Ebook: One Dimensional Marxism: Althusser and the Politics of Culture

One-Dimensional Marxism is a much-needed examination of the influence of the French philosopher Louis Althusser on the
English-speaking Left, especially in the cultural field where it has been strongest.

The four essays in this book all had their origins as papers at the conference of the British Sociological Association. Simon Clarke's close interrogation of the main texts of "Althusserian Marxism", published here for the first time, has already been the inspiration for several other critiques. Victor Jeleniewski Seidler challenges Althusser's silence on precisely those issues which surfaced during his theoretical reign: sexual politics and the "critique of everyday life". Kevin McDonnell and Kevin Robins investigate, as a case study, Althusser's influence on the cultural politics of Left journals and Screen in particular. Finally Terry Lovell argues, with reference to the key Althusserian texts, that the crucial absence in his marxism is the notion of the social relations of cultural production.

Altogether the book forms an indispensable set of essays for everyone concerned with marxism as it is lived and argued in
the 1980s.