Presentation of Louis Althusser's conversation with Waldeck Rochet

Abstract

In the work Elements of self-criticism, completed in June 1972 and originally published in French in 1974, Althusser writes a dedication to the then general secretary of the French Communist Party (PCF): “To Waldeck Rochet, who admired Spinoza and about whom I am he had spoken at length on a day in June 1966”.1 This conversation took place three months after the Central Committee of the PCF met in Argenteuil (a suburb in the northeast of the Paris region) and approved a resolution that characterized Marxism as humanism, expressing, thus, I support the theses defended by Louis Aragon and Roger Garaudy and contradict the criticisms of theoretical humanism formulated by Althusser and his group.