Louis Althusser's Jewish Problem
Louis Althusser isn't a well-known figure to most people, but this isn't due to his lack of importance in the history of Marxism rather this is because he wrote comparatively little for possibly the most important Marxist thinker of the mid to late twentieth century. (1) Another reason that Althusser isn't particularly well-known outside of students and critics of Marxism is that he only wrote in French and his work is - with the best will in the world - very difficult to read even in the original French and tough-going even in the superb English translations of it that are available.
Indeed, so important was Althusser to Marxism globally that his fellow if rather heterodox Marxist intellectual Maurice Godelier (2) and fellow radical leftist philosopher Christine Buci-Glucksmann (3) could point to Althusser's thought as being a kind of touchstone of international Marxist thought. Indeed, though while Althusser was not always an original thinker: (4) he is always a challenging one as he asks his reader to - per his intensive reading of Marx and Machiavelli - to question all their assumptions and get back to the empirical core of any given issue.
Althusser was one of those rare butterflies among academic intellectuals who actually tried to practice what he preached and wasn't content to sit back and simply criticise everyone else. A particularly valuable volume of his correspondence on this issue are his letters written to the Italian Marxist journalist and politician Maria Antonietta Macciocchi. (5) Macciocchi was campaigning in the predominantly working-class Caserta district of Naples for election on the ticket of the PCI (the Italian Communist Party) and would explain the local and party situation to Althusser prompting him to then write back with guidance and encouragement from a neutral perspective.
Now Althusser is usually seen by anti-jewish academic intellectuals - as exemplified by Kevin MacDonald - (6) as being heavily influenced by Claude Levi-Strauss in his philosophic system of structuralism. This is of course quite true in that Althusser was well-disposed to Levi-Strauss' ideas as they were 'linked to hard science' (7) (a-la Althusser's own position in 'Pour Marx' about the need to base the philosophy on empirical fact not abstract speculation).
However it may also be reasonably pointed out that Levi-Strauss was not - as MacDonald would have it - the major source of Althusser's ideas (and hence the jewish influence on them) as another (non-jewish) philosopher that Althusser drew similar conclusions from was Giles Deleuze (8) and Lacan - who MacDonald rightly pointed out Althusser later lionized as a 'scientific return' to Freud and drew heavily on this thought - (9) benefited from this idea so central to Althusser's refocus on Marxism as a 'scientific' system of philosophy [i.e. based on solid empirical demonstration as opposed to pointless theorizing] (10) and the need to remove the over-focus on Engels' later interpretation of Marx's words (11) so that in Marxist terms a 'return to the material base' was needed.
Althusser was essentially looking for a solid foundation on which to base his philosophy having correctly perceived the intellectual absurdity of basing material actions and reactions on ideas developed independent of the material circumstances that gave rise to said actions and reactions. Althusser naturally found much talk - after his intellectual break with Catholicism - of this theoretical idea - although I would opine precious little of it in practice - in the then fashionable writings of an obscure, supercilious and difficult to read German jew named Karl Marx.
In doing so Althusser is in a sense giving us the intellectual key to his later infatuation with Lacan's 'return to Freud': (12) if we factor in the fact that Althusser's own mental instability (probably not helped by the electro-shock treatments he was administered) led him to literally navel gaze and focus his brilliant if erratic mind on issues surrounding psychology and how the mentally ill are received and understood in society. (13) Essentially Althusser was searching for a material foundation for his philosophy, and he believed he had found it in the twin (self-proclaimed) 'scientific truths' of Marxism and Freudism as interpreted as previously misunderstood and perverted scientific systems.
Understanding this we can reject MacDonald's rather two dimensional interpretation of Althusser's intellectual lineage and his association with jewish thinkers - although we should note that Althusser had long had an interest in the ideas of Spinoza (which MacDonald doesn't mention) which was more of the origin of his philosophical structuralism than Levi-Strauss - (14) as although it has some truth to it: it simply doesn't account for Althusser's own eclectic ideas and life.
The source of Althusser's interest in jewish ideas - as well as according to some Communism (although he denied it) - (15) was the jewish angle to his life that MacDonald et al have missed: his jewish wife (and fellow Communist) Helene Rytmann. (16) What is interesting about Helene as a person is that she hated her mother: who - in classic Freudian speak - had rejected and abused her because she wasn't a boy, and her mother wanted a boy so that she would be loved by her husband. So, Helene hated her mother, but loved her father leading to her having a violent temper and being highly emotive, manipulative and controlling. (17)
Indeed, we know that Helene was quite probably mentally-deranged herself as Althusser saw the same psychiatrist as Helene (18) and that she was a pathological and highly manipulative liar. (19) This is strengthened when we realise that Helene was herself a political radical who had professed ambitions - which she never seemed to have wanted to fulfil - of becoming a historian and who made herself so obnoxious to the French Communist Party that they tried to order Althusser to sever his relationship with her, because of her professed Trotskyite ideas and general disruptive influence on Althusser's work for the French Communist Party. (20)
We further know that Helene took literal control of Althusser's manuscripts: deleting whole passages, adding others and generally preventing Althusser from working out his own ideas himself. (21) We also know that Helene added to and edited Althusser's correspondence with others: for example, when she 'clarified' Althusser's ideas in letters for Macciocchi. (22) Friends of Althusser's were frequently concerned about the complete control she exerted over him (23) and further that she was 'impossible' to get along with (i.e., she wanted to control them or prevent them interfering with her dominance over Althusser). (24)
If we understand this and the necessary concomitant that Helene largely controlled the content of Althusser's written work and how he was thinking as well as what he was reading: then we can see that Helene and not Levi-Strauss is the real source of Althusser's plunge into jewish ideas and his ever-worsening mental illness. Althusser was a manic depressive who was living with and totally dependent on a jewess who was all but a full-blown psychopath. Indeed, I think it not unreasonable to suggest that a lot of the Freudian obsessions (as well as the occasional dalliance with the idea he was a homosexual) with his mother and hatred of his father which Althusser evinces throughout his autobiographical notes ultimately stems from Helene's own neurosis and the projection of that onto Althusser who was her eternal punching bag, which she knew wouldn't punch back.
This picture of Althusser being in a highly abusive relationship accounts nicely for both his lack of productivity (as he was being controlled by Helene) and also why Althusser eventually killed Helene by strangling her (in the belief that she wanted to die). (25) Essentially Althusser had regained his sanity and in that brief time had realised that the source of much of the ills and failures of his life was the woman he believed himself to 'love' causing himself to strangle her as an 'act of mercy' for them both (i.e., they were 'destroying' each other).
The resultant overreaction by Althusser (26) is characteristic of the Stockholm Syndrome that he had been experiencing for so long as now he finally taken action to be rid of the psychopathic jewess in his bed, but yet this left a hole in his being as he simply couldn't live without Helene's abusive direction and exploitation after thirty years of it! (27)
We can then see Althusser's murder of Helene in their apartment in Paris as an (unsuccessful) attempt by him to exorcise the jewish demons that had by then made his mind their home. It was a last attempt to exorcise his 'will to power', which lead Althusser to become a kind of intellectual vegetable unable to think or write as he once had, because Helene had destroyed him, and he had in turn destroyed her for poisoning his mind.
In conclusion then we can see that Althusser was less a man influenced by jews as MacDonald posits, but rather a great mind who was perverted and destroyed by his association and sexual relationships with jews.
References
(1) Louis Althusser, Richard Veasey (Trans.), 1993, 'The Future Lasts Forever: A Memoir', 1st Edition, The New Press: New York, pp. ix; 4
(2) Maurice Godelier, Martin Thom (Trans.), 2011, 'The Mental and the Material', 3rd Edition, Verso: New York, pp. 148-149
(3) Christine Buci-Glucksmann, 1976, 'Sur la critique de gauche du stalinisme', Dialectiques, Vol. 15, p. 28
(4) Gary Cutting, 2001, 'French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, p. 40, n. 17
(5) Maria Antonietta Macciocchi, 1973, 'Letters from inside the Italian Communist Party to Louis Althusser', 1st Edition, New Left Books: London
(6) Kevin MacDonald, 2002, 'The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements', 2nd Edition, 1st Books: Long Beach, p. 21
(7) Gregory Elliott, 1987, 'Althusser: The Detour of Theory', 1st Edition, Verso: New York, pp. 62-63; Daisuke Arie, 2006, 'Marx and Distributive Justice', pp. 66 in Hiroshi Uchida (Ed.), 2006, 'Marx for the 21st Century', 1st Edition, Routledge: New York
(8) Elliott, Op. Cit., p. 61
(9) MacDonald, Op. Cit., p. 143
(10) Ably demonstrated by reading Macciocchi, Op. Cit., pp. 21-23
(11) Tristram Hunt, 2009, 'Marx's General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels', 1st Edition, Henry Holt: New York, p. 7
(12) Suggested by Elliott, Op. Cit., p. 321; also, Althusser, Op. Cit., p. xii
(13) Ibid., pp. 21-30
(14) Elliott, Op. Cit., pp. 179-180
(15) Althusser, Op. Cit., p. 111; the fact that Althusser couldn't have become a Communist other than through Helene is pointed out on Ibid, p. ix
(16) Ibid., p. 117
(17) Ibid.
(18) Ibid., p. xvi
(19) Ibid., p. x
(20) Elliott, Op. Cit., p. 55, n. 110
(21) Althusser, Op. Cit., p. x
(22) Macciocchi, Op. Cit., pp. 56-57
(23) Althusser, Op. Cit., p. x
(24) Ibid., p. 63
(25) Ibid., p. 3
(26) Ibid., p. 16
(27) Ibid., p. xvi