Letter to Macciocchi about May from 1968

Abstract

The letter whose Brazilian translation we present here, translated from the original Italian, was published in May 1969 by Maria Antonietta Macciocchi in the book Lettere dall’Interno del P.C.I. to Louis Althusser – Il partito, le masse e le forze rivoluzionarie nella dense correspondenza fra una militante communiste e il filosofo francese [Letters from within the PCI to Louis Althusser – the party, the masses and the revolutionary forces in the dense correspondence between a communist militant and the French philosopher]. Placed at the end of the book and dated March 15, 1969, Althusser's letter sets out the fundamental points of the analysis of the events of May 1968 and the major questions they raise. The epistolary genre suits an analysis outline, highlighting essential aspects for its execution. Althusser outlines them in a Spinozian style, stating two facts, a thesis and a hypothesis, preceded by the definition of these three analytical categories (“By fact/hypothesis/thesis I will understand [...]”) with the discrimination of their contents aiming at an exposition pedagogical, in which “what dominates the situation in the interpretation of the events of May” comes first.