Where this article was first published has not been established, so it is not reproduced here. marxsite reprinted it in full; this archive does not.
Asad Haider and Salar Mohandesi introduce and translate a section of the "theoretical balance sheet" Louis Althusser drafted in 1982 and never published. Their framing essay argues that Marxism's standing as a body of thought had become genuinely obscure: the workers' movement whose defeats Western Marxism once defined itself against had not merely lost but dissolved, leaving academic Marxism defining itself in relation to nothing at all. Against that background they read Althusser's late attempt to say what, if anything, holds Marxism together as a theory. The translation was made from the text printed in Futur antérieur's 1993 Althusser issue, and had not previously appeared in English.
Précis by Red Mole.
Read it at the archived copy of the marxsite page.