Abstract

After 1977 Althusser’s thought took an important « turn » away front Marxism-Leninism. The posthumously published writings from his late period constitute an extremely rich theoretical resource for post-Marxist thought. In them one can find a decisive refutation of the errors of Marxism-Leninism, which Althusser believes have two roots: the denigration and misunderstanding of the autonomy of the political, on the one hand, and the reliance on a metaphysical construction of historical becoming, on the other. In order to find the proper horizon to understand the political in its autonomous, or constituent, dimension Althusser finds it necessary to return to Machiavelli. In order to escape the grip of modern philosophy of history, and its obsession with a subject of history, Althusser offers a sketch of a theory of history that gives priority to the dimension of the event, of the contingent encounter, which evacuates all substance and all subject from historical becoming. The necessity of politics and the contingency of history: these are the two requirements for recovering Marx « after Marxism »