"For Marx" is a collection of essays by Louis Althusser, first published in France in 1965, though most of its chapters were originally articles appearing in French Communist Party journals between 1960 and 1964. Althusser's primary objective in this work is to intervene in the "theoretico-ideological conjuncture" of his time, which he describes as a specific intellectual and ideological situation. His aim is to draw a "line of demarcation" between authentic Marxist theory and various forms of philosophical (and political) subjectivism that he believed compromised or threatened it, notably empiricism and its variants like pragmatism, voluntarism, and historicism. ### Context and Genesis Althusser's essays in "For Marx" collectively aim to define and assess Marxist philosophy, or dialectical materialism, emphasizing its theoretical reality and its right to existence, while also acknowledging its historical "lateness" in explicit theoretical elaboration compared to Marx's science of history (historical materialism). He notes that great philosophical revolutions are often preceded and "borne along" by significant scientific revolutions, requiring extensive theoretical labor and historical maturation to achieve an explicit and adequate form. Althusser later reflected that his initial silence on certain questions, such as the organic relation between philosophy as a theoretical discipline and politics, led to "theoreticist" readings of his essays. He recognized that he had not sufficiently distinguished philosophy from science, particularly regarding what constitutes "philosophy proper" for Marxism, which, unlike earlier philosophies, has a non-pragmatic organic relation to politics. ### Central Arguments and Core Concepts 1. **The "Line of Demarcation"**: A central theme is the critical separation of true Marxist theory from ideological distortions. Althusser views the "inflation" of themes like "Marxist humanism" as an ideological phenomenon that, despite being an objective social reality where class conflicts unfold, poses a theoretical threat to scientific knowledge [Althusser's conception of Theoretical Conjuncture]. He argues that such ideological concepts, like "humanism," do not provide a means of knowing social relations, unlike scientific concepts such as "socialism" [Althusser's conception of Theoretical Conjuncture, 140, 144]. Relying on ideology instead of sufficient theory risks substituting a "feeling" of theory for genuine scientific knowledge. 2. **Critique of the Young Marx and the Epistemological Break**: - **Marx's Evolution**: A significant portion of "For Marx" critically examines Marx's early works (the "Young Marx"). Althusser argues for an unequivocal "epistemological break" in Marx's thought, which he locates around 1845, specifically with _The German Ideology_. The _Theses on Feuerbach_ are seen as marking the earlier boundary of this break, where a new theoretical consciousness begins to emerge through ambiguous concepts in his former language. - **Hegel and Feuerbach**: Althusser contends that the Young Marx was never strictly a Hegelian (except in the _1844 Manuscripts_, which he sees as a unique attempt to "invert" Hegelian idealism into Feuerbach's pseudo-materialism). Instead, Marx progressed from a Kantian-Fichtean problematic to a Feuerbachian one, moving _further_ from Hegel for most of his youth. The _1844 Manuscripts_ represent Marx's "sudden and total last return to Hegel" as an "explosive experiment" and a rigorous test of "inversion" that was crucial for his transformation. - **Feuerbach's Influence**: Marx's early works (1842-1845), including _On the Jewish Question_ and _Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of the State_, are deeply "impregnated" with Feuerbach's thought and basic philosophical problematic, encompassing terminology like "alienation," "species being," and "inversion of subject and predicate". Marx "espoused" Feuerbach's problematic for a few years, deeply identifying with it. The "rupture" with Feuerbach signified Marx's adoption of a "new problematic," which, like Themistocles basing Athens' future on the sea instead of land, involved basing his theory on "a new element". Understanding this break with Feuerbach is an "irreplaceable means of access" to Marx's later philosophical position. - **"Inverting Hegel"**: Althusser scrutinizes Marx's famous statement about "inverting Hegel" (from _Capital_), arguing it is more a "gestural" or "metaphorical" expression rather than a straightforward description of a theoretical operation. He rejects the idea that the Hegelian dialectic could be simply extracted as a "rational kernel" from its "mystical shell" (speculative philosophy). Instead, the "mystical shell" is seen as the "mystified form" of the dialectic itself, requiring a "demystification" that transforms its structures. For Althusser, the Marxist dialectic has distinct structures (e.g., in negation, identity of opposites, contradiction) different from Hegel's, and these structural differences are vital for Marxism to define and demonstrate. Marx never completed a dedicated "Dialectics" text, indicating that for him, the theory of his own theoretical practice was not essential for the development of his theory at the time. 3. **Redefining Philosophy and Theory**: - **Theory (capital 'T')**: Althusser proposes the term "Theory" (with a capital T) to designate Marxist "philosophy" (dialectical materialism), reserving "philosophy" (lowercase) for "ideological" philosophies. This "General Theory" is conceived as the "Theory of practice in general," developed from existing scientific theoretical practices to transform ideological products into scientific truths [Althusser's conception of Theoretical Conjuncture]. - **Theoretical Practice**: He distinguishes various forms of social practice: productive, political, ideological, and theoretical. Theoretical practice is a specific form that transforms "raw material" (representations, concepts, facts from other practices) into "determinate products" (knowledges) through the "labor of transformation," with existing 'theory' and method as the determinant elements [Althusser's conception of Theoretical Conjuncture, 122]. This process moves from the abstract to produce concrete knowledge [Althusser's conception of Theoretical Conjuncture]. - **Critique of "Hyper-rationalism" and Empiricism**: Althusser critiques Marxists who succumbed to "economistic" or "vulgar Marxist" interpretations, reducing culture to economics. He argues against the "analytic-teleological" reading of Marx's development, which decomposes his thought into "materialist" and "idealist" elements and implicitly assumes a Hegelian "in-itself" developing towards a predetermined end. This approach, in his view, destroys the "effective living unity of a text" and prevents a comprehensive understanding of its overall meaning. 4. **The Materialist Dialectic and Overdetermination**: - **Specificity of Contradiction**: Althusser emphasizes the specificity of the Marxist dialectic, particularly its concept of "overdetermination". Overdetermination refers to the complex and uneven development of contradictions within a social formation, where multiple, unevenly determined structures intervene not secondarily, but primordially. This differs from a "pure and simple" non-overdetermined contradiction. - **Structure and Superstructure**: This concept is linked to Marx's understanding of society as a structured whole with distinct "levels" or "instances": the economic base (infrastructure) and the superstructure (politico-legal and ideological). While the base determines the whole "in the last instance," the superstructure possesses relative autonomy and reciprocal action on the base. Althusser argues that the theory of the "specific effectivity" of superstructures needs further elaboration to fully understand overdetermination. He criticizes simplistic models that reduce the cultural to the economic or propose an "expressive causality" where a hidden essence (e.g., the Economy or a _Zeitgeist_) is assumed to determine all surface phenomena, creating a "factitious" unity. For Althusser, ideology is not just distortion but an "indispensable medium for the production of human subjects," involving material practices embedded in institutions, not merely "ideas". 5. **Theoretical Anti-Humanism**: - Althusser advocates for "Marx's theoretical anti-humanism" as an "absolute (negative) precondition" for the scientific knowledge and practical transformation of the human world. He argues that the philosophical myth of man must be "reduced to ashes" to truly know anything about human beings. - He views humanism as an "ideology" that, while serving a practical function (e.g., as a political slogan), lacks theoretical value. Humanism's reliance on a universal essence of man, an attribute of "each single individual," presupposes an empiricist-idealist worldview (empiricism of the subject, idealism of the essence) which Marx's breakthrough superseded. Marx, according to Althusser, never believed that knowledge of an object (like money as a social relation) could destroy its "appearance" as a thing, or that an ideology could be dissipated by knowledge alone, as ideologies have a "conditional necessity" within a given society. Even a communist society cannot do without ideology. ### Methodological Approach Althusser insists on the necessity of a rigorous method for reading Marx, emphasizing that an immediate reading can be deceived by the false transparency of his youthful ideological conceptions or by seemingly familiar concepts in his transitional works. He asserts that a "complete prior critique is indispensable" to identify Marx's real concepts of maturity and their location within his theoretical system. This critical effort requires activating provisional Marxist theoretical concepts concerning the nature and history of theoretical formations, effectively applying Marxist theory to Marx himself. The aim is to distinguish scientific theory from ideology and to understand discontinuities (like the epistemological break) within historical continuity. Althusser's work, particularly "For Marx," significantly influenced the Marxist renewal in cultural studies, aiming to provide Marx with a "structuralist" reinterpretation to enable contemporary Marxism to engage with other powerful European intellectual movements. His work is characterized by an insistence on theoretical rigor and a polemical engagement with perceived deviations from Marxist orthodoxy, seeking to define and strengthen the scientific foundations of historical materialism.