Louis Althusser: Structural Marxism
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The Break with Humanism
We have already encountered Louis Althusser (1918-1990) as a Marxist philosopher in Chapter 11.2: his “epistemological break” between the young and the mature Marx, his critique of humanism, his formula “history is a process without a subject.” Here we address a different aspect: Althusser as a structuralist – as a thinker who applies Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, and Lacan to social theory. He transferred the structuralist method to Marxism – and thereby provoked one of the fiercest debates in postwar French philosophy.[1] His major works Pour Marx (1965) and Lire le Capital (1965, with Balibar, Rancière, and others) became bibles for an entire generation of leftist intellectuals.
Althusser’s central thesis was the “epistemological break” in Marx’s work: the early Marx (up to about 1845) was a humanist – he spoke of alienation, of species-being, of human self-realization. The late Marx (from The German Ideology and Capital onward) broke with this humanism – he analyzed structures: relations of production, the commodity form, surplus value.
The consequence: “humanist Marxism” – Lukács, Sartre, the early Frankfurt School – appealed to the wrong Marx. It projected Hegelian categories (alienation, totality, subject) onto a thinker who had overcome them. The true Marx was a scientist, not a philosopher; a structuralist avant la lettre, not a humanist.[2]
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
Althusser’s most influential essay, “Idéologie et appareils idéologiques d’État” (1970), developed a structural theory of ideology.[3] The traditional Marxist view was that ideology is false consciousness – the rulers deceive the ruled to legitimize their power. Truth lies in the economic base; the ideological superstructure is mere appearance.
Althusser argued in more complex terms: ideology is not deception, but a lived relation to the world. It “interpellates” individuals as subjects – it hails them, addresses them, makes them what they are. If a police officer calls out “Hey, you there!” and I turn around, I am already constituted as a subject – as someone who can be hailed, who is responsible, who obeys or resists.[4]
The “ideological state apparatuses” – school, church, family, media – reproduce this constitution of the subject. They do not merely teach content (facts, values), but form the subjects capable of receiving this content. Before I learn anything, I must already be a “student” – someone who sits still, listens, obeys, takes exams. This formation is ideological, not in the sense of “false,” but of “constitutive.”
Overdetermination
Althusser’s most important concept was “overdetermination” (surdétermination) – borrowed from psychoanalysis.[5] The traditional Marxist view was that economics determines everything else – politics, law, culture are “superstructure,” determined by the “base.”
Althusser argued that it is not so simple. Every social phenomenon is determined multiply – by economics, yes, but also by politics, ideology, history, international relations. There is no “last instance” that explains everything. The totality is complex, contradictory, non-synchronous.
This sounds Hegelian – and it is. Althusser took from Hegel the idea of complex totality, of mediation, of internal contradictions. But he rejected Hegel’s teleology: there is no subject of history (neither Spirit nor the proletariat) developing toward freedom. History is a “process without a subject” – a movement of structures that no one steers.[6]
Althusser’s Critique of Hegel
Althusser’s explicit critique of Hegel was sharp: Hegel is the philosopher of “expressive totality” – the idea that all phenomena of an epoch are the expression of a single unifying principle. The World Spirit “expresses itself” in art, religion, politics, economics – everything is the appearance of the same essence.
Against this, Althusser holds: social totality is not expressive, but structured. The various “instances” – economy, politics, ideology – have relative autonomy. They develop at different speeds, follow different logics, stand in tension with one another. There is no “vision of essence” that reduces everything to a common denominator.[7]
The critique hits its mark – but it hits a particular Hegel, the Hegel of the philosophy of history, of “World Spirit” rhetoric. It overlooks the Hegel of the Logic, who analyzes precisely those mediations that Althusser demands. The irony: Althusser’s “structural causality” is closer to Hegel’s logic of essence than he himself was willing to admit.
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On Althusser, see the biography by William Lewis, Louis Althusser and the Traditions of French Marxism (Lanham, 2005). ↩︎
Louis Althusser, Pour Marx (Paris, 1965), esp. the essay “Marxisme et humanisme.” ↩︎
Louis Althusser, “Idéologie et appareils idéologiques d’État,” La Pensée 151 (1970). ↩︎
The famous “interpellation” scene in Althusser, “Idéologie,” p. 113f. ↩︎
Louis Althusser, “Contradiction et surdétermination,” in Pour Marx. ↩︎
Althusser, Pour Marx, p. 206: “L’histoire est un procès sans Sujet ni Fin(s).” ↩︎
Louis Althusser and Étienne Balibar, Lire le Capital (Paris, 1965), vol. 1, ch. 5. ↩︎