Althusser

From MarxWiki

Louis Althusser, 1918-1990, is a prominent Algerian (French) structural marxist theorist and critic. His embrace of marxist ideology can perhaps be traced to his time spent in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, after which he began his academic career. He was educated at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and taught there for over 30 years. Althusser believed in the `early humanist Marx` and advocated a thorough reading of all of Marx, claiming that Marx's intentions can be found within his texts. He wrote extensively, attacking modern humanism and reinterpreting classical Marx texts. Much of his work deals with the creation and functioning of ideology. He also introduced the idea of Ideological State Apparatuses and subject interpellation. He was concerned with the discussion of overdetermination and reductivity in reading Marx. A troubled mind, Althusser found himself in and out of mental institutions throughout his life. He was permanently institutionalized after `accidently` strangling his his wife to death in 1980.

In `Contradiction and Overdetermination,` Althusser argues that the commonly held view that Marx 'inverted' Hegel is not true. He points out that the very structure of the dialectic must change, and one cannot simply invert its terms. He believes that the relations between those terms also underwent change in Marx's reconfiguration of Hegel's dialectic. Ultimately he makes the claim that, while the supersturcture is determined 'in the last instance' be the structure, or base, it also maintains relative autonomy. It is an anti-reductive view of Marxism. The economic dialectic, the economic grounding, remains the dominant force, but it is never active in its pure state.The contradiction between forces of production and the realtions of production is not, alone, enough for successful revolution. There must an accumulation and fusion of circumstances. While the basic contradiction is active in all of these circumstances, they are not merely projections of that basic contradiction. The unity they achieve is constituted by their own (autononous) essences. The base, the fundamental contradiction, determines, and is overdetermined by, the superstructure.