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First, in the three-cornered battle for Introduction 21 an 'authentic' Marxism, we have an established 'orthodox' lineage, and two competing restructurings of it. The orthodox tradition has the authority which comes from control of an administrative apparatus. Of its two rivals, one has the self-proclaimed authority of the ethico-philosophical principles which constitute it, whilst the other is in search of a source of authority. The task before Althusser is to establish a series of discontinuities, differences, dislocations within and between texts; on the basis of these discriminations to establish a principle of selection (this is acceptable, authentic, validated - that is not) and, finally, to establish the credentials of the principle of selection.

Althusser's conception of knowledge as production could be rendered consistent in only two ways: the distinction between internal and external objects of knowledge may be abandoned in a realist, or materialist direction (I have suggested, in the notion of 'same thing - different description', one device which makes this possible), or it may be abandoned in an idealist, or conventionalist direction. In this latter strategy the internal (conceptual) object of knowledge is privileged, and what counts as 'real' is a function of what is conceptualised as real in current knowledge.

Correlatively the texts composed prior to this historical moment can be assigned to the pre-history of Marxism, as not truly 'Marxist', though composed by Marx. Furthermore, the persistence after the 'break' of concepts and problems of this pre-history is to be expected on the Bachelardian view: the philosophical effects of displaced stages in the theoretical lineage continue to threaten the achievements of later theoretical transformations in the form of 'epistemological obstacles'. The work of a philosophy which is partisan in support of the new science is to identify and wage war on these obstacles.