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Epigraph
For, ultimately, what did Machiavelli urge upon his readers, long before Chernyshevsky and Lenin, if not the problem and the question: What is to be done?
Louis Althusser, The Future Lasts Forever
What Is To Be Done?
Louis Althusser
Edited and Translated by G. M. Goshgarian
polity
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Originally published in French as Que Faire? © Presses Universitaires de France/ Humensis, Que Faire?, 2018
This English edition © 2020 by Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3860-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3861-4 (paperback)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Althusser, Louis, 1918-1990, author. | Goshgarian, G. M., editor.
Title: What is to be done? / Louis Althusser ; edited and translated by G.M. Goshgarian.
Other titles: Que faire? English
Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, [2020] | Originally published in French as Que Faire? in 2018 by PUF. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “A leading Marxist philosopher lays out his practical vision for political struggle”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020012866 (print) | LCCN 2020012867 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509538607 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509538614 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509538621 (epub) | ISBN 9781509544196 (adobe pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Gramsci, Antonio, 1891-1937. | Revolutions. | Communism.
Classification: LCC HX289.7.G73 A7313 2020 (print) | LCC HX289.7.G73 (ebook) | DDC 335.43--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012866
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012867
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Acknowledgements
G. M. Goshgarian thanks Nathalie Léger, director of the Institut mémoires de l’édition contemporaine, together with the rest of the Imec staff, the Arles Centre international de traducteurs littéraires, and François Boddaert, Fabio Bruschi, Jackie Épain, Luke Épain, Julie Le Men, Vittorio Morfino, Vanessa Roghi, Stefan Schomann, Laurie Tuller, and Fang Yan.
Note on the Text
The text on which the present translation is based, an unfinished manuscript titled Que faire? that Louis Althusser wrote in 1978, was first published in 2018 in an edition that I prepared for the Presses universitaires de France/Humensis. The French edition is based on a photocopy of a ninety-five-page typed manuscript bearing many corrections in Althusser’s hand. This photocopy, four pages of which are defective, would appear to be the only copy of the text in Althusser’s archives, housed in the Institut mémoires de l’édition contemporaine (Imec) in Caen. An appeal to Althusser’s collaborators failed to turn up other copies of Que faire?
A list of notes has been preserved at the Imec along with the photocopied manuscript. They bear on passages of Antonio Gramsci’s Quaderni del carcere (Prison Notebooks) quoted or referred to in Que faire? However, they contain no note markers pegging them to the text. Some of the notes contain brief comments, all of them in Italian; one includes a handwritten sentence that is not in Althusser’s hand. The