For Marx

For Marx

Cover of the first edition
Author	Louis Althusser
Original title	Pour Marx
Translator	Ben Brewster
Language	French
Subject	Karl Marx
Publisher	François Maspero, Allen Lane
Publication date	1965
Publication place	France
Published in English	1969
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	258 (first edition)
ISBN

For Marx (Template:Langx) is a 1965 book by the philosopher Louis Althusser, a leading theoretician of the French Communist Party (PCF), in which the author reinterprets the work of the philosopher Karl Marx, proposing an epistemological break between the young, Hegelian Marx, and the old Marx, the author of Das Kapital (1867–1883). The book, first published in France by François Maspero, established Althusser's reputation. The texts presented in For Marx are theoretical interventions in a definite conjuncture, particularly aiming at the definition of the lines to be pursued by the PCF after Stalin's years in the Soviet Union. Althusser's position is of theoretical antihumanism, and is against the teleology of history. Althusser defends that history is a process without subject and with an open end, but that has determinations that can be theorized by the science of history as constructed by Marx in his mature work, Das Kapital. Society is then conceptualized as a complex whole articulated in dominance by the economy where several social practices co-exist with a relative autonomy, introducing the concept overdetermination to characterize the levels of effectivity.

Background, contents and publication history

Except for its introduction, the chapters of For Marx first appeared as articles that were published in journals of the French Communist Party between 1960 and 1964. For Marx was first published in 1965 by François Maspero. An Italian translation was published in 1967, and an English translation, by Ben Brewster, in 1969. The book has been published in English by Verso Books with its most recent edition dating 2005. The book is composed of the following essays:

To My English Readers

Introduction: Today

1. Feuerbach’s ‘Philosophical Manifestoes’

2. ‘On the Young Marx’

3. Contradiction and Overdetermination

4. The ‘Piccolo Teatro’: Bertolazzi and Brecht

5. The ‘1844 Manuscripts’ of Karl Marx

6. On the Materialist Dialectic

7. Marxism and Humanism

See also

• Louis Althusser and the Traditions of French Marxism

References

Bibliography

Books

• Althusser, Louis (2005). For Marx. London: Verso Books. ISBN 1-84467-052-X.
• Cleaver, Harry (2000). Reading Capital Politically. Leeds: AK Press. ISBN 1-902593-29-4.
• Levine, Andrew (2017). "Althusser, Louis". In Audi, Robert (ed.). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Third Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-64379-6.
• McLellan, David (1995). The Thought of Karl Marx: An Introduction. London: Papermac. ISBN 0-333-63948-0.
• Merquior, J. G. (1986). Western Marxism. London: Paladin. ISBN 0-586-08454-1.
• Scruton, Roger (1985). Thinkers of the New Left. Harlow: Longman Group Limited. ISBN 0-582-90273-8.
• Scruton, Roger (2010). The Uses of Pessimism And the Danger of False Hope. London: Atlantic Books. ISBN 978-1-84887-201-1.
• Timpanaro, Sebastiano (1980). On Materialism. London: Verso Editions. ISBN 0-86091-721-5.

External links

• For Marx