Elements of Self-Criticism

This small booklet contains two previously unpublished essays. The first of these is dated June 1972, and this text was supposed to be included with the self-criticism elements that were widely scattered in the Reply to John Lewis and, as it will be remembered, were limited only to the correction of the definition of philosophy. But I had to give up writing these, in order not to exceed the limits of a simple magazine article and, on the other hand, not to disrupt the unity and integrity of that text published in French...

Two years after the publication of my works For Marx and Reading Capital, we will find in this essay for the first time a critical analysis of these two works, which I stated in the preface of the Italian edition of Reading Capital as being influenced by a "theoreticist tendency".

In addition to these Elements of Self-Criticism, I thought it appropriate to include an essay written at an earlier date (July 1970) on the evolution of the young Marx and showing in which direction I was heading.

-Louis Althusser

(From the Book)

"The mediation within the conditions of the emergence of historical science is not a deep-knowledge mediation. On the contrary, this mediation calls us to actuality. Because what was expected from Marx in the past is required from us today more than ever. 'Developing' Marxist theory, that is, capitalist-imperialist exploitation and In order to analyze new forms of domination, to establish a proper unity between the workers' movement and theory, we need to take a stand on proletarian theoretical positions more than ever. This means developing and developing these theoretical positions starting from the proletarian political stance, by making a radical critique of all the ideologies of the ruling class. means."

(Back cover)