A Necessary but Impossible Political Practice

Althusser between Machiavelli and Marx

Bibliographic Data

ID12673949
AuthorsFabio Bruschi (Institut supérieur de philosophie, UCLouvain, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume28
Issue1
Pages85-113
Publication date2019-06-11
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistorical Materialism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-4466 • E-ISSN: 1569-206X
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/1569206x-00001721
OpenAlexW2794694444
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited15

Althusser’s Machiavelli and Us has often been considered as the French Marxist’s first step on the path beyond Marxism. This article opposes this interpretation by showing that, while Machiavelli helps Althusser to renounce any attempt to deduce a communist political practice from the necessity portrayed by a theory of history, Althusser was mindful not to identify the relationship between the communist party and the masses with the relationship between the Prince and the people. From a Marxist perspective, a communist political practice must further the autonomous political initiatives of the masses that delineate a tendency towards the withering-away of the state and cannot merge with a practice of governing the people. This is why Marxism must not forsake its theory of history but employ it in the process of the subtraction of the party to its becoming-state by detecting the conditions of impossibility of the duration of a communist political practice

Communism · Epistemology · Impossibility · Interpretation (philosophy · Marxist philosophy · Merge (version control · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Law · Marxism and Critical Theory · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Political theory and Gramsci

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