that every society, including a communist one, requires Ideology (as opposed to Myth, which he thinks can be done without). Since this Ideology need not be true, merely useful (in a way pretty similar to structural-functionalism in mainstream sociology/anthropology), it's okay for the USSR to propagate pre-Marxian humanist ideology as long as its intellectuals can ensure that it doesn't mystify them.
This seems plausible to me, although the belief in the necessity of ideology clearly risks some incredibly conservative conclusions about the need for the state to mystify the masses, which Althusser does not sufficiently ward off, as his distinction between Myth and Ideology is unclear. Even worse, this clearly undermines, if not entirely, his claims of the essential distinction between pre-scientific Ideology and Science, as it requires that the ideological terminology can correctly point the way to the scientific theory, or at least the the problems that the science needs to solve. However, his argument for Marx's transition from ideology to science was not that the ideology pointed the way, but that Marx *retreated* backwards from Hegel's ideology till he reached its roots in French political theory and English political economy, with the encounter of the actually existing workers movements in these countries allowing him to understand the real experiences behind these bourgeois ideologies.
Even the details of the process of "epistemological break" (Generality I is ideological, Generality II operates on Generality I, to produce Generality III, a science) seems to requires some connection between the ideology and the science, although he tries to deny this too - his argument that I and III are different *in essence* is that even if they reuse the same words sometimes, these words appear in a different relation to each other, a different *structure*, and that structure determines essence. This seems like a reductive form of linguistic structuralism. I wish he had emphasized the psychoanalytic aspects of Bachelard's version of the epistemological break, which would have probably been more interesting than this very simplistic model.
December 24, 2020
It had parts i really loved, parts that were okay but could use some theoretical reconsiderations and parts that i found utterly horrible. I rated each article specifically and overall it was:
Introduction: A pretty nice to see appreciation of Stalin's theoretical works which was/is pretty rare to see in "western marxism". Making clear how Stalin was the one who put this madness of marxist theory being all around into a specific order with correct and precise definitions. Also I liked his categorizations of Marx's works between early, transitional and mature.
4/5
Feuerbach's "Philosophical Manifestoes": Pretty interesting analysis of Feurbach's significance and i also really liked his mention on Greek history on how "Marx liberated philosophy basing it on another element".
4/5
On the Young Marx: Ngl i found it a bit tiring. From a communist perspective what he says is obviously obvious but It's annoying to see how much socdem opportunists stripped all of the revolutionary context of Marx by overexploiting concepts like "alienation" and "fetishization".
3/5
Contradiction and Overdetermination: Literally the worst article of all. His attack on Engels is so lazy and cringe. He ends up doing exactly the same thing he blames Engels for. He opens up a problem/accusation and then refuses to explain it and give an alternative as "he cant enter into this problem here". Cringe af. Shame on you althusser
1/5
Piccolo Teatro: Pretty interesting materialist analysis of one specific play by a pretty much underrated and unknown playwright. Nothing too big and innovative but some interesting random thoughts
2.5/5
On the Materialist Dialectic: Now this one was by far my favourite. I'd suggest anyone who plans to read this book, if they want to save time to just read this essay/chapter instead. The longest of the articles and the one with the richest amount of originality and innovation. So many stuff are going on in the essay but one thing that i really liked is how he places theory as "practice" making no distinction between "theory" and "praxis", instead considering them as 2 sides of the same coin. Theoretical practice and Political practice. Simply great!
5/5
Marxism and Humanism: Pretty interesting analysis of humanism overall in a pretty original way. The things that i did dislike however were: his total misuse of "christian" humanism which he uses interchangably with bourgeois humanism in contrast to socialist humanism and his flirting with opportunism and post stalin USSR. Considering the Stalinist USSR as "a time of terror and error" and the post stalin one as a "truly liberated and humanist USSR" which was pretty lame ngl
4/5
Introduction: A pretty nice to see appreciation of Stalin's theoretical works which was/is pretty rare to see in "western marxism". Making clear how Stalin was the one who put this madness of marxist theory being all around into a specific order with correct and precise definitions. Also I liked his categorizations of Marx's works between early, transitional and mature.
4/5
Feuerbach's "Philosophical Manifestoes": Pretty interesting analysis of Feurbach's significance and i also really liked his mention on Greek history on how "Marx liberated philosophy basing it on another element".
4/5
On the Young Marx: Ngl i found it a bit tiring. From a communist perspective what he says is obviously obvious but It's annoying to see how much socdem opportunists stripped all of the revolutionary context of Marx by overexploiting concepts like "alienation" and "fetishization".
3/5
Contradiction and Overdetermination: Literally the worst article of all. His attack on Engels is so lazy and cringe. He ends up doing exactly the same thing he blames Engels for. He opens up a problem/accusation and then refuses to explain it and give an alternative as "he cant enter into this problem here". Cringe af. Shame on you althusser
1/5
Piccolo Teatro: Pretty interesting materialist analysis of one specific play by a pretty much underrated and unknown playwright. Nothing too big and innovative but some interesting random thoughts
2.5/5
On the Materialist Dialectic: Now this one was by far my favourite. I'd suggest anyone who plans to read this book, if they want to save time to just read this essay/chapter instead. The longest of the articles and the one with the richest amount of originality and innovation. So many stuff are going on in the essay but one thing that i really liked is how he places theory as "practice" making no distinction between "theory" and "praxis", instead considering them as 2 sides of the same coin. Theoretical practice and Political practice. Simply great!
5/5
Marxism and Humanism: Pretty interesting analysis of humanism overall in a pretty original way. The things that i did dislike however were: his total misuse of "christian" humanism which he uses interchangably with bourgeois humanism in contrast to socialist humanism and his flirting with opportunism and post stalin USSR. Considering the Stalinist USSR as "a time of terror and error" and the post stalin one as a "truly liberated and humanist USSR" which was pretty lame ngl
4/5
May 24, 2021
Espero que o Ricardo não veja isso porque acabei terminando sem ele de ler (ele tá ocupado, tá tudo bem)
Enfim, o que dizer sobre esse livro? Tenho minha política de ficar em silêncio quando gosto de algo porque é difícil, parece que qualquer palavra que eu vá dizer ou será imbecil ou será injusta com o que quero falar sobre, mas vou tentar.
Por Marx é um conjunto de textos de Althusser que datam entre 1960-1967, disposto em ordem de publicação, com uma preocupação: a defesa de Marx. Contudo, não é mera defesa contra o inimigo exterior ao marxismo, coisa que nem se precisaria se fazer, mas uma defesa contra aqueles que estão no interior do marxismo produzindo e reproduzindo certas visões do pensamento de Marx que estão em Marx, mas num Marx específico que, poderíamos dizer, não é bem Marx (Velho), os quais traçam um pensamento que parte desse Marx de vocabulário feuerbachiano e hegeliano (humanistas e economicistas), para fazer daí emerger o Marx propriamente marxista. Isso quer dizer, na realidade, que há propriamente uma separação epistemológica (o famoso corte) no decorrer da história do tempo de Marx.
Os dois primeiros textos preocupam-se em delimitar essa questão dos momentos de Marx em suas certas áreas, discutindo a relação de Marx Jovem com Feuerbach, e Marx entre a política, teoria e história.
No terceiro, "Contradição e Sobredeterminação (Notas para uma pesquisa)", Althusser, que realizará essa pesquisa mais detalhadamente em "Sobre a dialética materialista (da desigualdade das origens); irá discutir, bem... a dialética. O conceito de contradição ele vai discutir a partir do Da Contradição, de Mao, e de algumas passagens de Lenin. Com muito respeito, Althusser critica a ideia de uma Contradição simples, que ele remete ao pensamento hegeliano, além de remeter a toda a estrutura da dialética hegeliana. Essa crítica se dá a partir da proposta da substituição de tal conceito de contradição simples, identificação de *um* elemento da estrutura, (simples x complexo), do qual partiríamos para poder fazer algo. Não sei se me faço entender, mas como diz Althusser:
"Para que essa contradição se torne 'ativa' no sentido forte, princípio de ruptura, é preciso tal acumulação de 'circunstâncias' e de 'correntes' que, seja qual for a origem e o sentido (e muitas delas são necessariamente, por sua origem e seu sentido, paradoxalmente alheias, até 'absolutamente opostas' à evolução), elas 'fundem-se' numa unidade de ruptura: quando atingem esse resultado de agrupar a imensa maioria das massas populares no assalto de um regime que suas classes dirigentes são incapazes de defender" (pg. 77-78)
Não seria a própria realidade, detentora não de partes simples, mas de algo já complexo, do qual nós produzimos suas partes, identificamos partes, retiramos elas do complexo do real?
"Quando nessa situação entra em jogo, no mesmo jogo, uma prodigiosa acumulação de 'contradições' das quais algumas são radicalmente heterogêneas e não têm todas a mesma origem, nem o mesmo sentido, nem o mesmo nível e lugar de aplicação, e que, no entanto, 'se fundem' numa unidade de ruptura, não é mais possível falar da única virtude simples da 'contradição'". (pg. 78)
Para resolver esse problema da dialética que pressupõe uma contradição simples, dialética hegeliana essa, para passar à dialética outra, marxista, ele propõe a ideia de uma contradição sobredeterminada: "que a 'contradição' é inseparável da estrutura do corpo social como um todo, no qual ela se exerce, inseparável de suas condições formais de existência, e mesmo das instâncias que governa; que é, portanto, a própria contradição, em seu âmago, afetada por elas, determinante mas igualmente determinada num único e mesmo movimento, e determinada pelos diversos níveis e pelas diversas instâncias da formação social que ela anima." (pg.79)
Enfim, é necessário partir desse ponto para que se possa se posicionar na discussão a partir de uma visão da estrutura: "Depreende-se a ideia fundamental de que a contradição Capital-Trabalho nunca é simples, mas que ela e sempre especificada pelas formas e pelas circunstâncias históricas concretas nas quais se exerce" (pg.82)
Enfim, leiam também o anexo desse texto, pois nele ele consegue delimitar bem os excessos que essa posição pode gerar.
To cansado, depois continuo (se der, mas se não der, bem, devo reler em breve alguns textos e posso compartilhar minhas notas, não que elas importem para qualquer um que não eu)
Enfim, o que dizer sobre esse livro? Tenho minha política de ficar em silêncio quando gosto de algo porque é difícil, parece que qualquer palavra que eu vá dizer ou será imbecil ou será injusta com o que quero falar sobre, mas vou tentar.
Por Marx é um conjunto de textos de Althusser que datam entre 1960-1967, disposto em ordem de publicação, com uma preocupação: a defesa de Marx. Contudo, não é mera defesa contra o inimigo exterior ao marxismo, coisa que nem se precisaria se fazer, mas uma defesa contra aqueles que estão no interior do marxismo produzindo e reproduzindo certas visões do pensamento de Marx que estão em Marx, mas num Marx específico que, poderíamos dizer, não é bem Marx (Velho), os quais traçam um pensamento que parte desse Marx de vocabulário feuerbachiano e hegeliano (humanistas e economicistas), para fazer daí emerger o Marx propriamente marxista. Isso quer dizer, na realidade, que há propriamente uma separação epistemológica (o famoso corte) no decorrer da história do tempo de Marx.
Os dois primeiros textos preocupam-se em delimitar essa questão dos momentos de Marx em suas certas áreas, discutindo a relação de Marx Jovem com Feuerbach, e Marx entre a política, teoria e história.
No terceiro, "Contradição e Sobredeterminação (Notas para uma pesquisa)", Althusser, que realizará essa pesquisa mais detalhadamente em "Sobre a dialética materialista (da desigualdade das origens); irá discutir, bem... a dialética. O conceito de contradição ele vai discutir a partir do Da Contradição, de Mao, e de algumas passagens de Lenin. Com muito respeito, Althusser critica a ideia de uma Contradição simples, que ele remete ao pensamento hegeliano, além de remeter a toda a estrutura da dialética hegeliana. Essa crítica se dá a partir da proposta da substituição de tal conceito de contradição simples, identificação de *um* elemento da estrutura, (simples x complexo), do qual partiríamos para poder fazer algo. Não sei se me faço entender, mas como diz Althusser:
"Para que essa contradição se torne 'ativa' no sentido forte, princípio de ruptura, é preciso tal acumulação de 'circunstâncias' e de 'correntes' que, seja qual for a origem e o sentido (e muitas delas são necessariamente, por sua origem e seu sentido, paradoxalmente alheias, até 'absolutamente opostas' à evolução), elas 'fundem-se' numa unidade de ruptura: quando atingem esse resultado de agrupar a imensa maioria das massas populares no assalto de um regime que suas classes dirigentes são incapazes de defender" (pg. 77-78)
Não seria a própria realidade, detentora não de partes simples, mas de algo já complexo, do qual nós produzimos suas partes, identificamos partes, retiramos elas do complexo do real?
"Quando nessa situação entra em jogo, no mesmo jogo, uma prodigiosa acumulação de 'contradições' das quais algumas são radicalmente heterogêneas e não têm todas a mesma origem, nem o mesmo sentido, nem o mesmo nível e lugar de aplicação, e que, no entanto, 'se fundem' numa unidade de ruptura, não é mais possível falar da única virtude simples da 'contradição'". (pg. 78)
Para resolver esse problema da dialética que pressupõe uma contradição simples, dialética hegeliana essa, para passar à dialética outra, marxista, ele propõe a ideia de uma contradição sobredeterminada: "que a 'contradição' é inseparável da estrutura do corpo social como um todo, no qual ela se exerce, inseparável de suas condições formais de existência, e mesmo das instâncias que governa; que é, portanto, a própria contradição, em seu âmago, afetada por elas, determinante mas igualmente determinada num único e mesmo movimento, e determinada pelos diversos níveis e pelas diversas instâncias da formação social que ela anima." (pg.79)
Enfim, é necessário partir desse ponto para que se possa se posicionar na discussão a partir de uma visão da estrutura: "Depreende-se a ideia fundamental de que a contradição Capital-Trabalho nunca é simples, mas que ela e sempre especificada pelas formas e pelas circunstâncias históricas concretas nas quais se exerce" (pg.82)
Enfim, leiam também o anexo desse texto, pois nele ele consegue delimitar bem os excessos que essa posição pode gerar.
To cansado, depois continuo (se der, mas se não der, bem, devo reler em breve alguns textos e posso compartilhar minhas notas, não que elas importem para qualquer um que não eu)
September 14, 2020
Classic Althusser, highlights include Contradiction and Overdetermination, The Piccolo Teatro and On The Materialist Dialectic. To my shame, I sped through most of this book, and what concepts are contained within I had navigated retroactively through Althusser's later works (a reading which he might condemn), though the chase and the game of doubles we embark here are as pointed as ever. It's also nice to see him articulate so potently towards his critics.
January 10, 2018
It always seems a little harsh to comment on the readability of an author you have only read in translation, but suffice to safe this is not an easy book. That said, I did find the texts easier as I went through; whether that's something to do with them, or just me getting used to Althusser's style, I can't say.
Nevertheless, I am sure this is a book which would reward re-reading, as there were a number of points which I did find helpful on questions like base/superstructure, although I think I'd already come into contact with a number of the key points filtered through Raymond Williams. I am quite convinced by the argument about the Young Marx and the epistemological break, and I think I agree that this term is more useful than Hegelian terms like supersession etc; again, though, I found Moufawad-Paul's presentation of comparable arguments much easier-going! I was pleasantly surprised by the final chapter, 'Marxism and Humanism'; I'd expected some sort of horrible anti-humanism which treated with scorn the claims of socialist-humanists. In fact, what came across to me was the depth of Althusser's understanding of socialist-humanism and a recognition of a (ideological) use for it. I'm ultimately reminded of Gareth Stedman Jones' arguments about Althusser and the British socialist-humanists; each is responding to the critical problems of 1970s Marxism (economism and actually-existing socialism) and, although they take slightly different approaches, it is the recognition of these problems as problems which really matters. I can't help but wonder whether the differences between them aren't really differences in the level of abstraction, or differences that can only be resolved through political practice.
Nevertheless, I am sure this is a book which would reward re-reading, as there were a number of points which I did find helpful on questions like base/superstructure, although I think I'd already come into contact with a number of the key points filtered through Raymond Williams. I am quite convinced by the argument about the Young Marx and the epistemological break, and I think I agree that this term is more useful than Hegelian terms like supersession etc; again, though, I found Moufawad-Paul's presentation of comparable arguments much easier-going! I was pleasantly surprised by the final chapter, 'Marxism and Humanism'; I'd expected some sort of horrible anti-humanism which treated with scorn the claims of socialist-humanists. In fact, what came across to me was the depth of Althusser's understanding of socialist-humanism and a recognition of a (ideological) use for it. I'm ultimately reminded of Gareth Stedman Jones' arguments about Althusser and the British socialist-humanists; each is responding to the critical problems of 1970s Marxism (economism and actually-existing socialism) and, although they take slightly different approaches, it is the recognition of these problems as problems which really matters. I can't help but wonder whether the differences between them aren't really differences in the level of abstraction, or differences that can only be resolved through political practice.
December 19, 2025
Having read this book, I'm a bit embarrassed that I spent so long living on others' accounts of what Althusser said, either critical or laudatory. These essays are nothing less than a remarkably bold reformulation of Marxism, and it doesn't surprise me in the least that much of the following couple of decades of theory was simply working out their implications.
January 11, 2023
"It is impossible to know anything about men except on the absolute precondition that the philosophical (theoretical) myth of man is reduced to ashes (...) It is customary to suggest that ideology belongs to the register of 'consciousness'. We must not be misled by this appellation (...) In truth, ideology has very little to do with 'consciousness', even supposing this term has an unambiguous meaning. It is profoundly unconscious, even when it presents itself in a reflected form (as in pre-Marxist 'philosophy'). Ideology is indeed a system of representations, but in the majority of cases these representations have nothing to do with 'consciousness': they are usually images and occasionally concepts, but is above all structures that they impose on the vast majority of men, not via their 'consciousness'. They are perceived-accepted-suffered cultural objects and they act functionally on men via a process that escapes them. Men 'live' their ideologies as the Cartesian 'saw' or did not see - if he was not looking at it - the moon two hundred paces away: not at all as a form of consciousness, but as an object of their 'world' - as their 'world' itself."
April 1, 2018
This is a collection of 7 essays by Althusser, and as such there is not particularly an overarching thesis connecting all of them. There are however important ideas elucidated in them. Perhaps his most famous one is the "epistemological break", a term inherited from Bachelard, that posits in 1845 during the German Ideology Marx broke off from his Kantian-Fichtean/Feuerbachian roots and started developing historical and dialectical materialism. This was not in an instant, however, as it took roughly 13 years for Marx to formulate it. Althusser has the periods of Marx's thought as such:
1840-1844: early works
1845: Works of the Break
1845-1857 - The Transitional Works
1857-1883 - The Mature works
He criticizes what he called the "analytico-teleological" view of Young Marx, which to my understanding is the belief that Young Marx inevitably (teleologically) turns into the Scientific Marx that wrote Kapital.
Althusser also goes a bit against orthodoxy and posits that Marx did not invert Hegel (turn him on his head) but rather transformed Hegel: turning the civil society and State into the structure and superstructure respectively.
Another important contribution was Althusser's discussion of the overdetermination of contradictions, which he essentially takes from Freud (think condensation when thinking of overdetermination). To my knowledge it is essentially the uneven development of contradictions in the "complex whole" (totality?).
Another interesting thing to me were Generalities I, II, and III. This is the process in which knowledge is produced. Seems to me that Generality I is the "abstract, part-ideological, part-scientific....raw material of the science", Generality II is the "theory of the science at a given moment" and Generality III is the "concrete, scientific generalities that are produced".
The last essay on humanism was good, talking about how Marx originally espoused a humanism but how historical materialism implies an anti-humanism.
This is dense reading, and I would only recommend to people with a solid background in Marxist theory. I very well could have misinterpreted what was being said, as well.
1840-1844: early works
1845: Works of the Break
1845-1857 - The Transitional Works
1857-1883 - The Mature works
He criticizes what he called the "analytico-teleological" view of Young Marx, which to my understanding is the belief that Young Marx inevitably (teleologically) turns into the Scientific Marx that wrote Kapital.
Althusser also goes a bit against orthodoxy and posits that Marx did not invert Hegel (turn him on his head) but rather transformed Hegel: turning the civil society and State into the structure and superstructure respectively.
Another important contribution was Althusser's discussion of the overdetermination of contradictions, which he essentially takes from Freud (think condensation when thinking of overdetermination). To my knowledge it is essentially the uneven development of contradictions in the "complex whole" (totality?).
Another interesting thing to me were Generalities I, II, and III. This is the process in which knowledge is produced. Seems to me that Generality I is the "abstract, part-ideological, part-scientific....raw material of the science", Generality II is the "theory of the science at a given moment" and Generality III is the "concrete, scientific generalities that are produced".
The last essay on humanism was good, talking about how Marx originally espoused a humanism but how historical materialism implies an anti-humanism.
This is dense reading, and I would only recommend to people with a solid background in Marxist theory. I very well could have misinterpreted what was being said, as well.
October 30, 2020
One of the most important piecies of Western Marxism. While nowadays most parts of this book may sound dubious (because Althusser project did't last) it gives solid foundations for understanding how Althusser 'mis'reading of Marx gave such fruiutful results.
February 3, 2021
easy to understand, good book. i recommend it.
January 27, 2017
Although the chatter about this book is that you just have to drag it along until you reach "Marxism and Humanism", the last essay, and then the whole thing becomes clear, is a little misleading. The most challenging of essays collected here is "On the Materialist Dialectic" which also contains the most rigorous philosophical effort in the book. "Contradiction and Overdetermination", "Marxism and Humanism" and "On the Materialistic Dialectic" should be the order to read the three most important essays in this collection in my opinion.
May 16, 2018
Maybe I need to read this another two or three times because, honestly, I do not think I can reproduce, or even faithfully summarize the arguments made by Althusser. So here is not a review, but just a few impressions and comments.
The book consists of a set of articles written by Althusser in the early 60s, mostly for the Communist press. This was in the very early post-Stalinist period, following the 20th party congress at which Khruschev denounced Stalinism and vowed to take socialism along a new path. Suddenly it became imperative that Marxists regroup, take stock, and set a new course. Such was the influence of the internal political situation in the USSR: even intellectual Marxists in western Europe felt that they had been hit by a tsunami.
Althusser's aim was to go back to basics and define or discover the "theory" that serves as the foundation for Marxism. And though he goes to pains to define what he means by theory, I confess that I do not have a clear idea. At one point Althusser makes a distinction between Theory (capitalized), 'theory' (with inverted commas), and theory (unadorned). After re-reading that distiction multiple times, I have to confess that I do not understand.
Althusser takes it as given that Marxist historical materialism is a science: the science of history. In passing, at one point, he mentions that there are pseudo-sciences: psychology and sociology, that do not rise to the level of science, and their practicioners deceive themselves by adopting certain methods, certain techiques, from actual science. But nowhere (that I noticed) does he provide criteria by which one can distinguish a science from a pseudo-science. That is unfortunate.
Most of us have an idea about the general outlines of a science: besides the accumulation of facts about the natural world, a science proposes theories. A theory can have a scope that is broad or narrow, but one essential feature of a scientific theory is that it must be able to make predictions about the outcome of observations or experiments that have not yet been performed. If those predictions are generally correct, then we think that we should, at least provisionally, accept the theory as a correct statement about the world (with many qualifications, such as its domain of applicability, the possibility that the experimental outcomes were just incorrect, the possibility or even likelihood that the theory will need to be revised or discarded in favor of al alternative theory in the future). And as theories are formulated and tested, we gain knowledge about the world; knowledge that is of a different kind than simply the mere accumulation of facts.
So - is that the kind of theory that Althusser is talking about? Maybe, but he gives no examples so it was hard (for me) to tell.
At another level, in the philosophy of science there have been over recent centuries a deal of work done on the foundations of science, or of knowledge about the world more generally. This work has ranged from the naïve empiricism of Hume, through the rationalism of Kant, the radical idealism of Hegel, and so on. In the 20th century there was a shift from concerns with epistemology to actual philosophy of science, leading to the elaboration of the scientific method by Popper, based on a simplification and abstraction of actual scientific practice. That seems useful to me. So - is that the kind of theory Althusser is after? Again, I truly do not know. But maybe, since at one point he claims that hypotheses are part of bourgeois idealist ideology (!)(could I possibly have misread that, or misunderstood it? Surely so).
Regarding the issues that Althusser is addressing, he seems to apply a great deal of rigour. But he spends no time at all justifying some fundamental claims: the claim that historical materialism is a science, for example. As you can guess from my comments above, I do not believe that it is a science: what predictions has ever been made based on historical materialism that distinguishes historical materialism from any other approach to the study of history? And if such predictions have been made, were they correct (more correct than a broken clock)? I don't think so. As a method of analysis, as a level of abstraction when attempting to understand historical epochs, historical materialism no doubt offers some advantages. But a science? I need convincing.
In two chapters Althusser talks about his theory of "over-determination", with reference to the question of why the socialist revolution occurred first in Russia, and not in the advanced capitalist countries (as would have seemed to be a prediction of historical materialism). This discussion eventually leads him to talk about "contradictions", where he quotes (approvingly) a claim by Mao that in a complex system there are many "contradictions", but always there is a dominant contradiction; and there can be multiple "aspects" to a contradiction, but always there is a dominant aspect. Even if we get past the idiosyncratic use of the word "contradiction" in Marxist analysis, what reason do we have to believe the claim that there is always a "dominant" contradiction? Althusser takes this as established fact (or is it somehow an analytical statement), and goes on to base a justification for his claim of "over-determination" on this theory of dominant contradictions and aspects. It seems like an elaborate castle built on sand.
Again, though, my quick reading of these articles leaves me bewildered and in no position to judge the quality of Althusser's arguments.
The book consists of a set of articles written by Althusser in the early 60s, mostly for the Communist press. This was in the very early post-Stalinist period, following the 20th party congress at which Khruschev denounced Stalinism and vowed to take socialism along a new path. Suddenly it became imperative that Marxists regroup, take stock, and set a new course. Such was the influence of the internal political situation in the USSR: even intellectual Marxists in western Europe felt that they had been hit by a tsunami.
Althusser's aim was to go back to basics and define or discover the "theory" that serves as the foundation for Marxism. And though he goes to pains to define what he means by theory, I confess that I do not have a clear idea. At one point Althusser makes a distinction between Theory (capitalized), 'theory' (with inverted commas), and theory (unadorned). After re-reading that distiction multiple times, I have to confess that I do not understand.
Althusser takes it as given that Marxist historical materialism is a science: the science of history. In passing, at one point, he mentions that there are pseudo-sciences: psychology and sociology, that do not rise to the level of science, and their practicioners deceive themselves by adopting certain methods, certain techiques, from actual science. But nowhere (that I noticed) does he provide criteria by which one can distinguish a science from a pseudo-science. That is unfortunate.
Most of us have an idea about the general outlines of a science: besides the accumulation of facts about the natural world, a science proposes theories. A theory can have a scope that is broad or narrow, but one essential feature of a scientific theory is that it must be able to make predictions about the outcome of observations or experiments that have not yet been performed. If those predictions are generally correct, then we think that we should, at least provisionally, accept the theory as a correct statement about the world (with many qualifications, such as its domain of applicability, the possibility that the experimental outcomes were just incorrect, the possibility or even likelihood that the theory will need to be revised or discarded in favor of al alternative theory in the future). And as theories are formulated and tested, we gain knowledge about the world; knowledge that is of a different kind than simply the mere accumulation of facts.
So - is that the kind of theory that Althusser is talking about? Maybe, but he gives no examples so it was hard (for me) to tell.
At another level, in the philosophy of science there have been over recent centuries a deal of work done on the foundations of science, or of knowledge about the world more generally. This work has ranged from the naïve empiricism of Hume, through the rationalism of Kant, the radical idealism of Hegel, and so on. In the 20th century there was a shift from concerns with epistemology to actual philosophy of science, leading to the elaboration of the scientific method by Popper, based on a simplification and abstraction of actual scientific practice. That seems useful to me. So - is that the kind of theory Althusser is after? Again, I truly do not know. But maybe, since at one point he claims that hypotheses are part of bourgeois idealist ideology (!)(could I possibly have misread that, or misunderstood it? Surely so).
Regarding the issues that Althusser is addressing, he seems to apply a great deal of rigour. But he spends no time at all justifying some fundamental claims: the claim that historical materialism is a science, for example. As you can guess from my comments above, I do not believe that it is a science: what predictions has ever been made based on historical materialism that distinguishes historical materialism from any other approach to the study of history? And if such predictions have been made, were they correct (more correct than a broken clock)? I don't think so. As a method of analysis, as a level of abstraction when attempting to understand historical epochs, historical materialism no doubt offers some advantages. But a science? I need convincing.
In two chapters Althusser talks about his theory of "over-determination", with reference to the question of why the socialist revolution occurred first in Russia, and not in the advanced capitalist countries (as would have seemed to be a prediction of historical materialism). This discussion eventually leads him to talk about "contradictions", where he quotes (approvingly) a claim by Mao that in a complex system there are many "contradictions", but always there is a dominant contradiction; and there can be multiple "aspects" to a contradiction, but always there is a dominant aspect. Even if we get past the idiosyncratic use of the word "contradiction" in Marxist analysis, what reason do we have to believe the claim that there is always a "dominant" contradiction? Althusser takes this as established fact (or is it somehow an analytical statement), and goes on to base a justification for his claim of "over-determination" on this theory of dominant contradictions and aspects. It seems like an elaborate castle built on sand.
Again, though, my quick reading of these articles leaves me bewildered and in no position to judge the quality of Althusser's arguments.
October 22, 2008
Unreadable rubbish that tries to reduce Marx to a structuralist sociology. A continuation of Stalinism's attack on Marxism and the worst thing to happen to social analysis and critical theory since Uncle Joe came to power in person.
October 15, 2014
Althusser is a great and lively writer. Especially loved the chapters on the young marx and on humanism.
February 15, 2019
Althusser argues that there is a difference between the early humanist Marx and the late scientific Marx. That’s the book.
April 27, 2025
As I attempt to grapple with family internalizing and repeating attack ad assumptions ("Carney's too weak to stand up to Trump"), I find this passage still sticks in my mind:
"Simplicity is not original"...the simplest propaganda lines rely on a whole shaky foundational discourse structured by dubious in-built assumptions. Maybe not a unique insight, but so memorably summarized.
If I ever get around to a proper review, I'll highlight the concepts of an "epistemological break" between a humanist Marx and a scientific Marx.
Most useful, I think, is Althusser's adaptation of the Freudian concept of overdetermination. It's best anticipated in a letter of Engels to some guy named "J. Bloch" in 1890:
From Althusser himself:
This seems to be a more fruitful approach to "intersectionality", reaffirming the place of the base too often dismissed as economic "reductionism", yet acknowledging the murkiness in practice of "isolating" the effects of the base from superstructure given that both exist in process.
You'll get plenty from Althusser just by reading his essay Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, but if you want a deeper dive into not just laying out a structural Marxism, but why the contrast with humanism matters, this really gets into the weeds.
The individual producer, or the individual as the elementary subject of production, which eighteenth-century mythology imagined to be at the origin of society’s economic development, this economic ‘cogito’ only appeared, even as an ‘appearance’, in developed capitalist society, that is, in the society which had developed the social character of production to the highest degree. Similarly, in exchange, the simple universal par excellence, ‘did not appear historically in all its intensity until the most developed states of society. (This category) absolutely does not stride through every economic relation’.[36] So simplicity is not original; on the contrary, it is the structured whole which gives its meaning to the simple category, or which may produce the economic existence of certain simple categories as the result of a long process and under exceptional conditions.
"Simplicity is not original"...the simplest propaganda lines rely on a whole shaky foundational discourse structured by dubious in-built assumptions. Maybe not a unique insight, but so memorably summarized.
If I ever get around to a proper review, I'll highlight the concepts of an "epistemological break" between a humanist Marx and a scientific Marx.
Most useful, I think, is Althusser's adaptation of the Freudian concept of overdetermination. It's best anticipated in a letter of Engels to some guy named "J. Bloch" in 1890:
the factor which is in the last instance decisive in history is the production and reproduction of actual life. More than this neither Marx nor myself ever claimed. If now someone has distorted the meaning in such a way that the economic factor is the only decisive one, this man has changed the above proposition into an abstract, absurd phrase which says nothing. The economic situation is the base, but the different parts of the structure-the political forms of the class struggle and its results, the constitutions established by the victorious class after the battle is won, forms of law and even the reflections of all these real struggles in the brains of the participants, political theories, juridical, philosophical, religious opinions, and their further development into dogmatic systems-all this exercises also its influence on the development of the historical struggles and in cases determines their form. It is under the mutual influence of all these factors that, rejecting the infinitesimal number of accidental occurrences (that is, things and happenings whose intimate sense is so far removed and of so little probability that we can consider them non-existent, and can ignore them), that the economical movement is ultimately carried out.
From Althusser himself:
overdetermination does not just refer to apparently unique and aberrant historical situations (Germany, for example), but is universal; the economic dialectic is never active in the pure state; in History, these instances, the superstructures, etc. – are never seen to step respectfully aside when their work is done or, when the Time comes, as his pure phenomena, to scatter before His Majesty the Economy as he strides along the royal road of the Dialectic. From the first moment to the last, the lonely hour of the ‘last instance’ never comes.
This seems to be a more fruitful approach to "intersectionality", reaffirming the place of the base too often dismissed as economic "reductionism", yet acknowledging the murkiness in practice of "isolating" the effects of the base from superstructure given that both exist in process.
You'll get plenty from Althusser just by reading his essay Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, but if you want a deeper dive into not just laying out a structural Marxism, but why the contrast with humanism matters, this really gets into the weeds.
June 29, 2020
i've always liked anderson's description of marxism as an amalgam or synthesis of i) british empiricism, ii) french utopian socialism and iii) german idealism both because it is an inveterately marxist reading of marxism -- anderson being reliably synoptic in his points of view -- and also because it offers a robust means of understanding marx's ouevre, in its oscillations between these three poles. in althusser we see something quite different being proposed, utopian socialism, empiricism and idealism all banished; the strength of marx's argument is now held to exist in its structural or material, self-enclosing and autonomous logic. gillian rose, in a brief aside in hegel contra sociology, notes how althusser's philosophy sort of ends whenever the 'material' or 'structural' are invoked and indeed what exactly these concepts represent for althusser never become quite clear to me, in a way that would render them meaningfully distinct from the ways in which they are invoked within the context of french structuralism, a school of thought i've come to understand as idealistic or kantian, since reading both rose and anderson's writings on it.
i happen to think marx is correct, i think capitalism possesses immanent laws which tend towards the creation of two antagonistic classes, one of which exploits and deprives the other of the value it is responsible for creating, and that this exploited class needs to seize control of the means of production in order to supersede capitalism's limitations, but i think all this because das kapital offers concepts which are capable of grasping the forces which are at work in society, with some necessary adjustments, rather than because marx is prima facie right (though he is), if that distinction makes sense. a marxian account of the motive forces at work in say, ireland, at the present time, require us to supplement our understanding of capital's laws with imperialism, an understanding of the political subject within a 'parliamentary' 'democracy', post-industrial economics etc. in other words, all the history and politics which marx builds das kapital up and out of, and althusser, pointedly, does not.
finally, it is a bit of a pity that a work which is so invested in erecting a distance between marx and hegel spends so little of its time engaging with hegel's work, especially given how central the supposed simplicity or vagueness of hegel's dialectic in comparison to marx's is to althusser's argument. my biggest problem with for marx was its tendency to render the most complicated aspects of marx's works very simple -- the good marxist dialectic versus the bad, vague and simplisitic hegelian dialectic -- while the simple stuff becomes very complicated. perhaps saint-simonism was running rampant in the PCF in the sixties, but why we need to exorcise the spectre of the young marx rather than saying, yeah, he hadn't really figured it out in his twenties, there are some continuities but overall, let's move on to capital i just don't understand. in the name of this dubiously invoked science we seem to have reverted almost wholly to formal or transcendental categories which i had found the phenomenology so effective in moving beyond, i'm not sure how any notion of the absolute, whether or not we're calling the absolute the absolute or marx's brain can remain standing after hegel's clarification of it. a critique of empiricism as ideology i don't like much either, it is adorno to me
i happen to think marx is correct, i think capitalism possesses immanent laws which tend towards the creation of two antagonistic classes, one of which exploits and deprives the other of the value it is responsible for creating, and that this exploited class needs to seize control of the means of production in order to supersede capitalism's limitations, but i think all this because das kapital offers concepts which are capable of grasping the forces which are at work in society, with some necessary adjustments, rather than because marx is prima facie right (though he is), if that distinction makes sense. a marxian account of the motive forces at work in say, ireland, at the present time, require us to supplement our understanding of capital's laws with imperialism, an understanding of the political subject within a 'parliamentary' 'democracy', post-industrial economics etc. in other words, all the history and politics which marx builds das kapital up and out of, and althusser, pointedly, does not.
finally, it is a bit of a pity that a work which is so invested in erecting a distance between marx and hegel spends so little of its time engaging with hegel's work, especially given how central the supposed simplicity or vagueness of hegel's dialectic in comparison to marx's is to althusser's argument. my biggest problem with for marx was its tendency to render the most complicated aspects of marx's works very simple -- the good marxist dialectic versus the bad, vague and simplisitic hegelian dialectic -- while the simple stuff becomes very complicated. perhaps saint-simonism was running rampant in the PCF in the sixties, but why we need to exorcise the spectre of the young marx rather than saying, yeah, he hadn't really figured it out in his twenties, there are some continuities but overall, let's move on to capital i just don't understand. in the name of this dubiously invoked science we seem to have reverted almost wholly to formal or transcendental categories which i had found the phenomenology so effective in moving beyond, i'm not sure how any notion of the absolute, whether or not we're calling the absolute the absolute or marx's brain can remain standing after hegel's clarification of it. a critique of empiricism as ideology i don't like much either, it is adorno to me
June 2, 2021
Contrario a lo que escribieron los marxistas que pensaron en América Latina (sobre todo Sánchez Vázquez), Althusser no es sólo un agitador en el interior del marxismo mismo; tampoco es un «teoricista». Si bien la discusión que articula Althusser en este libro parece estar volcada hacia una reflexión de carácter eminentemente teórico, lo cierto es que hay en él una consigna sin la cual es difícil juzgarlo, a saber: la de llevar la lucha de clases al nivel de la teoría. En esa tesitura, se trata, al mismo tiempo, de un libro práctico. Este pequeño libro se compone, por cierto, de varios artículos. La mayoría de ellos, salvo el dedicado a Bertolazzi y Brecht, tienen que ver con una problematización sobre la producción teórica de Marx, en la que se intenta discernir al Marx de la juventud del Marx de la madurez.
Para esbozar una alternativa a ella, Althusser retoma el concepto de Bachelard de la «ruptura epistemológica», colocándolo como un punto de pivotaje en el seno de la producción teórica de Marx, esto es: como momento de inflexión en la transición de la «ideología» a la «ciencia», o del feuerbachismo al materialismo histórico. En esta línea, Althusser remarca la herencia de los poshegelianos y diluye la incidencia del mismo Hegel en Marx, de modo que articula una argumentación que le permite mostrar el núcleo duro del feuerbachismo en Marx, dando cuenta del uso de sus conceptos (enajenación, por ejemplo) en su lectura de la economía política (en los «Manuscritos del 44»). Pero la cosa no acaba ahí, y es que Althusser, no contento con remarcar la ruptura, se da a la tarea de establecer las líneas directrices que caracterizan la concepción de la dialéctica materialista y que, en consecuencia, la distinguen de la dialéctica hegeliana. Esto lo lleva a rechazar la fórmula sencilla, proporcionada por el propio Marx, que pretende inscribir en su trabajo una «simple» «inversión» de aquella (de la dialéctica hegeliana). De ahí que Althusser construya una concepción actualizada de la dialéctica materialista: en términos teóricos, con la tesis sobre las «generalidades»; y en términos de una «sobredeterminación», o de una «contradicción acumulativa» que implica un modo complejo de entender la realidad social y humana.
Por lo último, Althusser destaca como pensador, toda vez que dota de nuevos elementos conceptuales a la teoría marxista que funda una práctica transformadora de la realidad. Mientras que la complementa con las bases de una teoría de la ideología (en este libro puede verse el germen de lo que será su teoría sobre los «aparatos ideológicos del Estado» y de la «reproducción»), que hacen posible la desarticulación del humanismo (ideológico) inclusive.
No podría concluir mi brevísima reseña sin recomendar ampliamente la lectura de este libro.
Para esbozar una alternativa a ella, Althusser retoma el concepto de Bachelard de la «ruptura epistemológica», colocándolo como un punto de pivotaje en el seno de la producción teórica de Marx, esto es: como momento de inflexión en la transición de la «ideología» a la «ciencia», o del feuerbachismo al materialismo histórico. En esta línea, Althusser remarca la herencia de los poshegelianos y diluye la incidencia del mismo Hegel en Marx, de modo que articula una argumentación que le permite mostrar el núcleo duro del feuerbachismo en Marx, dando cuenta del uso de sus conceptos (enajenación, por ejemplo) en su lectura de la economía política (en los «Manuscritos del 44»). Pero la cosa no acaba ahí, y es que Althusser, no contento con remarcar la ruptura, se da a la tarea de establecer las líneas directrices que caracterizan la concepción de la dialéctica materialista y que, en consecuencia, la distinguen de la dialéctica hegeliana. Esto lo lleva a rechazar la fórmula sencilla, proporcionada por el propio Marx, que pretende inscribir en su trabajo una «simple» «inversión» de aquella (de la dialéctica hegeliana). De ahí que Althusser construya una concepción actualizada de la dialéctica materialista: en términos teóricos, con la tesis sobre las «generalidades»; y en términos de una «sobredeterminación», o de una «contradicción acumulativa» que implica un modo complejo de entender la realidad social y humana.
Por lo último, Althusser destaca como pensador, toda vez que dota de nuevos elementos conceptuales a la teoría marxista que funda una práctica transformadora de la realidad. Mientras que la complementa con las bases de una teoría de la ideología (en este libro puede verse el germen de lo que será su teoría sobre los «aparatos ideológicos del Estado» y de la «reproducción»), que hacen posible la desarticulación del humanismo (ideológico) inclusive.
No podría concluir mi brevísima reseña sin recomendar ampliamente la lectura de este libro.
June 12, 2025
Althusser was always quite adamant on proving that Marx's thoughts are the result of an 'epistemological break' from German idealism/philosophy, specially Hegelian philosophy. His problem is with those Marxists who claim that Marx had 'inverted' the Hegelian dialectic and made the method his own. Althusser objects and replies that even to consider Marxism as an inversion of the Hegelian dialectic is to betray the originality of Marx's thoughts. For he claims that Marx after 1844's manuscripts completely changed his position. Of course here he saw Marx's two versions. One is early Marx--a philosopher, Hegelian and Feuerbachian in nature, a humanist--and the mature Marx--who wrote Capital, rejected the whole philosophical tradition, anti-humanist. So to establish the fact that Marx gave birth to an original way of looking at the world, it is necessary first of all to understand that Marx started to analyze things from theoretical frameworks that were new, for it was not possible to to be Marx by still clinging to the left-out of Hegelian idealism. Almost in all the essays of this book Althusser kept critiquing Marxists who couldn't see the originality of Marxist theory.
One of the important essays from this book for me was the one where Althusser sees Marx as an Anti-humanist. Of course he considers the fact that once Marx himself was a humanist, but when Marx got to see the world through the lenses of mode of production, dialectical materialism, labor and its relation to value Marx was not the same anymore. Here Marx became a structuralist, according to Althusser. This anti-humanist Marx didn't see the historical representation as the result of some individual human agents, rather these individuals themselves got shaped through complex structure of different aspect of the society. So as a result concept like alienation also became obsolete for Marx, because now class struggle and history are residing in human consciousness. Everything for Althusser becomes the movement of structural complex.
In this book, Althusser also coined some theoretical concepts, claiming how important it is to understand the raw material world through theory, which is the only way of engaging scientifically rather than ideologically. As this is just a short review I am not going to talk about everything. I just wrote what I found to be most interesting in this book.
One of the important essays from this book for me was the one where Althusser sees Marx as an Anti-humanist. Of course he considers the fact that once Marx himself was a humanist, but when Marx got to see the world through the lenses of mode of production, dialectical materialism, labor and its relation to value Marx was not the same anymore. Here Marx became a structuralist, according to Althusser. This anti-humanist Marx didn't see the historical representation as the result of some individual human agents, rather these individuals themselves got shaped through complex structure of different aspect of the society. So as a result concept like alienation also became obsolete for Marx, because now class struggle and history are residing in human consciousness. Everything for Althusser becomes the movement of structural complex.
In this book, Althusser also coined some theoretical concepts, claiming how important it is to understand the raw material world through theory, which is the only way of engaging scientifically rather than ideologically. As this is just a short review I am not going to talk about everything. I just wrote what I found to be most interesting in this book.
May 8, 2020
I really had not appreciated these essays enough before.
In between rigorous analysis of the crucial differences between Hegel’s dialectic and Marx’s dialectic, contradictions and overdeterminations, and in between amazing analysis of the differences of marxist materialism, pre-marxist materialism, and socialist humanism, in between all this, the essay about Bertolazzi’s and Brecht’s plays is pure beauty 💔
“..forms of temporality that do not achieve any mutual integration, which have no relation to one another, which coexist and interconnect, but never meet each other, so to speak; with lived elements which interlace in a dialectic which is localized, separate and apparently ungrounded; works marked by an internal dissociation, an unresolved alterity.
The dynamic of this specific latent structure, and in particular, the coexistence without any explicit relation of a dialectical temporality and non-dialectical temporality, is the basis for a true critique of the illusions of consciousness (which always believes itself to be dialectical and treats itself as dialectical), the basis for a true critique of the false dialectic (conflict, tragedy, etc.) by the disconcerting reality which is its basis and which is awaiting recognition.
... there is no dialectic of consciousness, which could reach reality itself by virtue of its own contradictions. For consciousness does not accede to the real through its own internal development, but by the radical discovery of what is - other than itself.”
(The Piccolo Teatro: Bertolazzi and Brecht)
In between rigorous analysis of the crucial differences between Hegel’s dialectic and Marx’s dialectic, contradictions and overdeterminations, and in between amazing analysis of the differences of marxist materialism, pre-marxist materialism, and socialist humanism, in between all this, the essay about Bertolazzi’s and Brecht’s plays is pure beauty 💔
“..forms of temporality that do not achieve any mutual integration, which have no relation to one another, which coexist and interconnect, but never meet each other, so to speak; with lived elements which interlace in a dialectic which is localized, separate and apparently ungrounded; works marked by an internal dissociation, an unresolved alterity.
The dynamic of this specific latent structure, and in particular, the coexistence without any explicit relation of a dialectical temporality and non-dialectical temporality, is the basis for a true critique of the illusions of consciousness (which always believes itself to be dialectical and treats itself as dialectical), the basis for a true critique of the false dialectic (conflict, tragedy, etc.) by the disconcerting reality which is its basis and which is awaiting recognition.
... there is no dialectic of consciousness, which could reach reality itself by virtue of its own contradictions. For consciousness does not accede to the real through its own internal development, but by the radical discovery of what is - other than itself.”
(The Piccolo Teatro: Bertolazzi and Brecht)
May 20, 2021
This book is brilliant. Really. The concept of the epistemological break is brilliant (even if i'm unsure about the finality he gives in the account offered here, which he himself later broke with), his concept of the problematic, i.e. the basic unity of a text, is a brilliant concept, as is his concept of overdetermination, i.e. the contradiction is inseperable from the social formation, it is radically affected *by it*, but also *determines* it equally, and this reflection constitutes the unity of the complex whole within each contradiction.
The essay "On the Materialist Dialectic" is the highlight of the book, as he radically attacks the Hegelian assumption an original simple unity, and instead begins with a structured complex unity. He further gives a brilliant account of practice, theory, 'theory', Theory (yes they're all different!), etc. Last, but not least, he provides a brilliant critique of socialist humanism on the level of a theory, and instead advances *theoretical anti-humanism*, i.e. recognising humanis an ideology -- theoretical, as he does not, a priori, reject the support for humanism, or any ideology, but only on the condition of this theoretical anti-humanism. He further gives a quite insightful account of what ideology *is*, and why it will not dissappear in communism. All, in all, a brilliant book everyone should read.
The essay "On the Materialist Dialectic" is the highlight of the book, as he radically attacks the Hegelian assumption an original simple unity, and instead begins with a structured complex unity. He further gives a brilliant account of practice, theory, 'theory', Theory (yes they're all different!), etc. Last, but not least, he provides a brilliant critique of socialist humanism on the level of a theory, and instead advances *theoretical anti-humanism*, i.e. recognising humanis an ideology -- theoretical, as he does not, a priori, reject the support for humanism, or any ideology, but only on the condition of this theoretical anti-humanism. He further gives a quite insightful account of what ideology *is*, and why it will not dissappear in communism. All, in all, a brilliant book everyone should read.
December 14, 2025
به معنای واقعی کلمه آشغاله. برای شناخت مارکس آثار بسیار بهتری وجود دارند. وقتتون رو با این کتاب غیراستاندارد تلف نکنید. این کتاب مجموعهای از چند مقاله پراکنده است که طی ۵ سال نوشته شده و به اعتراف خود نویسنده تناقضاتی بین آنها نیز وجود داره. مشکلم با کتاب چند چیزه. یک اینکه نویسنده حتی به موضوع بحث هم متعهد نیست. به طور مثال یکی از مقالات کتاب اصلاً راجع به مارکس نیست؛ راجع به یک تئاتره! خروج از بحث در مقالات دیگر هم اتفاق میوفته. خیلی جاها نمیفهمی داره مارکس رو تفسیر میکنه یا داره نظرات خودش رو مستقل از نظرات مارکس مطرح میکنه.
دوم اینکه مانند اغلب متفکران قارهای مدعیات خودش رو روشن و شفاف بیان نمیکنه و استدلالی براشون نمیاره. مثلا یکی از مدعیات محوری آلتوسر اینه که در کتاب ایدئولوژی آلمانی گسستی در نظریات مارکس رخ میده و همچنین معتقده آثار پس از این دوره قابل دفاع تر هستند. اما هیچ وقت نمیفهمیم که در کدوم یک از نظریات مارکس این گسست رخ داده. چه برسه به اینکه شاهدی برای اثبات ادعای خودش بیاره و اینکه چرا معتقده آثار پس از اون دوره قابل دفاع تر هستند.
سوم اینکه نویسنده آرزوهای خودش رو به عنوان تفسیر جا میزنه. مثلا چون خودش از هگل و دیالکتیک بدش میاد، مارکس رو هم جوری تفسیر میکنه که گویی مارکس هم مثل او فکر میکرده.
در کل اگر از نویسندههایی که روشن و مرتب حرف نمیزنند خوشتون نمیاد از این اثر نیز خوشتون نخواهد آمد.
دوم اینکه مانند اغلب متفکران قارهای مدعیات خودش رو روشن و شفاف بیان نمیکنه و استدلالی براشون نمیاره. مثلا یکی از مدعیات محوری آلتوسر اینه که در کتاب ایدئولوژی آلمانی گسستی در نظریات مارکس رخ میده و همچنین معتقده آثار پس از این دوره قابل دفاع تر هستند. اما هیچ وقت نمیفهمیم که در کدوم یک از نظریات مارکس این گسست رخ داده. چه برسه به اینکه شاهدی برای اثبات ادعای خودش بیاره و اینکه چرا معتقده آثار پس از اون دوره قابل دفاع تر هستند.
سوم اینکه نویسنده آرزوهای خودش رو به عنوان تفسیر جا میزنه. مثلا چون خودش از هگل و دیالکتیک بدش میاد، مارکس رو هم جوری تفسیر میکنه که گویی مارکس هم مثل او فکر میکرده.
در کل اگر از نویسندههایی که روشن و مرتب حرف نمیزنند خوشتون نمیاد از این اثر نیز خوشتون نخواهد آمد.
August 27, 2023
I think the belief that Althusser is hard to read stems from the fact that readers expect more out of his work. You'll read something, and you'll be like: well, surely there has to be more, right? Which leads to difficulties in reading.
The fact of the matter is that Althusser is easy to read once you recognize he's saying very little in actuality, at least in this book For Marx.
I think Kolakowski is quotable here:
These two books of Althusser provide a disagreeable example of empty verbosity which, as noted earlier, can be reduced either to common sense trivialities in new verbal disguise, or to traditional Marxist tenets repeated with no additional explanation, or to wrong historical judgments. In understanding Marx, or Hegel, or political economy, or the methods of social science, they give us nothing except pretentious language.
Nevertheless, I did find the article Marxism and Humanism to be a particularly good one of the lot, over and above the other articles. However, most of what I find valuable in it, or in other bits and pieces of the articles that lay in this book, just reiterate concepts other theorists had come up with.
The fact of the matter is that Althusser is easy to read once you recognize he's saying very little in actuality, at least in this book For Marx.
I think Kolakowski is quotable here:
These two books of Althusser provide a disagreeable example of empty verbosity which, as noted earlier, can be reduced either to common sense trivialities in new verbal disguise, or to traditional Marxist tenets repeated with no additional explanation, or to wrong historical judgments. In understanding Marx, or Hegel, or political economy, or the methods of social science, they give us nothing except pretentious language.
Nevertheless, I did find the article Marxism and Humanism to be a particularly good one of the lot, over and above the other articles. However, most of what I find valuable in it, or in other bits and pieces of the articles that lay in this book, just reiterate concepts other theorists had come up with.
January 3, 2022
Overall, I think For Marx is an important classic in Marxist theory, but it is also overly difficult. It reflects the author's wish to build a reputation as a leading intellectual in the French Communist Party, and also to start a tradition of rigorous Marxist theory in France.
Althusser's main argument is that in 1845, with the completion of The German Ideology, Marx jettisoned his early Feuerbachian humanism, and laid down the cornerstones of a radically new, anti-humanist science of historical materialism. This is what Althusser calls Marx's epistemological break.
I think this was an especially important intervention at the time. In the France of the late 1950's Stalinist dogmatism was gone for good, and intellectuals exploring their new freedom turned to the young humanist Marx, blending this in various ways with the core tenets of Marxism. Althusser sought to correct their path by highlighting the fundamental nature of the break in Marx's work with the German Ideology, which was really the founding of Marxism as a coherent philosophy and science of history.
Althusser's main argument is that in 1845, with the completion of The German Ideology, Marx jettisoned his early Feuerbachian humanism, and laid down the cornerstones of a radically new, anti-humanist science of historical materialism. This is what Althusser calls Marx's epistemological break.
I think this was an especially important intervention at the time. In the France of the late 1950's Stalinist dogmatism was gone for good, and intellectuals exploring their new freedom turned to the young humanist Marx, blending this in various ways with the core tenets of Marxism. Althusser sought to correct their path by highlighting the fundamental nature of the break in Marx's work with the German Ideology, which was really the founding of Marxism as a coherent philosophy and science of history.
December 2, 2025
The central conceit of Althusser's reading of Marx, the point that he truly hammers home here, is rather simple: Marx, or at the very least, the mature Marx, is not a simple inversion of Hegel: it is Feuerbach who seeks to invert Hegel, and the early ("young") Marx eventually comes to shed both his (Young) Hegelian and Feuerbachian tendencies. Marx's early humanism gives way to his late dialectical materialism. I think I largely agree with this, even if it seems like a rather standard reading (the controversy over this is a little lost on me). Overall, good, if a bit too repetitive.
July 16, 2021
Perhaps Althusser is too hasty in his anti-Hegelianism, but this work serves as an important clearing of the ideological fog of humanism within Marxism. The "epistemological break" is an essential idea to any serious Marxism, even if L. Althusser's understanding of Marxist theoretical practice has its flaws.
February 12, 2023
Though has some interesting insights about philosophers and their relationship to the school of thought they work within fundamentally Althusser thesis is undermine by the clear fact that Marx is a humanist even in his later works. The Old joke about how Marx never gets old is created because of Althusser misunderstanding of marx
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