 At mid-decade, Althusser seized on these works’ popularity and the fact that his arguments had created a faction within the French Communist Party composed mostly of young intelligentsia to try and force change. This gambit to have the Party directed by theorists rather than by a Central Committee, whose Stalinism remained entrenched and who believed in the organic wisdom of the worker, met with little success. At the most, he succeeded in carving out some autonomy for theoretical reflection within the Party. Even though it is his most well-known intervention, this was not the first attempt by Althusser to try and influence the Party (he had tried once before during the mid 1950s from his position as cell leader at the ENS) and it would not be his last. While he lost much of the student support that his work had created when he remained silent during the “revolutionary” events of May 1968 (he was in a psychiatric hospital at the time), he campaigned once more to influence the Party during the mid 1970s. This intervention occurred in response to the French Communist Party’s decision to abandon traditional Marxist-Leninist aspects of its platform so as to better ally itself with the Socialist Party. Though Althusser’s position was well publicized and found its supporters, in the end, his arguments were unable to motivate the Party’s rank-and-file such that its leadership would reconsider its decision.