Louis Pierre Althusser (16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990)

Louis Pierre Althusser (16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy.

Althusser was a longtime member—although sometimes a strong critic—of the French Communist Party. His arguments and theses were set against the threats that he saw attacking the theoretical foundations of Marxism. These included both the influence of empiricism on Marxist theory, and humanist and reformist socialist orientations which manifested as divisions in the European communist parties, as well as the problem of the "cult of personality" and of ideology.

Althusser is commonly referred to as a structural Marxist, although his relationship to other schools of French structuralism is not a simple affiliation and he was critical of many aspects of structuralism.

Althusser's life was marked by periods of intense mental illness. In 1980, he killed his wife by strangling her. He was declared unfit to stand trial due to insanity, and was committed to a psychiatric hospital for three years. He did little further academic work, dying in 1990.

With the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956, Nikita Khrushchev began the process of "de-Stalinisation". For many Marxists — including the PCF's leading theoretician Roger Garaudy and the pre-eminent existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre — this meant the recovery of the humanistroots of Marx's thought, and the opening of a dialogue between Marxists and moderate socialists, existentialists, and Christians.Althusser, however, opposed this trend, proffering a "theoretical anti-humanism" and sympathising with the criticisms made by theCommunist Party of China, albeit cautiously. He was careful not to identify with Maoism. His stance during this period earned him notoriety within the PCF, and he was attacked by its secretary-general Waldeck Rochet. As a philosopher he was treading another path, which would later lead him to "aleatory materialism"; however, this did not stop him from defending Marxist orthodox thought in relation to his own position and work, such as in his 1973 reply to John Lewis.

Despite the involvement of many of his students in the events of May 1968, Althusser initially greeted these developments with silence.He was later to express an opinion similar to the official PCF line, describing the students as victim to "infantile" leftism. As a result, Althusser was attacked by many former supporters. In response to these criticisms, he revised some of his positions, claiming that his earlier writings contained mistakes, and a significant shift in emphasis was seen in his later works.