Louis Althusser - Reading Capital: the complete edition

The collective work Lire le Capital, which is given here in a new edition, has been out of print and unobtainable for several years. Yet it continues to serve as a marker and reference in debates and research over the interpretation of Marxs thought (even beyond the different currents of Marxism), whether the object and status of epistemology (caught between internalist and externalist models), or questions of political philosophy and theory of history raised by the critique of the category of subject, for which the notion of structuralism at one time served as a signal, despite uncertainties that will be mentioned below.

These three theoretical contexts were typical of the intellectual movement of the 1960s, the effects of which are still being felt today. Lire le Capital is particularly representative of this conjunction. It is situated in fact at the point of encounter (and mutual tension) of various projects that will be found constantly intertwined in the following texts, each of its authors seeking to bring to these their own illumination and particular emphasis. The first of these is the critical re-reading of Marxs scientific work and the mobilization of his concepts across the field of the human sciences. The second is the recasting of the categories and figures of dialectics, in the light of the idea of structural causality. This in its turn is inseparable from a reflection on the scope of the concepts of Freudian psychoanalysis, beyond the strict boundaries of the clinic, and a philosophical attempt to substitute for any theory of knowledge (that is, of its foundation or criteria) a problematic of the symptomatic reading of texts, theoretical practice, and the material production of knowledge effects. The final project, which at least subjectively dominated all the others, was the quest for a Communist politics of Spinozist inspiration (or, as Althusser also formulated it at this time, theoretically anti-humanist), which would conceive this as the necessary becoming of freedom rather than the emergence from the realm of necessity (in the celebrated Hegelian formula employed by Marx in Volume Three of Capital and taken up by Engels in Anti-Dhring).

For all these reasons, and without ever ceasing to arouse discussion and even argument, Lire le Capital ended up becoming for many people a kind of classic, both in France and abroad. Yet it was originally just the transcription of a seminar held at the cole Normale Suprieure under the direction of Louis Althusser, who exercised at the time the functions of an agrg rptiteur and secretary of the Lettres section. We shall briefly recall here these circumstances before giving the necessary indications on the production of the present edition and what distinguishes it from its predecessors.

The seminar from which Lire le Capital emerged was situated in the context of the activities of research training organized at the ENS on the proposal of teachers or the request of students (and most often after consultation between them). In principle, these activities were designed for students in a particular section (in this case, the Philosophy section), but they could also be open to those of other sections (Science, Literature), and to a greater or smaller number of listeners and participants from outside the establishment. The seminars organized by Althusser in the previous years were respectively devoted to The Young Marx (19612), The Origins of Structuralism (19623), Lacan and Psychoanalysis (19634). That of 19645, devoted to the collective reading of Marxs Capital and the demonstration of its general philosophical importance, constituted a kind of recapitulation and reinvestment of the previous results.

The continuity of this work was ensured by the implicit or explicit (but not exclusive) reference to Althussers early theoretical essays (later published in Pour Marx, 1965, and Positions, 1976), Robert Linhart, who had returned from a study trip to Algeria, was also associated with the preparatory discussions. Pierre Macherey, who had already left the cole, returned to take part in these sessions. Roger Establet, also a former philosophy student, subsequently wrote a contribution that served as a conclusion to the volume.