Althusser and Marxist Theory (1975): A document

The year 1975 – five years before the arrival of Thesis Eleven. Ten years after the first, French appearance of Reading Capital. Three years after the appearance of the Australian revolutionary Marxist journal Intervention. Althusser was a big deal for the English-speaking left. We all read Althusser, at least in our innocence. Althusser was an effective absence from the history of Thesis Eleven. Our people were drinking elsewhere. Maybe the timing was fortunate. Alastair Davidson, our mentor, had essayed Althusser in detail in the pages of Arena in 1969, and became his friend later in life. But he also taught us that structuralism was a language to be learned, more than a practice to be preferred. It might change the way intellectuals think, but you were not obliged to join the tribe. Theories were like languages. What was the fuss about? Some of the issues arising can be detected in perusing the text that follows. It represents Macintyre and Tribe’s intervention in the culture of the university and the party. What was the fuss about Althusser? In retrospect, it is difficult to tell, though it now seems clear that the Althusserian adventure helped provide the younger hotheads with a new vocabulary for revolution. Althusser carried a formidable theoretical apparatus. Social formation, mode of production, overdetermination, symptomatic reading, problematique and so on. Take that!