Reading Capital (Radical Thinkers). This item is unavailable.Reading Capital (Radical Thinkers)

Establishing a rigorous program of “symptomatic reading” that cuts through the silences and lacunae of Capital to reveal its philosophical core, Louis Althusser interprets Marx’s structural analysis of production as a revolutionary break—the basis of a completely new science. Building on a series of Althussers’s conceptual innovations that includes “overdetermination” and “social formation,” Étienne Balibar explores the historical and structural facets of production as Marx understood them, scrutinizing many of the most fundamental points in Capital, as though for the first time.

Louis Althusser taught political philosophy for many years at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, and was a leading intellectual in the French Communist Party. Many major figures studied with him, including Derrida and Foucault, and his work marked a new beginning for post-war political philosophy. His books include Reading Capital (with Etienne Balibar), For Marx, Machiavelli and Us and The Humanist Controversy and Other Writings. Etienne Balibar is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris-X. He is the author of Reading Capital (with Louis Althusser), Race Nation Class (with Immanuel Wallerstein), Spinoza and Politics, Masses Classes and Ideas and Politics and the Other Scene.