The Poverty of Theory: Or an Orrery of Errors

Thompson argues that Althusserian Marxism is a 'theoretical practice' that constitutes a concealed idealism, denying the role of human agency in history. He rejects Althusser's conception of history as a 'process without a subject,' insisting that this position is not merely philosophically mistaken but politically dangerous—it reproduces the logic of Stalinism in theoretical form [citation:13]. Against this, Thompson defends a socialist humanism grounded in historical materialism, where 'experience' serves as the interface between social being and consciousness, disrupting closed theoretical systems.

For Thompson, Althusser's theoretical system replicated the fatal flaws of Stalinist Marxism: economic determinism and anti-humanism. He argued that by denying human agency and reducing history to structural processes without subjects, Althusser provided a philosophical justification for political quietism and authoritarianism [citation:12][citation:13]. Thompson famously declared that if Althusserianism were the logical terminus of Marxist thought, he could never be a Marxist—he would rather be a Christian [citation:5]. The polemic was thus as much political as philosophical, aimed at purging what he saw as a Stalinist infection from British intellectual life.

Thompson posits 'experience' as the crucial category that Althusserian structuralism cannot accommodate. He argues that experience—lived social reality—'walks in without knocking at the door,' disrupting the philosopher's closed system and forcing theory to reckon with the real [citation:10]. This concept connects his historical method in The Making of the English Working Class to his philosophical critique: class consciousness arises from lived experience, not from theoretical deduction. For Thompson, historical materialism must be grounded in the empirical study of how people actually live and struggle, not in abstract theoretical practice.

Thompson's polemic was also aimed at Perry Anderson and the New Left Review, which he accused of importing 'every product, however banal, of the Althusserian fabrik' into Britain [citation:12]. The target was the younger New Left generation that had embraced structuralist theory and, in Thompson's view, abandoned the socialist humanism of the 1956 moment. The exchange between Thompson and Anderson—which Anderson answered in Arguments Within English Marxism—became a defining debate about the relationship between Marxist theory and socialist politics on the British left [citation:12][citation:16].

The book remains a staple text in the history of Marxist theory, though its fortunes have fluctuated with the intellectual climate [citation:1][citation:6]. In the decades after 1978, Thompson's polemic was often dismissed as anti-theoretical rhetoric. More recently, scholars have argued for its 'belated nowness': as post-structuralist and postist frameworks have themselves come under scrutiny, Thompson's insistence on human agency and the 'blade of human aspiration' has regained relevance [citation:13]. Scott Hamilton's study characterizes Thompson as a 'flawed giant' whose insights and oversights both belong to the Left's heritage [citation:16].

A frequent misreading treats The Poverty of Theory as a blanket rejection of all theory or a defense of naive empiricism. In fact, Thompson does not oppose theoretical work as such—he opposes 'Theory' with a capital T, the self-enclosed theoreticism that treats concepts as autonomous from historical reality [citation:10]. He insists that historical materialism itself is a theory, but one that must remain open to empirical challenge and the disruptions of experience. The polemic targets a specific mode of theorizing, not the enterprise of thought itself, as his own extensive theoretical work demonstrates.