This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| For Marx | |
|---|---|
| Name | For Marx |
| Author | Louis Althusser |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Subject | Marxism, philosophy |
| Genre | Political philosophy |
| Publisher | Éditions Maspero |
| Pub date | 1965 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 320 |
For Marx
For Marx is a 1965 collection of essays by the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. It articulates a structuralist reinterpretation of Karl Marx by engaging with the intellectual traditions of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Engels, and Antonio Gramsci, while addressing contemporary debates among French Communist Party, Structuralism, and New Left circles. The book seeks to redefine Marxist theory in relation to epistemology, history, and politics through rigorous philosophical analysis.
Althusser wrote during the 1950s and 1960s amid intellectual currents including Structuralism, Existentialism, and the postwar revival of Marxist thought in France. The work responds to debates within the French Communist Party and to positions associated with Humanism as practiced by figures like Jean-Paul Sartre and Georges Politzer. Althusser situates his critique against readings influenced by Karl Korsch and György Lukács, while drawing on methodological resources from Claude Lévi-Strauss and Nicolas Bourbaki mathematicians for notions of theoretical rigor. Internationally, the book engaged with the legacy of Vladimir Lenin and the practical politics of Sino-Soviet split era controversies.
The volume collects essays including "On the Materialist Dialectic" and "Contradiction and Overdetermination", which develop Althusser's key concepts such as "epistemological break" and "ideological state apparatuses". He reinterprets Marx's early writings in relation to later works like Das Kapital and the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, while invoking methodological contrast with Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Althusser foregrounds structural relations over humanist subjectivity, referencing analytical threads from Nikolai Bukharin and Rosa Luxemburg when discussing class formation, and engages with Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan in his analyses of ideology and subject formation. The essays weave close readings of texts by Karl Marx, dialogues with Friedrich Engels commentary, and critical appropriation of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's dialectic to propose a structural Marxist epistemology.
First published in French by Éditions Maspero in 1965, For Marx followed Althusser's rising prominence after his earlier essay collections and academic appointments at institutions like the École Normale Supérieure. Translations into English, Spanish, Italian, and other languages extended its reach across Europe and the Americas, appearing in editions from publishers engaged with leftist intellectual currents. The text circulated in university syllabi at institutions such as University of Paris and Columbia University, where it influenced courses on political philosophy, philosophy of science, and Marxism–Leninism. Subsequent reprints and collected works editions by Éditions Maspero and later university presses kept the essays in circulation through the late twentieth century.
For Marx provoked intense debate among scholars and activists. Supporters in circles associated with French Communist Party and New Left activists praised its theoretical rigor against humanist reinterpretations linked to Jean-Paul Sartre and Raymond Aron. Critics from the tradition of Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm accused Althusser of reducing political agency. The work influenced intellectuals such as Étienne Balibar, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault in diverse ways, prompting responses in journals like Les Temps Modernes and Critique. Internationally, activists in Italian Communist Party and academics in United States departments of philosophy and sociology debated Althusserian notions of ideology and apparatus.
Scholars have interpreted Althusser's essays through multiple lenses. Structuralist readings align him with Claude Lévi-Strauss and Louis Dumont, emphasizing system over actor; analytic philosophers compare his epistemological claims to themes in Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. Marxist humanists such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe contested his anti-humanist posture, while scholars of ideology studies linked his "ideological state apparatuses" concept to studies of media, education, and religion in societies influenced by Antonio Gramsci's notion of hegemony. Feminist critiques, including those influenced by Simone de Beauvoir and later by Judith Butler, interrogated implications for subjectivity and gender. Poststructuralist engagements by Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault highlighted tensions between structural determinations and discursive formations.
For Marx reshaped mid‑twentieth‑century Marxism by shifting debates toward theory of science, epistemology, and ideology. Its concepts of "epistemological break", "overdetermination", and "ideological state apparatuses" entered scholarly vocabularies used in studies of capitalism, class struggle in contexts like May 1968 events in France, and institutional analysis of entities such as trade unions and political parties. Althusser's approach influenced subsequent generations of Marxists, structuralists, and poststructuralists across universities, think tanks, and activist organizations. Though contested, the work remains a pivotal reference in contemporary discussions of Karl Marx's legacy, socialist strategy debates in parties like Italian Communist Party and Spanish Communist Party, and in interdisciplinary research spanning philosophy of science and cultural studies.
Category:1965 books Category:Books by Louis Althusser Category:Marxist literature