The publication of For Marx and Reading Capital established Louis Althusser as one of the most controversial figures in the Western Marxist tradition, and one of the most influential renewals of Marxist thought. Collected here are Althusser§s most significant philosophical writings from the late sixties and through the seventies. 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."--Publisher description.

Louis Althusser was born in Algeria in 1918 and died in France in 1990. He taught Philosophy for many years at the Ecole Normale Superieur in Paris, and was a leading intellectual in the French Communist Party.