Althusser

Louis Althusser · French Marxist philosopher (1918–1990) · 1918–1990

Appears in 77 videos · 113 passages, 46 of them in depth.

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Summary

Dominique Pagani treats Althusser as his main opponent within the Marxist field. His chief criticism is that Althusser uncouples Marx from Hegel: in Reading Capital, all readers of Marx are said to have gone wrong through a Hegelian reading, except Lenin. He sees this as the reverse of Lenin's approach, and he points out that Althusser admits he never read Hegel and that in 1953 he praised Stalin for condemning the negation of the negation1 2. He also criticises the formula "Marxism is not a humanism", which in his view amounts to throwing the baby out with the bathwater3, and an economic determination "in the last instance" that never comes into play in concrete cases4. Still, he grants Althusser a few points: the scientific continents, with Marx opening the continent of history, even though the note on Freud ignores that Marx already thinks the unconscious5; the idea that Marxism is not an economism; symptomatic reading; and his Montesquieu. He regularly contrasts him with Clouscard, who was sidelined in the PCF in his favour, while on other counts still regarding him as a comrade6.

Summary produced automatically from 115 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Who is this?

Louis Pierre Althusser (UK:, US: ; French:; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher who studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became professor of philosophy. Althusser's life was marked by periods of intense mental illness. In 1980, he killed his wife, the sociologist Hélène Rytmann, by strangling her. He was declared unfit to stand trial due to insanity and committed to a psychiatric hospital for three years. He did little further academic work, dying in 1990. […]

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Text: Wikipédia, CC BY-SA 4.0, excerpt · Portrait: Arturo Espinosa from barcelona, Cataluña (España), CC BY 2.0

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Talks · 7 Feb 2025Michel Clouscard and the betrayal of May 68

2:21Cited among the philosophers he expounds without nitpicking.
13:02Figure of structuralist Marxism who decouples Marx from Hegel and claims to say what Marx meant, unlike Clouscard.
31:19Economics "in the last instance" gives him a Marxism that never speaks of economics regarding a concrete case.

Cycle 11 · 3 Sept 2023Worldliness in Clouscard: desiring what? Through whom?

2:07:21He wanted a Marx amputated of dialectic and humanism.
2:10:29Reading CapitalHe saw that philosophy reacts to scientific continents, but the unconscious is already found in Hegel and Marx.
2:19:35To say that Marxism is not a humanism leads to Foucault: one cannot be both Foucauldian and Marxist.

Series · 10 Sept 2019M. Clouscard's reply to C. Morilhat (part 2)

1:56:12He makes the State a monolithic abstraction and condemns himself to the sole strategy of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
2:06:24His economic determination in the last instance never intervenes; his thought borrows from Foucault, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan.
2:20:37Reading CapitalClouscard did not want to rewrite Capital in philosophical terms.

Series · 23 Aug 2019M. Clouscard's reply to C. Morilhat (1987)

4:01Reading CapitalIs right to link the major articulations of philosophy to the sciences, but his note on Freud ignores that Marx already thinks the unconscious.
20:08His vocabulary dominated the Institute for Marxist Research, where Clouscard was ignored.
1:11:45Taken for the Marxist par excellence, yet he decouples Marx from dialectic, like Deleuze.

Series · 5 Jul 2018Being and Code

7:53Reading CapitalClouscard answers him that one cannot read Capital without seeing the substrate that precedes it.
19:20His return to Spinoza opens the drift toward deontologized marxism.
30:58He understood nothing of the Hegelian whole and admits at the end of his life that he had not really read Marx.
54:59He always wonders what Marx meant and suspends the passage to practice.
1:06:22The speaker: he rightly, though wrongly, raises the question of the conditions of validity of dialectic.

Talks · 2 Jul 2018Tribute to Domenico Losurdo

11:52He cuts Marx off from Hegel, admits not having read Hegel, and congratulates Stalin in 1953 for having condemned the negation of the negation.
1:08:14Losurdo criticizes his reading of Marx's humanism as a youthful weakness.

Talks · 17 Jun 2017Adotevi: Negritude and negrologists (2)

0:00Adotevi borrows from Althusser the concept of epistemological break, but in Althusser this break kept receding.
3:38The Future Lasts ForeverA professor more than a tragic philosopher, he takes core samples from authors' thought and learns of Freud through his students.

Series · 22 Dec 2014H for Hegel

11:27According to him, the Marxists failed through their Hegelian reading of Marx; the cord must be cut, only Lenin escapes this.
13:38His statement is Lenin's reversed; he sides with Stalin and the pro-Chinese.

Cycle 15 · 28 Aug 2026From Copernicus to Lenin: revolution!

1:06:27To the English maxim of the pudding, he replies that one must know whether it is indeed pudding one is eating.

Cycle 12 · 21 Apr 2024Saving the saviour? Redemption, the end of the cycle or its new beginning?

10:17His symptomatic reading consists in detecting in a text the anomaly that catches the reader, sometimes without the author's knowledge.

Cycle 12 · 28 Feb 2024Clouscard by you: answers to your questions

1:15:30With the economic determining in the last instance and relative autonomy, he never lets the economy intervene.

Cycle 11 · 22 Jul 2023Worldliness in Clouscard: the world as “cunning of reason”

2:07:57Often criticized, but right against pragmatism: one must still know whether it is really pudding being served.

Cycle 11 · 18 May 2023Worldliness in Clouscard, or privileges for all

2:09:06For him, Marx is never more Marx than when cut off from Hegel; Dominique Pagani argues the opposite.

Talks · 27 Mar 2023Praxis and psyche

30:12Wanted to decouple Marx from Hegel; a misreading, since the young Marx is the most severe toward Hegel.

Cycle 10 · 8 Dec 2021#10.6 War and peace: “The death drives advance in silence…” (Freud)

1:02:09"Marxism is not a humanism": he is right against colonial humanism, but one should not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Series · 14 Jul 2021Everything is allowed, nothing is possible! Michel Clouscard, May 68 and the capitalism of seduction

22:48His economic determination "in the last instance" never intervenes in concreto: a Marxism that does not speak of economics.
29:49He treats his depression with Lacan in the Luberon.

Series · 14 Jul 2021Everything's allowed, but nothing is possible! Michel Clouscard, May 68, French theory and capitalism

22:47Economic determination "in the last instance" yields a Marxism that never speaks of economics in concrete cases.
29:49He treats his depression at Lacan's practice in the Luberon, an annex of the neighborhood.

Cycle 9.2 · 5 Feb 2021#9.14 How can sciences of history be real?

57:32Reading CapitalHe had seen that Marxism is not an economism, which he had already developed in For Marx.

Cycle 9.1 · 17 Dec 2020#9 Benefits and harms of amnesia…

30:24Reading CapitalCriticized for decoupling Marx from Hegel, he was right to invent the concept of epiphanic reading.

Cycle 7 · 5 May 2020#7 Harnessed to confinitude

26:37He splits Marx from Hegel and leaves the dialectic to Hegel, contrary to what the postface to Capital says.

Cycle 7 · 11 Apr 2020#4 Harnessed to confinitude

28:20He is right that reversal does not change the structure, but he wrongly wants a total destruction of Hegel in Marx.

Cycle 6 · 8 Jan 2020#6.3 The logic of the subject in the face of the reconstitution of Nazism

29:03Uncouples Marx and Hegel, but recognizes that Marx owes Hegel the notion of a process without a subject.

Cycle 6 · 3 Dec 2019#6.2 The logic of the subject in the face of the reconstitution of Nazism

14:01Wanted to decouple Marx from Hegel; he acknowledges that Marx owes to Hegel the notion of a process without a subject, and admits not having read Hegel.

Cycle 5.2 · 29 Jul 2019#5.9 Kafka, “An Imperial Message”

22:05Lenin and PhilosophyInvited to give a philosophical talk, he sees it as an impossible exercise, and quotes Lenin's laughter.

Cycle 5.1 · 21 Nov 2018#5.2 The philosopher's Odyssey: revolutionary thought

1:44:47Reading CapitalJudges that readers of Marx had too Hegelian a reading; radical decoupling, opposite of Lenin.

Talks · 6 Oct 2018On Marx

25:02He asserts that Marxism is not a humanism, while later admitting he had not read Marx.

Talks · 12 Jun 2018In conversation with Bernard Friot (1 June 2018)

49:19Pagani follows him on the successive opening of scientific fields, up to Marx who opens the science of history.
2:03:12In agreement with him: to invert Hegel is not to change him (the mirror image).

Cycle 4 · 16 May 2018#4.8 Angélique (by Nerval)

59:43The "break" of the young Marx.
1:25:21Wanted to decouple Marx from Hegel, while making an exception for Lenin.

Cycle 2 · 1 Aug 2017#2.8 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

42:49Completely separates Marx from Hegel; he is an effect and not the cause of the decline of the PC; strangled his wife.
1:11:15He wrote that Marxism is not an economism.

Talks · 17 Jun 2017Adotevi: Negritude and negrologists (1)

7:04He brings Balandier to the École normale, the starting point of the seminar on African socialism.
1:04:30He gives the book a good reception; a great professor and "caïman," he spoke man to man and his marking of papers was another duty.

Talks · 2 Aug 2016Tribute to Jacques D'Hondt (1)

44:23Reading CapitalHe violently decouples Marx and Hegel: all readers of Marx would have been mistaken through a Hegelian reading, except Lenin.
47:05Either he or Lenin is mistaken: each claims that all the others were mistaken.

Talks · 2 Aug 2016Tribute to Jacques D'Hondt (3)

6:05in a 1953 article, he congratulates Stalin for having condemned the negation of the negation
19:12Montesquieu, Politics and Historyhe admits not knowing Hegel; his Montesquieu is his most successful work, after which he sinks into dogmatism

Series · 2 Aug 2016With Clouscard

1:01:29Chosen in Clouscard's place as the Party's philosopher; his vocabulary dominates the journal La Nouvelle Critique.
1:14:06Clouscard holds him to be a class enemy (according to a participant).

Series · 2 Feb 2016Hegel on the Beach 5/5

2:12:00Holds that readers of Marx went astray through a Hegelian reading, except Lenin; congratulated Stalin for having censored Hegel.

Series · 1 Feb 2016Marx on the Beach 1/2

27:31Lenin and PhilosophyProposes a renovation of Marxism; his table of the sciences adds in a note the unconscious continent opened by Freud, as if the unconscious had existed only since Freud.

Talks · 26 Apr 2015The music of history

1:49:25the economic determination "in the last instance," which never intervenes

Series · 7 Jul 2012Radio Galère: Michel Clouscard (2)

9:41He censors Hegel and Lenin's reading of Hegel.
41:28The "Althusserian terrorism."
44:54Treated by Lacan in the Luberon.

Talks · 23 May 2026Neo-fascism and the ideology of desire: is Michel Clouscard still relevant?

26:10Advises skipping the first section of Capital.
30:00Against him, Marx did not wait for Freud to think the unconscious.

Cycle 14 · 21 Oct 2025The silences of the media uproar: the Atlanticist re-Nazification

29:01A true philosopher of structuralism in the Marxist field.

Cycle 14 · 9 Aug 2025The repression of the subject in bourgeois civil society

4:52In his wake, some seek to decouple Marx from Hegel and from dialectic.
56:26Defines Marxism as a process without a subject.

Talks · 2 Dec 2024Napoleon, or the reasons of cunning

28:14Wrong to say Marx was Hegelian only in his youth.

Cycle 13 · 2 Sept 2024Clouscard: The metamorphoses of class struggle

1:14:17The author of the question about Marx's flirtation with Hegelian terminology has read him.

Cycle 12 · 22 Dec 2023Birth and carnage: the Massacre of the Innocents

2:01:15Cited among the so-called theoricist schools.

Cycle 11 · 29 Jun 2023Worldliness in Clouscard: Aragon and the positivity of the negative

1:24:08His metaphor of scientific continents.

Cycle 11 · 26 Apr 2023Worldliness in Clouscard, or “the dominant ideology”

2:02:10The aspects he cared about most are those Pagani cares about least.

Cycle 11 · 14 Oct 2022Clouscard and the problem of Socrates

26:42Congratulates Stalin in 1953 for having condemned the negation of the negation.

Cycle 10 · 10 Feb 2022#9 Pictures at an Exhibition: art, seen from here or from the other side?

1:21:59Saw the stakes of the distinction between Vorstellung and Darstellung.

Cycle 9.2 · 9 Jun 2021#9.23 “Ruled like music paper!” Bach, Nerval, Lévi-Strauss

33:21Has counter-revolutionary aspects, but is in other respects a comrade.

Series · 31 Mar 2021“Red-browns”, “decolonial”: should we use the dominant language?

24:34Pagani reproaches him for having separated Hegel from Marx.

Series · 31 Mar 2021Wagner and his interpreters, approaching Clouscard, Marx = Theseus?

49:37Clouscard crosses swords with him in Critique du libéralisme libertaire.

Cycle 9.2 · 4 Mar 2021#9.16 How can sciences of history be real?

1:42:39He is right against the Marxists who took theory lightly.

Series · 11 Jan 2021#8 Happiness and unhappiness in music

1:06:05Deserves credit for paying tribute to Montesquieu.
1:40:18Pope of intellectual Parisianism, meeting Lacan in Gordes.

Series · 3 Dec 2020#3 What is called modern music?

35:57Some Marxists who claim his legacy see Rousseau as the one who warned against industry.

Cycle 9.1 · 3 Dec 2020#7 Answers to questions (continued)

41:56Cited among Marxists with differing positions.
1:01:46When one insists on life and the vital, a god is brewing.

Talks · 24 Sept 2020Arendt and Heidegger: the destruction of thought

1:02:39Certain statements belong to Heideggerian Marxism.

Cycle 7 · 4 Apr 2020#3 Harnessed to confinitude

16:50For him Marxism is not a humanism: an anti-humanist thought.

Cycle 5.2 · 26 May 2019#5.7 Nature or landscape?

1:04:14Spent his career saying what Marx meant to say.

Cycle 5.2 · 25 Jan 2019#5.4 Introduction: nature or landscape?

31:59Mentioned in the Gordes anecdote.

Cycle 5.1 · 13 Jan 2019#5.3 bis Questions (Facebook Live)

57:54He was right to insist that Marxism is not an economism, even though he went too far in the other direction.

Cycle 5.1 · 31 Dec 2018#5.3 The philosopher's Odyssey: revolutionary thought

41:32One cannot spin a metaphor forever: on this point he seems right.

Cycle 5.1 · 24 Oct 2018#5.1 The philosopher's Odyssey: revolutionary thought

1:06:26Reading CapitalThe scientific continents; Marx inaugurates the science of history.

Cycle 5.1 · 15 Oct 2018#5.0 Presentation of the 2018-2019 workshop

15:03In opposition to him, Pagani fights against the counter-revolutionary decoupling of Marx and Hegel.
19:18Influenced by the neo-Nietzschean offensive.