For Marx

I should like briefly to present this translation of Pour Marx to an English
audience, and, on the same occasion, to make use of the time that has
elapsed since it was written to take some ‘bearings’ on the philosophical
content and the ideological significance of this small book.
Pour Marx appeared in France in 1965. But only its Introduction
(‘Today’) dates from that year. All the other chapters were published earlier,
between 1960 and 1964, in the form of articles in French Communist Party
journals.* They were collected together exactly as originally written,
without any corrections or alterations.
To understand these essays and to pass judgement on them, it is essential
to realize that they were conceived, written and published by a Communist
philosopher in a particular ideological and theoretical conjuncture †
. So
these texts must be taken for what they are. They are philosophical essays,
the first stages of a long-term investigation, preliminary results which
obviously demand correction; this investigation concerns the specific nature
of the principles of the science and philosophy founded by Marx. However,
these philosophical essays do not derive from a merely erudite or
speculative investigation. They are, simultaneously, interventions in a
definite conjuncture.