Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists

Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists: And Other Essays

The publication in 1965 of For Marx and Reading Capital established Louis Althusser as one of the most original and controversial figures in the Western Marxist tradition; a thinker whose renewal of Marxism was to enjoy great influence over the next decade.
Collected here are Althusser’s most significant philosophical writings from 1965 to 1978; the majority previously untranslated. Intended to contribute, in his own words, to a “left-wing critique of Stalinism that would help put some substance back into the revolutionary project here in the West,” they are the record of a shared history. At the same time they chart Althusser’s critique of the theoretical system unveiled in his own major works, and his developing practice of philosophy as a “revolutionary weapon.”
The collection opens with two lucid early articles “Theory, Theoretical Practice and Theoretical Formation” and “On Theoretical Work.” The title piece Althusser’s celebrated lectures in the “Philosophy Course for Scientists” is the fullest exploration of his new definition of philosophy as politics in the realm of theory; a conception which is further developed in “Lenin and Philosophy.” “Is it Simple to be a Marxist in Philosophy?” provides an invaluable account of Althusser’s intellectual development. The volume concludes with two little-known late pieces “The Transformation of Philosophy,” in which the paradoxical history of Marxist philosophy is investigated; and “Marxism Today,” a sober balance-sheet of the Marxist tradition.
Attesting to the unique place which Althusser has occupied in modern intellectual history between a tradition of Marxism which he sought to reconstruct, and a “post-Marxism” which has eclipsed its predecessor these texts are indispensable reading.
"A famous title of Engels's underscores the essential distinction between Marxism and previous socialist doctrines: before Marx, socialist doctrines were merely utopian ; Marx's doctrine is scientific. What is a utopian socialist doctrine? It is a doctrine which proposes socialist goals for human action, yet which is based on non-scientific principles, deriving from religious, moral or juridical, i.e. ideological, principles. The ideological nature of its theoretical foundation is decisive, because it affects how any socialist doctrine conceives of not only the ends of socialism, but also the means of action required to realize these ends. Thus, utopian socialist doctrine defines the ends of socialism - the socialist society of the future - by moral and juridical categories; it speaks of the reign of equality and the brotherhood of man; and it translates these moral and legal principles into utopian - that is, ideological, ideal and imaginary - economic principles as well: for example, the complete sharing-out of the products of labour among the workers, economic egalitarianism, the negation of all economic law, the immediate disappearance of the State, etc. In the same manner it defines utopian, ideological and imaginary economic and political means as the appropriate means to realize socialism: in the economic domain, the workers' co-operatives of Owen, the phalanstery of Fourier's disciples, Proudhon's people's bank; in the political domain, moral education and reform - if not the Head of State's conversion to socialism. In constructing an ideological representation of the ends as well as the means of socialism"