Skillfully deploring a large cast of characters, Sheehan retraces the development of Marxist philosophy of science through detailed and highly readable accounts of the debates that have characterized it. The opening chapter discussed the ideas of Marx and Engels, and the second, Marxist theoreticians of the Second International. In the third chapter Sheehan covers Russian Marxism up to World War II. Sheehan concludes with a close analysis of the development of the debate among non-Soviet Marxists, placing particular (...) emphasis on the contributions of leading British in the 1930s. (shrink)

A masterful survey of the history of Marxist philosophy of science. Now with a new afterword. Skillfully deploying a large cast of characters, Sheehan retraces the development of Marxist philosophy of science through detailed and highly readable accounts of the debates that have characterized it. Approaching Marxism from the perspective of the philosophy of science, Sheehan shows how Marx's and Engel's ideas on the development and structure of natural science had a crucial impact on the work of early (...) twentieth-century natural philosophers, historians of science, and natural scientists. From the ideas of Marx and Engels, those of the Marxist theoreticians of the Second International to the debates within Russian Marxism up to World War II, Sheehan masterfully surveys the history of marxist philosophy of science, concluding with a close analysis of the development of the debate among non-Soviet Marxists, placing particular emphasis on the contributions of leading British Marxists in the 1930s. (shrink)

Lucien Sève (1926–2020) was one of the foremost Marxist theoreticians of the Parti Communiste Français. An indomitable opponent of both structural and humanist Marxism, his 1973 article reprinted below represents the core of his conception of alienation. For Sève, whilst the mature Marxism of Das Kapital is fundamentally distinct from the speculative humanism of the 1844 Manuscripts in placing capital, not abstract labour, at the heart of alienation, this reinforces, rather than replaces, the role of alienation at the (...) centre of Marx’s mature thought, and hence of Marxism itself. (shrink)

Today, Karl Kautsky is mainly remembered for his polemics against the young Bolshevik regime or as the ‘renegade’ in Lenin’sThe Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, which pillories him for his wavering stance in opposing World War I and his outright hostility to the Russian Revolution of October 1917. Kautsky’s authority as a Marxist theoretician was seriously called into question ever since Lenin’s polemic. During the Cold War in particular, a consensus emerged which suggested that Kautsky’s views of democracy, (...) organisation and revolutionary change had little or nothing to do with the political practice of Russian Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Recently, however, several studies have challenged this consensus. They highlight the profound impact which Kautsky had on the development of Russian Bolshevism and make the case that – prior to his renegacy in 1914 – thinkers such as Lenin and Trotsky viewed Kautsky as the legitimate intellectual heir of Marx and Engels. This article introduces an autobiographical essay written by Kautsky in 1924 and calls for closer engagement with his œuvre as a whole. (shrink)

This paper has two interrelated aims. One is a criticism of the recent book by Eric Olin Wright, Andrew Levine and Elliott Sober, "Reconstructing Marxism". It is argued that many of the book's key concepts and premises are obscure; sometimes, when clear enough for logical relations to be established, inconsistent with one another; and nearly always open to objections. The same is true of the arguments (where they can be identified) to the conclusions. The book's basic philosophical stance is, in (...) regard to its combination of essentialism and empiricism, Aristotelian. The second aim is to sketch an alternative view of the general character of historical materialism, based closely on Marx's "mature" practice as theoretician, and on many of his key statements of principle. This view involves a sharp distinction between the context of theory and the context of the real (the understanding and change of the latter being the point of the former), and, in the theoretical domain, a distinction among levels of abstractness or generality. (shrink)

Karl Kautsky was one of the most important Marxist thinkers of his age. In this life sketch written in 1924, he outlines his intellectual development and how he came to be such an important Marxist theoretician.

The resiliency and independence of Italian Marxism is often attributed to the influence of Gramsci. This influence arises in part from Gramsci's role as a founder and theoretician of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Yet, his significance arises from his identification with Western Marxism. Gramsci is considered to be a prime representative of this tradition by virtue of his roots in Hegelianism, which is often used to explain how the PCI was spared many of the worst aspects of Stalinism. It (...) is also credited with allowing the PCI to develop its “third way” or “via italiana,” which abandons the accepted Marxist-Leninist approaches to the acquisition of political power and makes the pursuit of parliamentary politics a legitimate enterprise for the communist movement. (shrink)

This essay centres on the English translation of Georg Lukács’s Tailism and the Dialectic. Lukács is generally heralded as a founding theoretician of a ‘Western Marxism’, in opposition to ‘Eastern’ Soviet Marxism, and his most impressive and most influential work, History and Class Consciousness, is generally treated as having rehabilitated Marxist concern with questions of subjectivity. It might therefore come as a surprise when Lukács in Tailism states that the purpose of History and Class Consciousness was to demonstrate ‘that (...) the organisation and tactics of Bolshevism are the only possible consequence of Marxism’. In my view, however, this should already be abundantly clear from History and Class Consciousness. For Lukács’s absorption with proletarian subjectivity was motivated by an obsession with what he saw as its immaturity. And he coined the category of ‘reification’ in order to explain his disappointed expectations, to explain, that is, why the proletariat did not make a ‘socialist’ revolution in the ‘objectively ripe’ situation of an ‘imperialist war’ created by ‘moribund capitalism’. In short, Lukács did raise anew the question of the subjective, but only to then declare that workers, not even ‘the most revolutionary among them’, could never attain proper class consciousness, which he attributed instead to the ‘revolutionary party’ bearing the properly revolutionary theory. For this reason I agree with Slavoj Žižek’s characterisation of Lukács as the ‘ultimate philosopher [my emphasis] of Leninism’ – although I do think that Lenin himself would have found, as he did in connection with one of Lukács’s other works, Marxism ‘present only at a verbal level’. My concern is two-fold: with a critique of the methodological short-cuts that Lukács made in his purely conceptual derivation of the concept of reification, and his purely conceptual attribution of it as the necessary form of working-class consciousness ‘in its immediacy’; and with the dangerous political consequences that Lukács derived from his assessment of the reified character of working-class subjectivity, mainly a theoretical guarantee that the party with the proper revolutionary theory must always be right, or at least more right than anyone else. (shrink)

This groundbreaking work by one of the world's foremost theoreticians of culture and scholars of Russian philosophy gives for the first time a systematic examination of the development of Russian philosophy during the late Soviet period. Countering the traditional view of an intellectual wilderness under the Soviet regime, Mikhail Epstein provides a comprehensive account of Russian thought of the second half of the 20th century that is highly sophisticated without losing clarity. It provides new insights into previously mostly ignored (...) areas such as late Soviet Russian nationalism and Eurasianism, religious thought, cosmism and esoterism, and postmodernism and conceptualism. Epstein shows how Russian philosophy has long been trapped in an intellectual prison of its own making as it sought to create its own utopia. However, he demonstrates that it is time to reappraise Russian thought, now freed from the bonds of Soviet totalitarianism and ideocracy but nevertheless dangerously engaged into new nationalist aspirations and metaphysical radicalism. We are left with not only a new and exciting interpretation of recent Russian intellectual history, but also the opportunity to rethink our philosophical heritage. (shrink)

The problem of freedom is becoming ever more pressing in our day, as the effectuation of real and complete freedom for all people who work is one of the principal objectives of the social morality of communism set forth in the Program of the CPSU. On the other hand, capitalism and its ideological defenders in the struggle against the world communist movement seek to turn the idea of freedom to their own ends, distorting and limiting this concept so as to (...) prove the unprovable, to wit, that the capitalist social system is the "free world," while socialism and communism constitute a violation and destruction of freedom. In so doing they recognize the fundamental opposition of the Marxist and bourgeois conceptions of freedom, while holding, naturally, that their standpoint represents truth and the Marxist, confusion. Here, for example, are the words of a bourgeois theoretician: "The Marxist concept of freedom as recognition of necessity changes the meaning of freedom so as to make it unrecognizable. It pays formal respect to free will, while accepting determinism in its entirety". (shrink)

De George undertakes the formidable task of compressing within 154 pages of text a description and critical analysis of the changes which have taken place in Marxist theory in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union since the Twentieth Congress in 1956. The brevity of the book is its chief handicap detracting from what is otherwise a stimulating study of modern Marxism. The summary form of statement leads to some unsupported claims and to others which are (...) ambiguous because they lack development. Most of the space is devoted to the two extremes of Soviet and Yugoslav Marxism, with sketchy references to Poland and Hungary and scantier references to Czechoslovakia. East Germany and Rumania are dismissed in one sentence as puppet versions of Soviet Marxism. Among the interesting and provocative observations which would benefit from expanded treatment are: Contemporary Marxists in Eastern Europe view Marxism or Marxism-Leninism as a philosophy, not as a science. Even in the Soviet Union, where Marxism-Leninism is still considered a science, the term has been given a meaning distinct from the ordinary meaning of science. Theory and practice have become separated, although not divorced. The political leaders are not the theoreticians and the theoreticians are not the party spokesmen. The power centers are removed from the centers of theoretical activity. There is a continuity between the Stalinist and post-Stalinist periods which is not recognized or admitted by most Marxists. Stalin himself initiated some of the developments which are generally regarded as post-Stalinist features. The wide variety of interpretations of Marxism by contemporary Marxists in the countries under study indicates the vitality of the basic doctrine and its potential for further development. They also prove that Marxism need not go the way of Lenin and Stalin and that communism need not go the way of Soviet Russia.--H. B. (shrink)

On the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of the death of Marx, has not the moment come at last to render an equitable judgment, of the type which only the passage of time allows us to formulate, on the man whom we do not know how to describe— philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, politician, theoretician of the worker movement, reformer, revolutionary or prophet? And this judgment, which will take everything and examine it before putting all things in their proper place, (...) could it not take the form of a response to the famous question: what is dead and what is still living today in that work which is as monumental as it is diverse since it touches every domain of knowledge and action? (shrink)

No figure among the western Marxist theoreticians has loomed larger in the postwar period than Louis Althusser. A rebel against the Catholic tradition in which he was raised, Althusser studied philosophy and later joined both the faculty of the Ecole normal superieure and the French Communist Party in 1948. Viewed as a "structuralist Marxist," Althusser was as much admired for his independence of intellect as he was for his rigorous defense of Marx. The latter was best illustrated (...) in For Marx (1965), and Reading Capital (1968). These works, along with Lenin and Philosophy (1971) had an enormous influence on the New Left of the 1960s and continues to influence modern Marxist scholarship. This classic work, which to date has sold more than 30,000 copies, covers the range of Louis Althusser's interests and contributions in philosophy, economics, psychology, aesthetics, and political science. Marx, in Althusser's view, was subject in his earlier writings to the ruling ideology of his day. Thus for Althusser, the interpretation of Marx involves a repudiation of all efforts to draw from Marx's early writings a view of Marx as a "humanist" and "historicist." Lenin and Philosophy also contains Althusser's essay on Lenin's study of Hegel; a major essay on the state, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," "Freud and Lacan: A letter on Art in Reply to Andre Daspre," and "Cremonini, Painter of the Abstract." The book opens with a 1968 interview in which Althusser discusses his personal, political, and intellectual history. (shrink)

"If we are to understand not only the direct impact of Marx on the development of German thought but also his sometimes extremely indirect influence, an exact knowledge of Hegel, of both his greatness and his limitation, is absolutely indispensable."- from the preface. It is well known that Hegel exerted a major influence on the development of Marx's thought. This circumstance led Lukacs, one of the chief Marxist theoreticians of this century, to embark on his exploration of Hegelian (...) antecedents in the German intellectual tradition, their concrete expression in the work of Hegel himself, and later syntheses of seemingly contradictory modes of though. Four phases of Hegel's intellectual development are examined: "Hegel's early republican phase," "the crisis in Hegel's views on society and the earliest beginnings of his dialectical method," "rationale and defense of objective idealism," and "the breach with Schelling and " The Phenomenology of Mind."" Lukacs completed this study in 1938, but because of the imminent outbreak of war, it was not published until the late 1940s. A revised German edition appeared in 1954, and it is this text that is the basis of this first English translation of the work.". (shrink)

"If we are to understand not only the direct impact of Marx on the development of German thought but also his sometimes extremely indirect influence, an exact knowledge of Hegel, of both his greatness and his limitation, is absolutely indispensable."- from the preface. It is well known that Hegel exerted a major influence on the development of Marx's thought. This circumstance led Lukács, one of the chief Marxist theoreticians of this century, to embark on his exploration of Hegelian (...) antecedents in the German intellectual tradition, their concrete expression in the work of Hegel himself, and later syntheses of seemingly contradictory modes of though. Four phases of Hegel's intellectual development are examined: "Hegel's early republican phase," "the crisis in Hegel's views on society and the earliest beginnings of his dialectical method," "rationale and defense of objective idealism," and "the breach with Schelling and The Phenomenology of Mind." Lukács completed this study in 1938, but because of the imminent outbreak of war, it was not published until the late 1940s. A revised German edition appeared in 1954, and it is this text that is the basis of this first English translation of the work. (shrink)

This article examines how Maoist theory and practice were imported to France during the 1960s. A syncretic phenomenon, as notions developed in the Chinese cultural context were adapted to the very different Gallic situation, French Maoism proved to be especially influential among students at the École normale supérieure at the rue d’Ulm in Paris, where the Marxist theoretician, Louis Althusser, was teaching. Maoist philosophy facilitated critiques of the Moscow-aligned French Communist Party and its student union; it enabled Althusser's rethinking (...) of the Marxist tradition, and it ultimately provided ammunition for his students’ eventual break with his “theoreticism.” Maoism's fecund contribution to French intellectual culture in the 1960s, helping to lay the groundwork for the events of May 1968, derived principally from its dual theoretical and practical nature. This article highlights two specific Maoist tenants—the inevitably violent nature of revolution and the ersatz-empiricist method of the “investigation”—and suggests how, after 1968, French Maoism ultimately surrendered the former as the latter proved more useful to direct democratic politics. ☆ Thanks to Geoff Goshgarian for his well-informed comments on part of this essay. (shrink)

This insightful book explores the life and ideas of Italian Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci, and argues his work has considerable contemporary relevance when re-considering educational leadership in today's age of crises. This volume will be of pivotal interest to academics, researchers, and postgraduates in the fields of educational leadership, the sociology of education, and education policy and politics. Practitioners interested in educational leadership and social theory, and those active in social movements, may also find the book of use.

The article aims to introduce the works of eminent Iranian Marxist theoretician, Kamal Khosravi, to Western readers. Over the past few decades, Khosravi has written extensively on Marx, Marxism, and Marxist methodology. Through translations and his own writings, he has worked tirelessly to introduce Iranian readers to the rich debates on Marxist methodology and value theory that have developed in the West since the 1960s. More recently, as the lead editor of the Iranian journal Critique, his writings (...) are having an influence on the ongoing social movements as they are being disseminated and discussed amongst activists and labour leaders. In this article, we situate his writings within the developments of Iranian and Western Marxism. (shrink)

"If we are to understand not only the direct impact of Marx on the development of German thought but also his sometimes extremely indirect influence, an exact knowledge of Hegel, of both his greatness and his limitation, is absolutely indispensable."- from the preface. It is well known that Hegel exerted a major influence on the development of Marx's thought. This circumstance led Lukács, one of the chief Marxist theoreticians of this century, to embark on his exploration of Hegelian (...) antecedents in the German intellectual tradition, their concrete expression in the work of Hegel himself, and later syntheses of seemingly contradictory modes of though. Four phases of Hegel's intellectual development are examined: "Hegel's early republican phase," "the crisis in Hegel's views on society and the earliest beginnings of his dialectical method," "rationale and defense of objective idealism," and "the breach with Schelling and _ The Phenomenology of Mind_." Lukács completed this study in 1938, but because of the imminent outbreak of war, it was not published until the late 1940s. A revised German edition appeared in 1954, and it is this text that is the basis of this first English translation of the work. (shrink)

This book traces ideological trends in China through a range of historical and comparative perspectives, spanning the ancient belief systems of Confucianism, Legalism, and Taoism to political ideologies of the present day. Chapters in this edited volume are divided into four parts: traditional Chinese ideology, ideology of the Republic, Maoism as an ideology and post Mao ideology, zoning in on specific historical periods from the Qing and Republic periods to the reform era, as well as the period after the founding (...) of the PRC - through which Mao Zedong's political thought is notably discussed from the perspective of epistemology and the global impact of Maoism. Key topics include Sun Yat-sen as the Father of the Republic, Li Dazhao, the early Marxist theoretician, Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist Fascism, Liang Qichao's emotional appeals through liberal political discourse, Jiang Zemin's theory of 'Three Represents' de-emphasising the Marxist concept of class, Hu Jintao's theory of 'Harmonious Society' and Xi Jinping's political thought. Contributions from world-leading scholars take both comparative and critical approaches, examining not only how studies of ideology are relevant, but how Chinese ideologies have retained their own characteristics distinct to the West. As the first comprehensive study of this subject in the English language, Chinese Ideologywill appeal to students and scholars of philosophy, political science, history, and Asian studies more broadly. (shrink)

In the corpus of Marxist and Communist theory, there exists no complete analysis of what the future society will look like. Marx, himself, was skeptical about the possibility of providing such an analysis. Nevertheless, most Marxist theoreticians have alluded to this future society and have indicated some of its general characteristics. Analyzing the relevant writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin and Stalin, the author attempts to present a description of the communist future society according to Communist (...) doctrine. A brief evaluation is given in the final chapter but it is too brief to be very helpful. This book fills an important gap in the study of Communist ideology.—R. J. B. (shrink)

Since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the validity of Marxism and Marxist theory has undergone intense scrutiny both within and outside the academy. In _Lukács After Communism_, Eva L. Corredor conducts ten lively and engaging interviews with a diverse group of international scholars to address the continued relevance of György Lukács’s theories to the post-communist era. Corredor challenges these theoreticians, who each have been influenced by the man once considered the foremost theoretician of Marxist aesthetics, (...) to reconsider the Lukácsean legacy and to speculate on Marxist theory’s prospects in the coming decades. The scholars featured in this collection—Etienne Balibar, Peter Bürger, Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, Jacques Leenhardt, Michael Löwy, Roberto Schwarz, George Steiner, Susan Suleiman, and Cornel West—discuss a broad array of literary and political topics and present provocative views on gender, race, and economic relations. Corredor’s introduction provides a biographical synopsis of Lukács and discusses a number of his most important theoretical concepts. Maintaining the ongoing vitality of Lukács’s work, these interviews yield insights into Lukács as a philosopher and theorist, while offering anecdotes that capture him in his role as a teacher-mentor. (shrink)

The term 'fascism' continues to be very much in currency in Philippines society. To the Filipino people, its meaning is often drawn from pained memory of wholesale deprivation of democratic rights and large-scale human rights abuses. Yet, to many, the fear of fascism has still to give way to a deeper understanding of this menace. This may hold true even among those belonging to the progressive movement. One Marxist philosopher and theoretician who gave extended treatment of the issues surrounding (...) the character and conditions giving rise to fascism was Nicos Poulantzas, whose theory is employed here to interrogate the debates about fascism in the post-Marcos Philippines context. (shrink)

ArgumentBer Borochov, the Marxist Zionist revolutionary who founded the political party Poyle Tsien, was also one of the key theoreticians of Yiddish scholarship. His landmark 1913 essay, “The Tasks of Yiddish Philology,” was his first contribution to the field and crowned him as its chief ideologue. Modeled after late nineteenth-century European movements of linguistic nationalism, “The Tasks” was the first articulation of Yiddish scholarship as a discrete field of scientific research. His tasks ranged from the practical: creating a (...) standardized dictionary and grammar, researching the origins and development of the language, and establishing a language institute; to the overtly ideological: the “nationalizing and humanizing” of the Yiddish language and its speakers. The essay brought a new level of sophistication to the field, established several of its ideological pillars, and linked Yiddish scholarship to the material needs of the Jewish people. Although “The Tasks” was greeted with a great deal of skepticism upon its publication, after his death, Borochov became widely accepted as the “founder” of modern Yiddish studies. (shrink)

In Search of a Political Philosophy is an analysis of the three democratic `isms'--conservatism, liberalism, and socialism--and of the distinct nature of the all-consuming ideology of Marxist communism. W. J. Stankiewicz is concerned with the conscious and unconscious assumptions of the proponents and followers of each ideology, and those of their theoreticians and critics. Stankiewicz examines the norms by which political ideologies are characterized, and discusses which of these are given precedence. He provides an analysis of how each (...) ideology views such issues as freedom and restraint, responsibility, equality, justice, power, authority, property, human nature and happiness. He also examines the areas of ideological contiguity and mutual influences, the sources of ideological incomprehension in our society, and the forces that split Western societies. In Search of a Political Philosophy takes issue with the positions of some of our leading political theorists and represents an original contribution to political philosophy in its own right. It makes a stimulating and challenging contribution to the areas of politics, political philosophy, ethics, political and social theory, the history of political thought, and the history of ideas. (shrink)

Jean-Numa Ducange’s recent work, La Révolution française et la social-démocratie. Transmissions et usages politiques de l’histoire en Allemagne et Autriche 1889–1934, provides an ambitious and theoretically-sophisticated analysis of the ways in which German and Austrian socialists interpreted the French Revolution from 1889 to the 1930s. Ducange shows how the different strands of Second International socialism interpreted the revolution in their own ways, and shows the impact of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 on this. His work does not only (...) focus on leading theoreticians such as Karl Kautsky, but also documents very effectively the way in which the readings of the French Revolution were disseminated widely through Social Democracy’s rank-and-file membership. It is a valuable contribution to the literature on the culture of Marxism in Central Europe in this period, as well as a rich addition to the literature on the resonance and uses of the French Revolution: the ‘echoes of the Marseillaise’. (shrink)

Karl Marx and the Anarchists examines Marx's disputes with the anarchist theoreticians he encountered at various stages of his career as a revolutionist. Marx's attacks on Stirner, Proudhon, and Bakunin are shown to be of vital importance to the understanding not only of the subsequent enmity between Marxists and anarchists, but also of Marx's own interpretation of revolutionary politics.

Paul Lafargue, the disciple and son-in-law of Karl Marx, helped to found the first French Marxist party in 1882. Over the next three decades, he served as the chief theoretician and propagandist for Marxism in France. During these years - which ended with the dramatic suicides of Lafargue and his wife - French socialism, and the Marxist party within it, became a significant political force. Leslie Derfler explores Lafargue's political strategies, specifically his break with party co-founder Jules Guesde (...) in the Boulanger and Dreyfus episodes and over the question of socialist syndicalist relations. Derfler shows Lafargue's importance as both political activist and theorist. He describes Lafargue's role in the formulation of such strategies as the promotion of a Second Workingmen's International, the pursuit of reform within the framework of the existent state but opposition to any socialist participation in nonsocialist governments, and the subordination of trade unionism to political action. He emphasizes Lafargue's pioneering efforts to apply Marxist methods of analysis to questions of anthropology, aesthetics, and literary criticism. (shrink)

This book examines the legacy of Antonio Gramsci and Leon Trotsky in the shadow of Stalinism in order to reassess the very different and distorted academic reception of the two figures, as well as to contribute to the revitalization of Marxism for our time. While Gramsci and Trotsky lived and died in a similar fashion, as revolutionary Marxist leaders and theoreticians, their reception in academia could not be more different. Gramsci has become tremendously popular, becoming a central figure (...) in many disciplines, while Trotsky remains largely ignored. Saccarelli argues that not only is Gramsci popular for the wrong reasons--being routinely distorted and depoliticized--even when rescued from his contemporary users, Gramsci remains inadequate. Conversely, the fact that Trotsky remains beyond the pale of "theory" is a terrible indictment of the current state of academic thinking. (shrink)

Rosa Luxemburg is considered as important critic of the economic and political violence which is indispensable to the capitalist system. However, little is written about her concept of revolutionary violence, as is usually the case in the context of her criticism of the Russian revolution. The aim of the article is to reconstruct her views on revolutionary violence based on less known sources. The analysis shows that the Polish Marxist was an original theoretician of revolutionary violence who consiedered the (...) issues of armed uprising and the use of brutal means against counter-revolutionaries in an interesting and unique way. (shrink)

In 1996, the sociological journal Theory and Society devoted a special issue to “Theory and Theoreticians.”1 My contribution, titled “For Theory,” was intended as an homage to the late Alvin Gouldner, the radical social theorist, self-described “outlaw Marxist,” and founding editor of the journal, among whose many books was one called For Sociology.2 The essay was also dedicated to the memory of Bill Readings, a gifted literary theorist inspired in particular by Jean-François Lyotard, and a participant in the (...) seminar I had led at the School of Criticism and Theory a decade earlier. Best known for his unflinching critique of what he called “the university in ruins,” Bill had lost his life at the age of thirty-four... (shrink)

If one looks at the controversial premises of analytical approaches to fascism according to Roger Griffin, it is not surprising that a yawning distance has opened up between Marxist and non-Marxist schools of interpretation. In this situation whereby two camps are mutually ignorant of one another, it is certainly suggestive that the liberal British theoretician of fascism should put himself forward to play the role of a ‘mediator’, even if he faces the danger of significant criticism from both (...) schools of interpretation. But Griffin’s attempt takes place on a predominantly theoretical level. The author of this essay instead places the notion of revolution in historical-empirical perspective, in order to distinguish it from the account associated with (liberal) representatives of the ‘new consensus’. He then examines, in particular, whether National Socialism represented a utopia which satisfied revolutionary aspirations. The author further asks whether fascism could separate itself from its (early) conservative support to an extent that would permit commentators to meaningfully identify a revolutionary breakthrough. And finally he clarifies what the modernizing achievements of fascism during its time in power actually were. Against this background, there does seem at least the possibility of a dialogue between the two approaches that would advance each of them. (shrink)

This book examines the legacy of Antonio Gramsci and Leon Trotsky in the shadow of Stalinism in order to reassess the very different and distorted academic reception of the two figures, as well as to contribute to the revitalization of Marxism for our time. While Gramsci and Trotsky lived and died in a similar fashion, as revolutionary Marxist leaders and theoreticians, their reception in academia could not be more different. Gramsci has become tremendously popular, becoming a central figure (...) in many disciplines, while Trotsky remains largely ignored. Saccarelli argues that not only is Gramsci popular for the wrong reasons--being routinely distorted and depoliticized--even when rescued from his contemporary users, Gramsci remains inadequate. Conversely, the fact that Trotsky remains beyond the pale of "theory" is a terrible indictment of the current state of academic thinking. (shrink)

The pre-1932 writings of Otto Kirchheimer are often described by researchers as the work of a young ‘left-Schmittian’, a radical Marxist who gave the anti-liberal critique and theoretical apparatus of his Doktorvater Carl Schmitt a new purpose for different ‘political ends’. The danger of this approach is that fundamental divisions between the societal conceptualizations of both theoreticians are ignored in lieu of apparent terminological similarity. Through the lens of economy, it is therefore the intent of this article to (...) continue in the tradition of Alfons Söllner and Frank Schale, pushing against this assumed affinity and highlighting Otto Kirchheimer’s unique defense of liberal democracy. (shrink)

The present stage in the development of the Marxist-Leninist theory of esthetics cannot but be recognized as productive in the sense that there has been a noticeable expansion of the sphere of studies in esthetics, which has come to embrace ever newer problems that heretofore were virtually or entirely ignored by scholarship in our country. Unfortunately, the problem identified in the title of the present article has not been among those treated. The subject of art and personality differences has (...) had no single monograph or even a chapter in those inclusive works of recent years in which attempts have been made at a systematic presentation of the entire content of the esthetic teachings of Marxism . It is only certain aspects of this subject that have attracted the attention of theoreticians, and then they have been examined only in passing, within the context of other problems. (shrink)

What is one to do with a work whose modest opening lines by the editor proclaim it to be “one of the most crucial documents in European Marxism since … well, since maybe ever”? Almost as if to reinforce this claim, the book comes padded with no fewer than three introductions, three prefaces, and a long epilogue. This alone should alert the unaware reader that the impenetrability of the text is due not to any conceptual profundity — as epigones would (...) have it — but to an unimaginable theoretical confusion. The publisher's PR frontwoman seeks to market Negri as a “Eurocommunist theoretician” jailed for his explosive revolutionary views. (shrink)

A Kantian Utopia in Russia: Erikh Solov'ëv. The article deals with Erikh Solov'ëv, a historian of philosophy who is one of the best Soviet and post-Soviet exponents of Kant. In several of his works and articles, published in the 1990s, Solov'ëv has attempted to apply the ideas of Kant's social philosophy to post-Soviet realities. Kant is important above all as a theoretician of a free subjectivity, human rights, and a critic of paternalism in social life. Several Kantian motives came to (...) the fore during the perestrojka when the Marxist "class approach" was abandoned and "all-human" values entered into the discussion. Later, Solov'ëv attempted to develop Kantian guidelines for a post-Soviet society, including moral norms for businessmen in the new Russia, but these attempts bore the distinct hallmark of social utopianism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dmitry Khanin THE POSTMODERN POSTURE Postmodernists—the sectarians ofour day—proclaim that the old kingdom of historical narrative and historical subject has perished, and is now being replaced by a new one of ahistorical discourses and ahistorical characters. According to these prophets, "history" is anyway just changes in ways of talking about history. Anyone who does not agree with the ahistoricity of the postmodern world oudook may be accused—and tried on (...) the spot—of defending the cause of the totalitarian Reason against the most liberating movement of today. This postmodernist abuse of history is paradoxical, since the very notion of history coming to its end and giving way to the ahistorical kingdom of freedom and merry debauchery is itself a very old idea, even a mythological one. The description ofhistory as marching toward its own demise relies on a whole tradition which portrays history as a drama. Aristode's conception of tragedy as a sequence of actions culminating in a dénouement has no doubt shaped this view of historical process. Christian and other religious millenarians have announced the end of history already many times. Yet another notorious instance of such eschatological daydreaming is the futurology of Karl Marx, who envisaged the kingdom of communism as occupying this same ahistorical space. A rather obsolete idea, perhaps, but it seems still to attract postmodernists, though they give it a characteristic twist, since they sincerely believe theory, discourse, écriture (i.e., theoretico-symbolical activity) are much more important than any actual historical contentprocesses and events. One of the most notable spokesmen for this approach is Arthur Danto, who insists that world history evolved in a good Hegelian manner until the theorists came to understand that history depends on their Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 239-247 240Philosophy and Literature texts much more than theorists themselves depend on historical processes and events.1 Many theoreticians working in an otherwise Marxist tradition similarly are glad to assert with FredricJameson that we must say farewell to Marx's positivistic illusion that history is driven by laws disguised as economic forces.2 In the epoch of "late capitalism," says Jameson, consumption gains the upper hand over production and becomes the mainspring of history. Of course, in light of recent doings in Europe I am tempted to ask if we owe it to postmodernists—and their ahistorical, inconsistent, and generally confounding claims about history lying in ruins—that the Berlin Wall actually is in ruins and Vaclav Havel is president of Czechoslovakia. Even more daring theorists may now declare an era of "very late capitalism." Here it will not be merely the mass media that act transformatively on society (as McLuhan claimed), but rather consumer goods themselves, like state-of-the-art washing machines or French perfumes, which create a new aura of intellectual discourse. TL· Postmodern Scene: Excremental Culture and Hyper-AesÜietics, a book by two Canadian authors, Arthur Kroker and David Cook, promotes such a sea change in the theoretical landscape and along the way presents a joyous recapitulation ofthe latest fads in postmodern thinking. The new apostolic generation ofpostmodern critics seems to enjoy the beautiful new things that can be bought for bucks, worrying at the same time that bucks may be losing some of their purchasing power. Like Hari-Krishnas dancing in the street they luckily possess a sort of happy consciousness which also recalls their puritanical great grandfathers who regarded profligacy as the greatest sin and much preferred saving to spending. In what follows I want to draw a portrait of this new postmodern posture. A few main assumptions underlie Kroker's and Cook's wake for postmodernism, which, in its peculiar genre of philosophic obituary, epitomizes and thus prepares for future oblivion views which were exceedingly popular in the preceding decade. First of all, the authors adopt Baudrillard's equation of Marx and Nietzsche: "Marx and Nietzsche shared a deep and common affinity in meditating upon historical (Christian) and materialistic (capitalist) expressions ofthewill ofpower."3 From Baudrillard's perspective Marx appears as a pathetic romantic who tried to defend the "referential illusion" by renaturalizing concrete labor even though its entirely abstract character was brilliandy revealed in Das Kapital. Baudrillard... (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to analyze the soviet interpretation of the phenomenon of political realism. the author contends that since soviet political theory is mainly motivated by ideological prejudices, the ideas of soviet theoreticians exhibit a lack of historical and philosophical sensitivity. in the paper several soviet writers are distinguished, the most important of them-a karenin. his erudite contribution amounts to a redescription of political realism and power politics in marxist-leninist terms. the essay focuses on a (...) number of karenin's arguments, in which objectivity recedes into the background to give room to ideological presuppositions. to provide the necessary corrective, the author tries to present in conclusion a logical and concise definition of the central ideas of political realism. (shrink)

As we know, the activity approach to understanding man and his world became widespread in Russian philosophy in the 1960s-70s. At the time, it was, I should emphasize, one of the most significant manifestations of progressive trends in Soviet philosophical thought, which strived to overcome the stagnation and dogmatism of official Marxism. However, as it happens whenever the authority of an intellectual current is established, the activity approach and the category of activity were used frequently in a superficial way, simply (...) because they were fashionable at the time. This gave me occasion to announce, in a collection of articles on the problems of the a tivity approach published in 1976, that a sort of magical word "activity," unsupported by responsible conceptual analysis, was widely used.1 There is no doubt, however, that the development of the activity approach by serious theoreticians was backed up by sufficiently deep conceptual analysis, which advanced our philosophical culture of the time. (shrink)

This volume is divided into three parts. In the first, Ms. Dunayevskaya unfolds the story of Luxemburg’s life as “theoretician, as activist and as internationalist.” In the second part she briefly discusses the Women’s Liberation Movement as a historical subject and thus as “revolutionary force and reason.” In the third part she focuses on Marx as the theoretician of “revolution in permanence.” Throughout the book, history, philosophy, and critique are interwoven into a whole. Whether a coherent whole emerges from Dunayevskaya’s (...) careful work, or the book consists of three welcome but not well-related contributions to Marxist and feminist scholarship is not clear. (shrink)

This article is a critical review of Terry Eagleton’s latest publication, Why Marx Was Right . Eagleton, one of the more celebrated Marxist literary critics in academia, presents his readers with a manifesto of Marxian individualism for the budding theoreticians of market socialism. This book represents Eagleton’s latest sally from the cloisters of stuffy English departments into the realms of economic theory. I cover many of the book’s most important talking points, debate his primary theses with ample counterpoints, (...) and probe Eagleton’s vision of the socialist future from an Austrian angle to see where the author succeeds and falls short of his mark. (shrink)

Full Professor of Law at the University of Padua and guest lecturer at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Antonio Negri, born in 1933 and raised in Catholic Action, had to his credit an impressive series of works on law, historicism, and philosophy before launching himself upon the career of chief philosopher and theoretician of Leninist revolution in Italy. Domination and Sabotage is the fifth in a series of shorter works that have issued from his seminars at the University of Padua, all (...) published by Feltrinelli in the well-known series Opuscoli marxisti and all treating of the relation between advanced industrial society and proletarian revolution. The tract has enjoyed an extraordinarily wide circulation and has been hailed as a new Communist Manifesto. Its particular focus is on the question of Marxist method, and within that question its chief interest for the present reviewer is the secularized religious motif that runs through Negri’s thought. (shrink)

Della Volpe was a professor of philosophy, one of the leading theoreticians of the Italian Communist Party in the 50s and 60s, and one of the few prominent intellectuals to retain party membership following the Hungarian revolt. Nonetheless, his Marxism is distinctly heterodox. The main thrust of Rousseau and Marx, which contains an essay of that name as well as several short papers on Soviet legality and "materialist methodology," is to establish certain continuities between Marx’s thought and earlier philosophy. (...) Marx is here depicted as attempting to solve a problem first stated by Rousseau, the problem of egalitarian liberty, and as applying the logic of modern experimental science to moral and political questions. (shrink)