in "louis althusser and the traditions of french marxism" (2005), william s. lewis described "reading capital" as the culmination of the rereading of marx that althusser began in 1953. he considered it a theoretically sophisticated text and noted that it had an enthusiastic reception among intellectuals. however, he suggested that the difficulty of the work supported the charge that althusser aspired to "leninist vanguardism" and wanted "a small, theoretically sophisticated cadre" to "direct the revolution", and expressed agreement with the historian eric hobsbawm's view that the book showed that althusser was an "extremely selective reader of marx."