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This article proposes to reexamine Bourdieu’s relationship with Marxism, and more particularly with Althusserian Marxism. It is suggested that Althusser may have functioned as a foil for Bourdieu, especially in view of the similarities between the Althusserian theory of ideological power and Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power. The theory of the state is probably the most appropriate ground on which to compare the two thinkers. The recent publication of Bourdieu’s lectures on the state allows one to see how in his own historical sociology he elaborated a theory of the state that was a response to Marxism: by responding to the Marxist critique of Hegel, Bourdieu seeks to show that, since the dominant invoke the universal in order to legitimize their domination, they can only ever be partially successful in doing so. Bourdieu ends up by conceding to Marxism that the universal makes significant progress only in terms of the self-interested understanding of the universal proper to the dominant.