Althusser and the End of Leninism

Louis Althusser was not only a key intellectual for the French Left in the 1960s and 70s, his influence and reputation extended beyond the boundaries of his own country and have left a lasting mark. In the current climate of collapse of Marxist ideas, Althusser has paradoxically become a cuase celebre once again. Not, however, because of the perceived value of his ideas, but because of his own and others' revelations of his psychological problems. This book offers a re-evaluation of the significance of key aspects of Louis Althusser's thought: his overt espousal of Leninism during the two decades up the the end of the 1970s. Althusser attempted to rehabilitate Lenin as an academically respectable philosopher, rather than as a politician. His neglect of Lenin's contribution to political theory is also assessed and an assessment of Althusser's shift away from Leninism at the end of the seventies concludes the study.