Reassessing the Legacy of Louis Althusser on His 100-Year Anniversary: An Interview with Warren Montag

Louis Althusser was one of the most disputed scholars in the Marxist tradition. Condemned as a revisionist by some, celebrated as a brilliant, innovative Marxist philosopher by others, his theoretical contributions still spur interest and controversy today, almost thirty years after his death.

Althusser vs. Althusser

Louis Althusser (1918-1990), the French philosopher born in Algeria, is one of the main intellectual figures of European Marxism in the post-World War II era. A member of the French Communist Party, and a supporter, in his own way, of Maoism, he is known as the main proponent of what was called the “structural Marxist” school of thought. Some of his concepts were incorporated into the social sciences. Two examples that are fairly well-known are the terms overdetermination and ideological state apparatuses.