Althusser’s debt to the tradition of French historical epistemology in this account of knowledge production and philosophy of science should now be evident. However, this epistemology’s Marxian and Spinozistic elements may be less pronounced. The vocabulary adopted above to express this theory, however, gestures to both influences. For Althusser, Marx’s founding of the science of history is crucial not only to politics (as will be addressed below) but also to understanding all of human activity,