“Marxism is not historicism”: successes and limits of an Althusserian thesis

Abstract

“Marxism is not a historicism”, wrote L. Althusser in the in the 1960s. Even though this article is not exclusively focused on the French philosopher, we bring up his statement, and from it, create a double movement. In the first place, we will discuss the
shortcomings of a purely historical approach to understand contemporary capitalist society. However, soon after, we will contend that the pure theoretical demotion of a historical analysis does not do justice to the complexity of Marxist thought. In short, our goal is to render more transparent the peculiar relationship between systematic structures, and the living history of men, a complex relationship, which does not allow one to dismiss the importance of any of the constituent elements. To this end, it will be necessary to return to some crucial aspects of Marx himself, that in our understanding can still be further
developed.