Together with Louis Althusser's book For Marx, Reading Capital represents one of the foundational texts of the school of "structuralist Marxism" which transformed the face of modern philosophy and social theory. Presided over by the magnetic and intellectually coruscating figure of Althusser, the structuralist Marxists attempted no less than an intellectual revolution against dominant interpretations of Marx. Seeking to cleanse Marx of all Hegelian impurities and recast his thought on a rigorously scientific basis, in this work Althusser and one of his most brilliant students and colleagues, Etienne Balibar, subjected Marx's method in Capital, his critique of classical political economy, and the fundamental terms of historical materialism, to searching textual analysis and challenging conceptual reconstruction. Inaugurating a new way of reading Marx that was to prove both intensely stimulating and capable of generating fierce controversy, Reading Capital is a work that cannot be bypassed by anyone interested in Marxism, and in theory more generally, in this century.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
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One reads his passionate study with attention, even with excitement. -- Eric Hobsbawm, Times Literary Supplement
Language Notes
Text: English, French (translation)
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Althusser's masterpiece,
By
This review is from: Reading Capital (The Verso Classics Series) (Paperback)
It's almost impossible to understand Marx's specific theoretical and methodological positions 150 years after. Not because they're exceptionally difficult, rather that they've been obfuscated by generations of pro- and anti- ideologues. Althusser's project is to reconstruct Marx's theoretical practices at a very high level of rigor, clarifying, for example, the specific differences between Hegel's understanding of "dialectics" and Marx's. In doing so he produces a series of new concepts: "structure in dominance", "overdetermination", "problematic", "epistemological break", "combinatory" and others. While none of these *terms* is present in Marx's writing, the things they refer to definitely are. In turn, this labor makes it possible to clearly understand the theoretical differences between Marx's early works and his mature ones; that is, between his "Feuerbachian" youth and his Marxist maturity. This is a difficult work, but a profoundly rewarding one for those interested in what it is that makes Marx Marx.
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Spirit, Not The Text,
By Nin Chan "Nin Chan" (Toronto, ON, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Reading Capital (Radical Thinkers) (Paperback)
Louis Althusser/ Etienne Balibar- Reading Capital
This, alongside his momentous For Marx, has always been my favorite text from Althusser. It is so rigorous, so precise and so keen that one is often astonished by the attention devoted to seemingly trivial minutiae. Yet these subtleties make all the difference when reading Marx, and Althusser makes one feel like a bit of an idiot for being so careless in one's reading habits. What makes this text so stunning is the fact that it never veers into pedantry, despite its stringent meticulousness. Hobsbawm remarks on the back cover that "one reads him with excitement", and I would have to concur- if you have struggled through Das Kapital as many times as I have, marveling at its stirring lyricism and Promethean poetry, it is likely that you have missed the `epistemological break' that distinguishes it from its Western heritage. The understated elegance of Althusser's exposition contrasts with the impact that it registers upon even the most seasoned readers of Marx. In classically French style, the iconoclastic force of its content is dissimulated by its sober, clinical language. Of course, the weaknesses of Althusserian Marxism have been revealed by luminaries like Badiou (in his earliest essays, in the Theory of the Subject and in Metapolitics), Laclau/Mouffe and Zizek (Sublime Object of Ideology). Laclau and Mouffe are, perhaps, right in saying that Althusser is incapable of taking his leave of economistic idealism altogether, holding as he does to his hypothesis of `economic in the last instance'. This lacuna prevents Althusser from elaborating a truly materialist dialectic (yet is it really the case that the Marxist fixation on 'political economy' should be dismissed as a retrograde essentialism? Read Zizek's fiery defense of Althusser in his 'In Defense Of Lost Causes'). Still, the innovations of these thinkers would be unthinkable without Althusser- he transposed the study of Marx onto a different ground, `changing elements' and devising a new problematic for philosophical practice. To get a tentative grasp on Althusser, I would suggest that you read, as preliminary preparation, the entirety of For Marx, especially his discussions on overdetermined contradiction and the Marxist dialectic. Badiou's typology of situations, which attempts to break with every sort of naturalism and metaphysics altogether (even the Spinozist vitalism of Deleuze), would be altogether unthinkable without Althusser's retrieval of Mao and Lenin. Althusser's greatest contribution to Marxism, I think was his concerted, unflinching effort to purge it of every trace of idealism and historicism. More importantly, he tried to develop a consummately materialist dialectic, one that would require unsparing scientific effort and analysis on the part of militant intellectuals. We may not agree with Althusser's conclusions, but we cannot help but thank him for his conscientiousness. Oh, Balibar's section is brilliant too, and of great import for sociology in particular. However, I wanted to dedicate this review to Louis Althusser, one of the great thinkers of the 20th Century.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Typographical errors make this edition unusable,
By Vidar Thorsteinsson (Reykjavik, Iceland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Reading Capital (Radical Thinkers) (Paperback)
The Verso 2009 version of this book (the "Radical Thinkers" paperback) is teeming with typographical errors. It seems like the manuscript has been prepared by use of an OCR machine reading of the older 1970/1997 edition. The machine, as is to be expected, has made various mistakes. These have largely not been corrected by Verso's editor. This is incredibly sloppy work on the publisher's behalf and makes for a very serious shortcoming of this book. Some of the errors are relatively harmless, but others create ambiguities (e.g. missing quotation marks). For this reason, I would not recommend using this edition of the book as a reference or for serious study purposes.
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