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In the theoretical mode of production of ideology (which is utterly different from the theoretical mode of production of science in this respect), the formulation of a problem is merely the theoretical expression of the conditions which allow a solution already produced outside the process of knowledge because imposed by extra-theoretical instances and exigencies (by religious, ethical, political or other 'interests') to recognize itself in an artificial problem manufactured to serve it both as a theoretical mirror and as a practical justification.

But these elements at our disposal, often of considerable value (particularly in the history of philosophy treated as the history of the 'theory of knowledge'), are one thing, and their theoretical organization, which presupposes precisely the formation, the production of this theory, is another. I have only made this detour in order to be able to say, on returning to Marx, that the apodictic character of the order of his theoretical discourse (or the 'logical' order of the categories in Capital ) can only be thought against the background of a theory of the history of the theoretical, which would show what effective relationship there is between the forms of proof in the theoretical discourse of Capital on the one hand, and the forms of theoretical proof contemporaneous with it and close to it, on the other.

We think the relations establishing and articulating these different practices one with another by thinking their degree of independence and their type of 'relative' autonomy, which are themselves fixed by their type of dependence with respect to the practice which is 'determinant in the last instance': economic practice. But we shall go further. We are not content to suppress the egalitarian myth of practice, we acquire a completely new basis for our conception of the relation between theory and practice, which is mystified in any idealist or empiricist conception.