In the 1970s, when Hirst joined the fledgling Department of Politics and Sociology, he was an “uncompromising Althusserian” known for his “unbending theoretical rigour”. He co-founded the Althusserian journal Theoretical Practice, which attacked empiricism and positivism, while defending the scientific study of Marxism. It took an anti-historical, anti-humanist, and structuralist approach that generated a furious backlash, accused of creating a “self-generating conceptual universe” that “imposes its own identity upon the phenomenon of material and social existence, rather than engaging in a continual dialogue with them”. By the early 1990s, however, Hirst had recanted dogmatism, choosing a more heterodox position. He was later to denounce the “ideologisation of political studies” in the 1970s, which led to “so much energy” being “consumed in infighting between Marxist sects”. He argued against the “if you are not for us, you are against us” mentality, maintaining that it was “lethal to the scepticism and objectivity needed both for scientific work and credible political action”. In this he was able to attack dogmatic “left” and “right” ideologies. Who could dispute, he suggested, that “cosmopolitan idealism, neo imperialism and revived revolutionary leftism” were all failed forms of twentieth century politics? Twenty-first century crises needed real solutions, grounded in a deep scrutiny of politics, publics, and economic patterns.