>>2694539His main work is his reading of capital. For Marx is a good starting point though.
>>2694595Althusser invests a lot of effort in finding a break in the discourse of the young and the "mature" marx yes, but his framing is entirely different. It's about a humanistic strain in works like The German Ideology, seemingly influenced by Feuerbach, giving rise to concepts like spiritual alienation, then being largely foregone in later works.
The novel theoretical concepts of Althusser cannot be described as "analytic" in good faith. They are descended from his structuralist contemporaries, yet represent an attempted restatement of dialectics within a purely materialist framework. It should by no means be conflated with "anti-dialectics":
>Let us say, to end this ever-extended textual exposition, that if the Marxistt dialectic is 'in principle' the opposite of the Hegelian dialectic, if it is rational and not mystical-mystified-mystiificatory, this radical distinction must be manifest in its essence, that is, in its characteristic determinations and structures. To be clear, this means that basic structures of the Hegelian dialectic, such as negation, the negation of the negation, the identity of opposites, 'supersession', the transformation of quantity into quality, contradiction, etc. have for Marx (in so far as he takes them over, and he takes over by no means all of them) a structure different from the structure they have for Hegel). It also means that these structural differences can be demonstrated, described, determined and thought. And if this is possible, it is therefore necessary, I would go so far as to say vital, for Marxism. We cannot go on reiterating indefinitely approximations such as the difference between systems and method, the inversion of philosophy or dialetic, the extraction of the 'rational kernel', and so on, without letting these formulae think for us, that is, stop thinking ourselves and trust ourselves to the magic of a number of completion of Marx's work. I say vital, for I am convinced that the philosophical development of Marxism currently depends on this task.The above is directly followed by a footnote positively referencing Mao's On Contradiction!