Editing Louis Althusser (section)

==Reception and influence==
While Althusser's writings were born of an intervention against reformist and ecumenical tendencies within Marxist theory,<ref name=Soper>{{cite book |last=Soper |first=Kate|author-link=Kate Soper |date=1986 |title=Humanism and Anti-Humanism |location=London |publisher=Hutchinson |page=88 |isbn=0-09-162-931-4}}</ref> the eclecticism of his influences reflected a move away from the intellectual isolation of the [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin era]]. He drew as much from pre-Marxist systems of thought and contemporary schools such as structuralism, philosophy of science and psychoanalysis as he did from thinkers in the Marxist tradition. Furthermore, his thought was symptomatic of Marxism's growing academic respectability, and of a push towards emphasizing Marx's legacy as a [[philosopher]] rather than only as an [[economist]] or [[sociologist]]. [[Tony Judt]] saw this as a criticism of Althusser's work, saying he removed Marxism "altogether from the realm of history, politics and experience, and thereby ... render[ed] it invulnerable to any criticism of the empirical sort."<ref>New Republic, V. 210, 03-07-1994, p. 33.</ref>

Althusser has had broad influence in the areas of Marxist philosophy and [[post-structuralism]]: interpellation has been popularized and adapted by the [[feminist]] philosopher and critic [[Judith Butler]], and elaborated further by [[Göran Therborn]]; the concept of ideological state apparatuses has been of interest to [[Slovenia]]n philosopher [[Slavoj Žižek]]; the attempt to view history as a process without a subject garnered sympathy from [[Jacques Derrida]]; historical materialism was defended as a coherent doctrine from the standpoint of [[analytic philosophy]] by [[G.&nbsp;A. Cohen]];<ref>Cohen, G.&nbsp;A., ''Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence'', x. Oxford University Press, 1978. {{ISBN|0-19-827196-4}}. Cohen claims that Althusser's work is an inadequately vague defence of Marx's theory.</ref> the interest in [[structure and agency]] sparked by Althusser was to play a role in sociologist [[Anthony Giddens]]'s [[theory of structuration#Althusser|theory of structuration]].

Althusser's influence is also seen in the work of economists [[Richard D. Wolff]] and [[Stephen Resnick]], who have interpreted that Marx's mature works hold a conception of class different from the normally understood ones. For them, in Marx class refers not to a group of people (for example, those that own the means of production versus those that do not), but to a process involving the production, appropriation, and distribution of surplus labour. Their emphasis on class as a process is consistent with their reading and use of Althusser's concept of overdetermination in terms of understanding agents and objects as the site of multiple determinations.

Althusser's work has also been criticized from a number of angles. In a 1971 paper for ''[[Socialist Register]]'', Polish philosopher [[Leszek Kołakowski]]<ref>Kolakowski, Leszek (1971), "[http://www.socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5334/2235 Althusser's Marx]". ''Socialist Register'' 1971, pp. 111–28.</ref> undertook a detailed critique of structural Marxism, arguing that the concept was seriously flawed on three main points:

{{blockquote|I will argue that the whole of Althusser's theory is made up of the following elements: 1. common sense banalities expressed with the help of unnecessarily complicated [[neologisms]]; 2. traditional Marxist concepts that are vague and ambiguous in Marx himself (or in Engels) and which remain, after Althusser's explanation, exactly as vague and ambiguous as they were before; 3. some striking historical inexactitudes.}}

Kołakowski further argued that, despite Althusser's 'verbal claims to "scientificity"', is ''himself'' <!--structural Marxism was [[unfalsifiable]] and thus unscientific, and was best understood as a quasi-religious [[ideology]]{{verification failed}} --> "building a gratuitous ideological project". In 1980, sociologist Axel van den Berg<ref>Berg, Axel van den (1980). "Critical Theory: Is There Still Hope?" ''The American Journal of Sociology'', Vol. 86 No. 3 (Nov 1980), pp. 449–78.</ref> described Kołakowski's critique as "devastating", proving that "Althusser retains the orthodox radical rhetoric by simply severing all connections with verifiable facts".

G.&nbsp;A. Cohen, in his essay 'Complete Bullshit', has cited the 'Althusserian school' as an example of 'bullshit' and a factor in his co-founding the '[[Non-Bullshit Marxism Group]]'.<ref>Cohen, G.&nbsp;A. 'Complete Bullshit', pp. 94–5 in his ''Finding Oneself in the Other'' (ed. [[Michael Otsuka]]) (2013) Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.</ref> He says that 'the ideas that the Althusserians generated, for example, of the interpellation of the subject, or of contradiction and overdetermination, possessed a surface allure, but it often seemed impossible to determine whether or not the theses in which those ideas figured were true, and, at other times, those theses seemed capable of just two interpretations: on one of them they were true but uninteresting, and, on the other, they were interesting, but quite obviously false'.<ref>Cohen, G.&nbsp;A. 'Complete Bullshit', pp. 95 in his ''Finding Oneself in the Other'' (ed. [[Michael Otsuka]]) (2013) Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.</ref>

Althusser was vehemently attacked by British Marxist historian [[E. P. Thompson]] in his book ''The Poverty of Theory''.<ref name=Thompson1>Thompson, E. P., (1978) "The Poverty of Theory" in ''The Poverty of Theory & other essays'', pp. 193–397. Merlin, 1978. {{ISBN|0-85036-231-8}}</ref><ref name=Anderson2>{{cite book |last=Anderson |first=Perry |author-link=Perry Anderson |year=1980 |title=Arguments Within English Marxism |location=London |publisher=New Left Books and Verso | isbn=0-86091-727-4 |pages=103–4}}</ref> Thompson claimed that Althusserianism was Stalinism reduced to the paradigm of a theory.<ref name=Thompson2>Thompson, E. P., (1978) "The Poverty of Theory" in ''The Poverty of Theory & other essays'', p. 374. Merlin, 1978. {{ISBN|0-85036-231-8}}</ref> Where the Soviet doctrines that existed during the lifetime of the dictator lacked systematisation, Althusser's theory gave Stalinism "its true, rigorous and totally coherent expression".<ref name=Thompson3>Thompson, E. P., (1978) "The Poverty of Theory" in ''The Poverty of Theory & other essays'', p. 333. Merlin, 1978. {{ISBN|0-85036-231-8}}</ref> As such, Thompson called for "unrelenting intellectual war" against the Marxism of Althusser.<ref name=Thompson4>Thompson, E. P., (1978) "The Poverty of Theory" in ''The Poverty of Theory & other essays'', p. 381. Merlin, 1978. {{ISBN|0-85036-231-8}}</ref>