 From the time of its initial dissemination, Althusser’s re-reading of Marx was met by almost equal amounts of enthusiasm and castigation. For every reader who found in his prose an explanation of Marx’s philosophy and science that rendered Marx philosophically respectable and offered renewed hope for Marxist theory, there were critics who judged his work to be idealist, Stalinist, dogmatist, or excessively structuralist, among myriad other charges. Though many of the initial reactions were contradictory and evidenced misunderstandings of what Althusser was up to, compelling criticisms were also offered. One was that Althusser was only able to offer his reading by ignoring much of what Marx actually wrote about his logic and about the concepts important to his analysis. Another criticism, and one voiced to Althusser by leaders of the French Communist Party, was that Althusser’s reading of Marx offered little on the relationship between Marxist theory and Marxist political practice.