Althusser
>is unable to conceive of the subject in any way other than as an effect of
>structure, therefore having no place in his/her thought for agency, will or
>intention, has been made obvious since Althusser's brand of vulgar
>scientistic Leninism became a dominant element in certain benighted
>sections of the left.
Here is what Althusser writes: "For Lenin, the _real_spontaneity, capacity for action, inventiveness and so on, of the 'masses', was to be respected as _the most precious_ aspect of the workers' movement: but at the same time Lenin condemned the 'ideology of spontaneity' (a dangerous ideology) shared by his opponents (populists and 'Social Revolutionaries'), and recognised that the _real_spontaneity of the masses was to be sustained and criticized in the mean time in order to 'liberate' it from the influence of bourgeois ideology." (Althusser's emphasis)
Ulhas