French materialism found in Spinoza’s thought a valuable ally to solve the impasse of orthodox marxism. Louis Althusser’s reference to Spinoza is oriented to contest a naive theory of knowledge and causality and the metaphysics of Subject involved. Particularly, Spinoza’s theory of imagination is the ground on which Althusser builds his original theory of ideology. This interpretation will nevertheless reveal itself as incomplete and it will take Althusser into a blind alley. The effect of Althusserian ideology is an oppressed subject, unable to do any effort of emancipation from capitalist relations of production and reproduction. What Althusser removes is the link between Spinoza’s imagination and his theory of affects, and the possibility of individual and collective liberation inscribed in the imaginative process itself.
