20th-century French Philosophy - Marxist Philosophers

Marxist Philosophers

It is important to realise that, as well as holding many varying degrees and interpretations of Marxism, many French Philosophers' views on it shifted substantially during their lifetime. Sartre, for instance, became more influenced by Marx during the course of his life.

Alexandre Kojève (1902–1968) was a Marxist and Hegelian political philosopher, who had a substantial influence on intellectual life in France in the 1930s and on the reading of Hegel in France.

Louis Althusser (1918–1990) was a key Marxist philosopher, sometimes considered to be the structuralist equivalent to Marxism that Lacan was to Psychoanalysis and Claude Lévi-Strauss to ethnology (although all of them rejected the identification). One of his first seminal works was Reading Capital (1965), co-written with Étienne Balibar, Roger Establet, Jacques Rancière and Pierre Macherey. He opposed Hegel's teleological approach to history, drew on Bachelard's concept of "epistemological break" and defined philosophy as "class struggle in theory."

Other Marxist authors include Henri Lefebvre (1901–1999), who partly influenced the Situationist and Guy Debord, the group Socialisme ou Barbarie aforementioned, etc.