Señor

Louis Althusser


Politics and History


Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hegel and Marx




Translated from the French by Ben Brewster







'Montesquieu: Politics and History' first published by Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1959,
© PUF,1959; 'The Social Contract' first published in Cahiers pour l'Analyse, no. 8:L'Impensé de Jean- Jacques Rousseau, n.d., © Le Graphe; 'Marx's Relation to Hegel' first published in Hegel et la Pensée
Moderne by Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1970,
© PUF, 1970.

This translation first published, 1972
© NLB, 1972








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Prepared © for the Internet by David J. Romagnolo,djr@marx2mao.org (July 2003) Pdf version by malst@abv.bg (March 2006)
Acknowledgments 6
Translator's note 7



Part One


MONTESQUIEU: POLITICS AND HISTORY


Foreword 13
1. A Revolution in Method 17
2. A New Theory of Law 31
3. The Dialectic of History 43
4. 'There are Three Governments . . .' 61
5. The Myth of the Separation of Powers 87
6. Montesquieu's PartiPris 96
Conclusion 107
Bibliography 108



Part Two


ROUSSEAU: THE SOCIAL CONTRACT


Foreword 113
1. Posing the Problem 116
2. The Solution of the Problem: Discrepancy I 125
3. The Contract and Alienation 135
4. Total Alienation and Exchange: Discrepancy II 140
5. Particular Interest and General Interest,
Particular Will and General Will:Discrepancy III 146
6. Flight Forward in Ideology or
Regression in the Economy: Discrepancy IV 155



Part Three


MARX'S RELATION TO HEGEL 161


Index 187
page 6






Acknowledgments : We are grateful to J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd for their kind permission to use extracts from The Social Contract and Discourses, translated b G. D. H. Cole, and from Émile, translated byBarbara Foxley, both published in Everyman's Library.
page 7






Translator's note : Quotations from the works of Montesquieu in Part One of this book have in general been taken from the four-volume translation by Thomas Nugent entitled The Works of Monsieur de Montesquieu, published in London in
1777. References to the Spirit of Laws give the Book number in Roman and the chapternumber in Arabic numerals: thus, SL, VIII, 9 means The Spirit of Laws, Book VIII, Chapter 9. Quotations from Rousseau in Parts One and Two have been taken either from The Social Contract and Discourses, translated by G. D. H.
Cole, in the Everyman's Library edition of 1966, or from Émile, translated by Barbara Foxley, in the Everyman's Library edition of 1957. Page references are to these editions.However, the translator has taken the liberty of altering these translations whenever questions of consistency of terminology, or facilitating the reader's understanding of Althusser's commentary, have arisen. Quotations from Marx, Engels and Lenin in Part Three have been taken from the standard English translations of their works, published in England by Lawrence and Wishart.
page 9Part One


Montesquieu: Politics and History





























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To apply the ideas of the present time to distant ages, is the most fruitful source of error. To those
people who want to modernize all the ancient ages, I shall say what the Egyptian priests said to
Solon,'O Athenians, you are mere children.'
The Spirit of Laws, XXX, 14.

Montesquieu made us see . . . Mme De Staël

France had lost her claims to nobility; Montesquieu gave her them back. Voltaire

























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Foreword











I make no claim to say anything new about Montesquieu. Anything that seems to be...