A Survey of Critical Theories of "Western Marxism"

This synoptic essay considers the nature and evolution of the Marxist theory that developed in Western Europe, after the defeat of the proletarian rebellions in the West and the isolation of the Russian Revolution in the East in the early 1920s. It focuses particularly on the work of Lukacs, Korsch and Gramsci; Adorno, Marcuse and Benjamin; Sartre and Althusser; and Della Volpe and Colletti, together with other figures within Western Marxism from 1920 to 1975. The theoretical production of each of these thinkers is related simultaneously to the practical fate of working-class struggles and to the cultural mutations of bourgeois thought in their time. The philosophical antecedents of the various school within this tradition Lukacsian, Gramscian, Frankfurt, Sartrean, Althusserian and Della Volpean are compared, and the specific innovations of their respective systems surveyed. The structural unity of 'Western Marxism', beyond the diversity of its individual thinkers, is then assessed, in a balance-sheet that contrasts its heritage with the tradition of 'classical' Marxism that preceded it, and with the commanding problems which will confront any historical materialism to succeed it.

Our analysis has focused on the concept of state capitalism as applied by its various proponents to the Third World and advanced capitalist countries as well as the socialist countries. This concept was employed to explain the changes which occurred in the nature and role of the state in contemporary societies, particularly its intervention in and regulation over their economies. The proponents of the thesis of state capitalism for the Third World and advanced capitalist countries accurately describe the greater intervention of the state through nationalization measures and the introduction of state planning. Their interpretation of these processes as the emergence of state capitalism emanates from a conception of the state as external to capitalist production relations. They have failed to demonstrate that capitalism, in either the Third World or advanced countries, has taken a qualitatively new form; more specifically that (1) private capital has been subordinated to the state, and (2) that the operation of the market is controlled by national plans. Our critique has shown that the increasing intervention of the state, which albeit plays an important role in these societies, is explainable in terms of the logic of capitalism in its various manifestations, The state, therefore, has always been an intrinsic component of capitalist relations of production, and the concept of state capitalism, which attributes new properties to the character of capitalism, is untenable. Adherents of the state capitalist model for the socialist countries attempted to reveal that capitalist forces (embodied in the state bureaucracy) and relations had restored their dominance in these societies subsequent to anti-capitalist revolutions. However, we have shown the inadequacy of their argument by demonstrating that (1) capitalist relations of production within these societies, and that in fact some sectors (the completely planned sectors), have lost their commodity character; (2) that the state bureaucracy cannot correspond to a capitalist class because it neither can accumulate means of production nor purchase labor power for its own ends; and (3) that they neglect to see that societies in early forms of socialism, particularly within the context of a capitalist world market, retain certain capitalist elements and forms of inequality. Although we do not deny that capitalist relations of production may regain their dominance within these societies and that the state bureaucracy may correspond to a capitalist class, these have not yet been demonstrated. Consequently, the use of the concept of state capitalism to characterize these societies does not accurately reflect reality. We therefore maintain that state capitalism as a sociological concept is presently overused and lacks the theoretical rigor a concept requires if it is to be useful for social analysis. State capitalism, therefore, must be used as an analytical category and not merely as a loose descriptive device. Our critique of the state capitalism concept is not merely semantical, but is based on a fundamentally different conception of the character of the state in capitalism as well as in socialism. The adherents of state capitalism - in capitalist or socialist societies - must demonstrate that social reality indeed expresses new properties which necessitate the creation of a new concept.

Since the First World War, Marxist philosophy has been dominated by two basic frameworks for understanding Marxism and the world. The first of these frameworks is Marxist-Leninism as it has been developed in Soviet philosophy and practice. The second framework is Lukaicsian humanistic Marxism. The ascendency of these two frameworks has its origins in the failure of the Marxism of the Second International. Both Lenin and Lukacs argued that the political failure of the Second International had its roots in the philosophical errors of its leaders. In particular, both Lenin and Lukaics criticized the Marxism of the Second International for its mechanistic and undialectical misconception of Marx's economics and theory of history. Bad philosophy of science contributed to errors in politics. In this respect, Lenin and Lukaics were in agreement. However, in their understanding of dialectics and the proper method for social theory, Lenin and Lukacs were in fundamental disagreement. Where Lenin accepted the dialectics of nature, Lukacs restricted dialectics to processes involving conscious subjects. Where Lenin held a unity of science position with respect to the natural and the social sciences, Lukacs held that social theory required a method distinct from the method of the natural sciences. Where Lenin held that everything which exists is a product of matter in motion, Lukacs rejected this thesis as untenable in post-critical philosophy. Where Lenin held that knowledge was accurate reflection of external reality, Lukacs advanced an epistemology of praxis. The Lukacsian framework provided a foundation for Marxist alternatives to Soviet Marxism such as Critical Theory, Praxis Marxism, and Existential Marxism. By the 1950s the framework had established itself as orthodoxy in Western Marxism.

The impoverishment of mainstream International Relations (IR) scholarship, especially as it is practised in the bastions of academic power and respectability in the United States, can be registered in terms of its wilful and continuing conceptual blindness to mutually constitutive relations of governance/resistance at work in the production of global politics. This has been underscored in recent years by the rise of powerful transnational social movements seeking to reform or transform global capitalism, a coalition of coalitions recently reincarnated in the form of a global peace movement opposing the blatantly neo-imperial turn in US foreign policy. As the essays in this Special Issue attest, critical scholars of world politics have developed conceptual vocabularies with which to (re-)construct, from various analytical-political perspectives, aspects of these governance/resistance relations. My task in this article is to argue that – under historical circumstances of capitalist modernity – a dialectical understanding of class-based powers is necessary, if by no means sufficient, for understanding social powers more generally, and issues of global governance and resistance which implicate those powers. Although it is not without its tensions and limitations, I have found re-envisionings of Marxian political theory inspired by Western Marxism – and in particular by interpretations of Antonio Gramsci – to be enabling for such a project. Marxian theory provides critical leverage for understanding the structures and dynamics of capitalism, its integral if complex relationship to the modern form of state, the class-based powers it enables and the resistances these engender; and Gramsci's rich if eternally inchoate legacy suggests a conceptual vocabulary for a transformative politics in which a variety of anti-capitalist movements might coalesce in order to produce any number of future possible worlds whose very possibility is occluded by capitalism. In the present context of globalising capitalism and neo-imperialism, such resistance has taken the form of a transnational confluence of movements for global justice and peace.

The most important intellectual source of Habermas’ thinking is the broad, flexible and interdisciplinary Marxist tradition which inspired what came to be called the ‘Frankfurt School’ of Critical Theory, based in the early 1930s and again from 1950 in the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. As Habermas showed in detail in his Theory of Communicative Action, this tradition draws on both Marx and Max Weber, on another non-Marxist, Weber’s contemporary Georg Simmel, and on the father of ‘western Marxism’, Georg Lukács. In an autobiographical interview, Habermas recalls reading Lukács for the first time with great excitement, but with a sense that his work was no longer directly relevant to post-war societies such as West Germany. His thinking remained shaped, however, by a western Marxist agenda emphasizing the interplay between capitalist exploitation and bureaucratic state rule, and their implications for individual identity and collective political autonomy. More concretely, as a member of what has been called the ‘Hitler Youth generation’, drawn as a child into complicity with the most appalling regime of modern times, he was horrified both by the crimes of the Third Reich and by the unwillingness of his compatriots to face up to their responsibility for what had happened.

In Western Marxism, Domenico Losurdo identifies the antithetical and sometimes hostile positions expressed on anti-colonial struggles as the salient feature of the “Western Marxist” tradition of radical European theory. As Losurdo shows, the formation of such positions, which dispense with an essential component of the Marxist theory of class struggles, is a result of a prevalence of theoretical concepts and tendencies within the Western Marxist canon, absent in leading spokespeople from countries in which Marxist governments held power after October 1917. As the article develops in part 1, the positions at issue include messianism, anti-statism, utopianism, anti-scientism, anti-technologism, anti-modernism, anti-labourism, antinomianism, romanticism, and idealism. In part 2, responding to critics who have challenged the value of Losurdo’s characterisation of a “Western Marxism” spanning into post-structuralist thinkers, the article shows how discerning Losurdo’s analysis is by focusing on popular “radical” Italian theorist, Giorgio Agamben. In the conclusion, the article is situated within the critical responses to Western Marxism, and calls attention to a perceived tension in Losurdo’s treatment of Ernst Bloch, and more widely, in the Marxian stance towards bourgeois rights and liberties.

Since its advent in the early 1920s, Western Marxism has undergone a torturous process from anti-liberalism to virtually liberalism. The main theoretical deficiency behind this process is the over-estimation of Marx’s cultural critique of capitalism. As his economic research gradually deepened, Marx’s dual critique of capitalism from economic and cultural perspectives matured. When the leading proponents of Soviet Marxism gave prominence to Marx’s economic critique, as circumstances required, they and some key figures in the Second International misread his theory with emphasis on economic determinism. In contrast, Georg Lukacs and most Western Marxists proceeded to develop a Marxian cultural critique with the consequence that his economic research being marginalized. Without the counterbalance of a continuous and consistent economic theory to challenge a confident international capitalism, cultural critique is consequently reorganized in confluence with liberalism, which is centered on an individual ontology. Re-excavating Marxian dual critical theory may help Western Marxism escape the dilemma.

This article reconstructs the theory of ecological development that underlies the mature intellectual production of Friedrich Engels. It does so by means of a dialogue between recent scholarly interpretations of his thought, on the one hand, and a contextualized discussion of its reception in Latin America, on the other. Published in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, the mature work of Engels enabled Latin American Marxism to challenge mainstream theories of development that framed this concept in terms of mere growth or modernization, and to provide a multilinear understanding of historical and technological change in modern societies. For Engels, the (eco)socialist development of the forces of production would require the construction of a mass movement against capital. Accordingly, the article also unearths his writings on political strategy, and discusses the ways in which they informed anti-dictatorial struggles in Latin America. By bringing together the economic and the political underpinnings of an Engelsian theory of development, the article rethinks ecological socialism beyond Western Marxism – especially after its shift towards degrowth – and points at its implications for building an environmental politics of the working class.

As an important figure in Western Marxism, Louis Althusser's work "Sur la reproduction" theoretically reconstructs the Marxist theory of the state from the concept of reproduction, and Marx's theory of the state has always been a key issue in the study of Marxism. This paper analyzes the concept of "reproduction" as a starting point for analyzing Althusser's interpretation of Marx's theory of social formations and describes the theory of the state he constructed on this basis. Althusser's complete and rich theory of the state is an important development of the Marxist theory of the state.

This article explores the profound intellectual legacy and contributions of Perry Anderson, a leading figure in Marxist theory, history, and as the editor-in-chief of the New Left Review. Born in London in 1938, Anderson's scholarly journey encompasses diverse disciplines including political science, history, and literature, establishing him as a pivotal figure in contemporary Marxist thought. The study conducts a comprehensive historical review, focusing on Anderson’s seminal works such as "Considerations on Western Marxism," "The Origins of Postmodernity," and "The New Old World," situating them within the socio-political context of post-World War II Europe and the emergence of the New Left movement. Methodologically, employing a historical approach, the research examines Anderson’s critical interpretations of historical processes, socio-economic structures, and ideological formations. It elucidates how Anderson's writings challenge and extend traditional Marxist historiography, offering nuanced insights into the complexities of contemporary capitalism and its global ramifications. Major findings highlight the reception and impact of Anderson’s works, emphasizing their influence on Marxist scholarship and their resonance among global audiences, particularly in China. By documenting the interpretation and reception of Anderson’s works in China, the study underscores their international significance and cross-cultural relevance in understanding capitalist ideologies and societal structures. Furthermore, the article proposes avenues for future research, suggesting directions to explore Anderson’s ongoing relevance in contemporary socio-political challenges and advancing progressive perspectives in global intellectual discourse. Ultimately, this research contributes to a deeper appreciation of Anderson’s intellectual legacy, illuminating his enduring influence on Marxist theory and critical social analysis.

Fitzgerald (1896-1940) is one of the most outstanding novelists in America of the 1920s and the spokesman of the “Lost Generation”, as well as the creator of “the Jazz Age”. As a typical writer of “Lost Generation” in the United States during the post-war period of the economic prosperity, he not only experienced false prosperity of “the 1920s-full of clamor” – “the Jazz Age”, but also predicted that it would not last long. His representative works The Great Gatsby, is a novel about a typical American young man -- Gatsby’s pursuit of the American dream, which vividly portraits the trend of money worship and epicureanism in America of the so-called “Jazz Age” and reveals people’s selfishness and indifference in the United States during the economic prosperity period after the World War I. Georg Lukács, a Western Marxist theorist, points out in Historical Novel, critical works that “A historical fiction is a story in which history is set among historical events ”. Fitzgerald’s purpose is to show the postwar social life and mental outlook of the Americans in the 1920s and try to arouse people’s introspection and exploration for the value of survival. Since the advent of the novel, it has been the focus of most critics. Among a large number of comments, most focus on the analysis of the text and the subject matter of the novel, as well as the author’s writing techniques. While few have tried to employ Western Marxist criticism to analyze the themes and techniques of the literature perspectives of Georg Lukács. The paper attempts to conduct an analysis of realistic themes, such as impressionism and symbolism in The Great Gatsby from the theory of Western Marxist criticism to reflecting the corruption of people’s value.

In the past decade, New Left Review and Telos have jointly done more to open up the ongoing tradition of continental Marxism to English-speaking readers than any other journals. Through their lengthy and frequent commentaries on what until recently has been an “unknown dimension” of Marxist theory, they have stimulated a discussion more sophisticated and open-ended than any in the previous history of radical thought in Britain or America. Without their tireless translations of continental articles and books, our awareness of what is now known as “Western Marxism” would be severely impoverished. Yet, except for the rare article by Robin Blackburn or Russell Jacoby, writers associated with one journal have been almost entirely absent from the pages of the other.

This article offers a major reinterpretation of the nature of interwar Marxist theory. It does so by offering a new reading of the work of Karl Korsch in the context of a network of ex-communist intellectuals. In Marxism and Philosophy (1923), Korsch responded to the split in the labour movement with a radical new claim to Marxist orthodoxy. Rather than engaging in Marx exegesis, he aimed to turn the Marxist ‘method’ on Marxism's own history. In the narrative he constructed, Bolshevik-inspired Communism appeared as the next logical step in the dialectic. But this argument rested on a historicisation of Marx's own writing that led to an unresolvable tension in Korsch's work that threatened to undermine its claim to Marxist orthodoxy. Once it is understood that Marxism was a political currency as much as a purely theoretical space of argument, Korsch's reluctance to resolve the tension one way or the other becomes understandable. This reinterpretation of Korsch's work challenges the ‘Western Marxism’ paradigm in which he has been read, showing that Korsch’s work presupposed a reading of revolutionary success and potential rather than defeat and that he did not advocate a turn to superstructural or cultural questions in the manner supposed.

Previous articleNext article FreeOn Graduation from Default, Inflation, and Banking Crises: Elusive or Illusion?Rong Qian, Carmen M. Reinhart, and Kenneth RogoffRong QianUniversity of Maryland Search for more articles by this author , Carmen M. ReinhartUniversity of Maryland and NBER Search for more articles by this author , and Kenneth RogoffHarvard University and NBER Search for more articles by this author University of MarylandUniversity of Maryland and NBERHarvard University and NBERPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreI. IntroductionThis paper addresses the concept of "graduation" from external default, banking, and inflation crises.1 Employing a vast data set cataloging more than 2 centuries of financial crises for over 60 countries developed in Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), we explore the risk of recidivism across advanced economies versus middle- and low-income countries. We show that 2 decades without a relapse (falling into crisis) is an important marker. After 1800, roughly two-thirds of recurrences of external default on sovereign debt and three-quarters of recurrence of inflation crisis occur within 20 years.2 However, crisis recidivism distributions have very fat tails, so that it takes at least 50 and perhaps 100 years to meaningfully speak of "graduation." Indeed, in the case of banking crises in particular, it is hard to argue that any country in the world has truly graduated.Given that graduation (with its companion question, will this ever happen again?) is arguably one of the most important issues in macroeconomics and development, there has been remarkably little theoretical or empirical investigation of the subject. For example, the large theory literature on sovereign lending and default, while producing many important insights into the fundamental distinction between willingness to pay and ability to pay, largely treats a country's basic developmental and political characteristics as parametric. There is very little on explaining the political, social, economic, and financial dynamics that ultimately lead a country to be less prone to certain types of crises.We acknowledge that the concept of graduation is a hard nut to crack. Many advanced countries had enjoyed a long hiatus from systemic banking crises after World War II and yet had huge problems during the recent global financial crisis. After 90 years of serial default running from 1557 to 1647, Spain did not default again until 1809. Even the advanced countries had high inflation as recently as the 1970s and early 1980s, while many emerging markets had hyperinflation less than 2 decades ago. Is the advent of modern independent central banks sufficient to guarantee that fiscal dominance never again reasserts itself? Have the rich countries that have supposedly "graduated" from serial default on external debt shifted the locus of risk to de jure or de facto (via inflation or financial repression) default on domestic debt? Does the theory of sovereign default or of financial development tell us that we should expect richer and more advanced countries to be immune? Or is graduation a mirage, with the "graduates" really being at best "star pupils," and can graduates be distinguished from patients in remission?Our goals in this paper are fairly narrowly circumscribed. Most of our analysis is based on data on the dates and duration of the crises themselves. We speculate on underlying causal factors but do not approach them empirically here.3 Although the various types of crises often occur in clusters, our quantitative analysis mainly treats individual crises separately.We begin the paper in Section II by defining the crises that we will catalog. In Section III of the paper, we present a summary time line of crisis, followed by a brief overview of the early history of serial default on external debt. An interesting case is France, which defaulted on its external debt no fewer than nine times from the middle of the sixteenth century through the end of the Napoleonic War but has not defaulted on external debt since. France is a canonical case of what we define as an "external default graduate." (This did not stop France from having numerous severe banking crises in the past 2 centuries.)In the main body of the paper, we provide a broad aggregative historical overview of the data across different types of crises, distinguishing between advanced countries and emerging markets, also taking into account the advent of International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs after World War II as another marker of a debt crisis.In Section IX of the paper, we speculate on links between graduation and development and the possibility for recidivism among richer countries. The fact that the canonical theory of sovereign default does not strongly predict smaller problems in richer countries (it does not strongly predict graduation) might be considered a flaw in theory. But it might also be taken as warning sign that graduation can be more difficult and take even more time than our data of "just" a few centuries can reveal. On banking crises, the theory needs to better explain why countries never seem to graduate.The main empirical results from our long-dated historical time series on financial crises may be described as follows. First, the process of "graduation," that is, emergence from frequent crisis suffering status, is a long process. False starts are common and recurrent. This is especially true in the case of banking crises, for both high-income countries and middle- and low-income countries.Second, the vulnerability to crisis in high-income countries versus middle- and low-income countries differs mostly in external default crises, to a lesser extent in inflation crises, and surprisingly little in banking crises.4Third, the sequence of graduation for most countries is first to graduate from external default crisis, then from inflation crisis, and eventually from banking. The last stage of graduation is extremely difficult, even for high-income countries. Among high-income countries, even though most of them have graduated from external default crisis and inflation crisis, more than 20% recently experienced a banking crisis, and far more when weighted by size. Schularick and Taylor (2009) speculate that advanced countries continue to experience credit busts despite arguably advancing regulation and institutions, because as risks moderate, financial systems grow and restore them.Finally, the role of IMF programs in crises in the modern period is important. The availability of IMF bridge loans certainly has increased countries' resilience to "sudden stops" but, even setting aside moral hazard problems, is by no means a cure-all. Countries entering IMF programs are still forced to undergo painful macroeconomic adjustments in an attempt to regain sound fiscal footing and regain access to private capital markets. The challenges of successfully implementing IMF programs are underscored by the fact that there are many significant cases in which countries default within 3 years of an IMF bailout. IMF programs may help facilitate orderly debt workouts but do not guarantee them. We also note that in its early history, many of today's rich countries regularly drew on IMF resources, although there has been a 3-decade hiatus.II. Definition of CrisesExternal debt crisis. We distinguish between external and internal debt on the basis of the legal jurisdiction where the debt contracts are enforced. This is a convenient construct given the history and evolution of sovereign debt. Obviously it may be useful to parse the data in other ways for some exercises, and in principle our data set allows that.Although there are exceptions and there has been some evolution in recent years, typically in our long-dated historical data set, external debt is denominated in foreign currency and held by foreign creditors. There are certainly important examples, such as Mexico's short-term Tesobono bonds in the mid-1990s, where the debt is domestic yet is denominated in foreign currency and held primarily by foreign creditors. Although we regard the U.S. abrogation of the gold clause in the early 1930s—when gold was revalued from $21 to $35 per ounce—to be a default on domestic debt, many non-U.S. residents were also holding the debt at the time. In general, following standard practice, we define an external debt crisis as any failure to meet contractual repayment obligations on foreign debts, including both rescheduling or repayments and outright default. (As both of these examples make clear, however, one ultimately needs to think carefully about whether graduation from external default may sometimes just mean a shift to episodic de facto and de jure internal default.)In practice, most defaults on external debt end up being partial, with creditors typically (but not always) repaying 30¢–70¢ or more on the dollar, admittedly not adjusting for risk. The rationale for lumping together defaults regardless of the ultimate "haircuts" creditors are forced to absorb is that, in practice, the fixed costs of external debt default (which include difficulties in obtaining trade credits and loss of reputation) tend to be large relative to the variable costs. In principle, one could parse episodes more finely here according to, say, output or tax revenue loss depending on data availability, although we do not undertake that exercise here. See, however, Tomz (2007) and Tomz and Wright (2007).Inflation crises. Following Reinhart and Rogoff (2004), we define inflation crises as episodes in which annual inflation exceeds 20%. This threshold is lower than the 40% we and others have used in related studies on postwar data but is a compromise reflecting that prior to World War I, average inflation rates were much lower, and 20% inflation generally represented a significant level of dysfunction. Indeed, since we are particularly interested here in inflation as a vehicle for partial default, one clearly would also want to consider lower levels of sustained unanticipated inflation such as many advanced countries experienced in the 1970s. Depending on the maturity structure of debt, sustained 10% inflation can certainly be tantamount to de facto default. A proper calibration, however, would require detailed data on the maturity structure of debt (as in Missale and Blanchard 1994) and, ideally, also on the evolution of inflation expectations. We do not attempt this here, though again, this is an important caveat to interpreting the concept of graduation from external debt crises.Banking crises. Our definition of banking crises follows standard practice (e.g., Kaminsky and Reinhart 1999; Caprio and Klingebiel 2003). Following our own earlier work, "We mark a banking crisis by two types of events: (1) bank runs that lead to the closure, merging or takeover by the public sector of one or more financial institutions and (2) if there are no runs, the closure, merging, takeover, or large-scale government assistance of an important financial institution (or group of institutions) that marks the start of a string of similar outcomes for other financial institutions" (Reinhart and Rogoff 2009, 11). We recognize that our listing of systemic (on a national scale) banking crises may be incomplete, especially prior to 1970, especially for crises outside the large money centers that attract the attention of the world financial press.5Having set out basic definitions, we are now ready to view some basic characteristics of the data. To provide context and motivation for the concept of graduation, we begin with a summary time line of financial crises since 1550, followed by a brief overview of the early history of sovereign defaults.III. A Time Line of Financial Crises and the Early History of Sovereign DefaultsTable 1 provides a summary historical perspective that helps show how the three different varieties of financial crisis have spread over time and across country groups. Between 1550 and 1800, sovereign defaults on external debt were relatively common in Europe, but they were relatively rare elsewhere if only because (a) there were few other independent nations in a position to default and (b) given the crude state of global capital markets, relatively few countries were wealthy enough to attract international capital flows. Thus defaults were relatively insignificant in the regions that constitute today's emerging markets. Systemic banking crises, however, were relatively rare everywhere. The legal and technological underpinnings of modern private banking simply had not reached a stage of maturity and depth sufficient to cause systemic crises in most instances. (Of course, there are exceptions. Following Cipolla [1982] and MacDonald [2006], Reinhart and Rogoff [2009] discuss how England's 1340 default to Florentine bankers triggered a financial crisis in Italy.) Similarly, inflation crises were relatively rare, although again there are many exceptions (see Reinhart and Rogoff 2009, chap. 12). Prior to the widespread adoption of paper currency, bouts of very high inflation were relatively difficult to engineer.Table 1. Time Line of Crises, 1550–2010 External DebtCrisesBanking CrisesInflation Crises1550–1815 (Napoleonic wars end)Frequent in advanced economies (including the "world powers" of the time); serial in some casesRareRare1826Frequent in "peripheral" advanced economies and most emerging marketsSerial in advanced; rare in emergingRare18501900Serial in advanced; more frequent in emerging1913 (WW1 begins)Frequent in advanced and emerging1945 (WWII ends)Rare in advanced and emergingPost-1945Rare19641973Serial in some emerging marketsMore frequent in advanced; serial in emergingFrequent in advanced and emergingEarly 1980sEarly 1990sFrequent in emerging2000Rare20092010??View Table ImageThe end of the Napoleonic War in the early 1800s marks a significant transition. The largest advanced countries were increasingly able to avoid external default, albeit partly by their ability to issue an increasing share of their debt domestically. Default, however, became common in "peripheral" advanced countries such as Spain and Portugal, while newly independent emerging markets such as Greece and Latin America entered a long period of serial default. Over the same period, as advanced countries developed more sophisticated banking systems, banking crises became far more common. Emerging markets were certainly affected by advanced country banking crises but did not have so many of their own, if only because their financial systems were dominated by foreign banks.By the turn of the twentieth century, emerging market financial institutions had developed to the point where domestic banking crises became more common. By the time of the Great Depression of the 1930s, banking crises were a worldwide phenomenon. Owing in no small part to the financial repression that followed in reaction to the Great Depression, banking crises were relatively rare during the period from the end of World War II until the early 1970s. As financial repression thawed, banking crises became more frequent in the advanced economies and serial in many emerging markets, bringing us to the recent financial crisis episode.Finally, Table 1 gives a time line of inflation crises, which of course were quite common in all countries in the 1970s and remained a problem in emerging markets until the past decade.We thus focus our early history on sovereign external defaults. As Reinhart et al. (2003) and Reinhart and Rogoff (2009) emphasize, many of today's advanced economies had recurrent problems with default on sovereign debt during the period when they might arguably have been characterized as emerging markets. Table 2 illustrates the case of Europe for the 3-century period 1550–1850, with the years listed marking the beginning of a sovereign default episode.Table 2. External Defaults: Europe, 1550–1850CountryYears of DefaultNumberof DefaultsAustria-Hungary1796, 1802, 1805, 1811, 18165England*1594*1*France1558, 1624, 1648, 1661, 1701, 1715, 1770, 1788, 18129Germany: Prussia1683, 1807, 18133 Hesse18141 Schleswig-Holstein18501 Westphalia18121Netherlands18141Portugal1560, 1828, 1837, 1841, 18455Russia18391Spain1557, 1575, 1596, 1607, 1627, 1647, 1809, 1820, 1831, 184310Sweden18121Source: Reinhart et al. (2003), Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), and sources cited therein.Note: The table excludes Greece (which gained independence in 1829). Note that for some countries, even if there was a default on external debt, there may have been a default on domestic debt, as was the case for Denmark (1813).* Denotes our uncertainty at this time about whether England's default involved external (as opposed to purely domestic) debt.View Table ImageAs one can see clearly from the table, serial default was quite common among the major European powers during the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, with France defaulting on its external debt nine times and Spain defaulting 10 times (with three more to follow in the second half of the nineteenth century). One important observation, immediately apparent from the table, is that there is typically a substantial interval between defaults, typically decades, but sometimes centuries. (Note that we require at least 2 years between default episodes to regard them as independent events.) After defaulting in 1683, Prussia's next default episode did not follow for more than a century in 1807. Portugal, after defaulting in 1560, did not default again until 1828, when the country lapsed into a period of serial default that did not end until 1890. At this writing, Portugal has not defaulted again since. (Importantly, during a significant portion of Portugal's quiescent period, it had effectively lost its independence.)Figure 1 gives a measure of the duration of periods of recidivism during the pre-Napoleonic era for the independent (relatively) high-income countries of our sample. The the of time between default episodes (including cases in which there was no As one can see from the half of all default recurrences after a more than with a significant even after a 1. External default duration of high-income countries, of time is as the of years between two external We first the of external default then the duration of time if it was and the episodes of default crisis with and two episodes with no countries Portugal, and Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), sources cited and country external sovereign debt defaults have much in the modern most recent default in in and in (Reinhart and Rogoff interesting are the cases of and France, despite a level of defaults in its pre-Napoleonic has not defaulted on external debt since. has not defaulted on external debt since its default at the end of the Napoleonic War in would be interesting to explore whether defaults are less to than defaults, though of course over many it is the to that many countries to up large (as in the of we will consider the of our recidivism results to the of and Rogoff (2009) also show that the of long in Table 2 are quite of some of today's emerging markets, many of which have defaulted at least during the past The of emerging markets that have experienced external debt crises if one episodes in which countries default to IMF bridge In all these the countries still as were forced to fiscal as we do not include these in our although arguably from the point of view of macroeconomic and the of debt they are important. We to this issue when we IMF The and of Crises: The now to focus on the more period, to the at the same time the analysis to include banking and inflation crises, as in Table as important in this The past 2 centuries also a much of independent nations to as various regions of the world the of In Table we present of crisis measure takes the of years a country experienced of crisis (including all years and not just the by the of years since independence (or since of External and low-income Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), sources cited and is as the of years in crisis by the of years since were for country since or the country's independence countries for external default crisis and countries for inflation and banking Latin Table 3 that the between high-income countries and the of the world in to external default crisis. The average external default crisis of the high-income group is less than half of that of middle- and low-income countries and of that of Latin countries. The would be even if we only and defaults. crisis are also in the of the world than in high-income countries although the is the average of banking crises in high-income countries and in the of the world are The results in Table 3 of course, with the time line in Table that inflation and banking crisis are lower in part because the average duration of these crises to be much to external default crises. (Note also that we are years in crisis, as opposed to the of independent Table which gives the average duration of crises, the between the mean and duration of external default crises versus inflation and banking crises. The duration of banking crises is 3 years or less across all where the world for default crises is For inflation crises, the is only 1 across all this that a country can ways to on in a state of sovereign default far more than it can continue any of as during a banking or inflation the long duration of external default crises and their it is not that large of the world have been in default over much of the last years, as by Reinhart and Rogoff of the major default episodes include the Napoleonic in the early nineteenth century and then Latin countries and Portugal in the first of the The default during the era that the Great Depression and World War when at the more than 40% of the weighted by was in default on external 2 gives the share of countries in inflation crisis over the same Note the huge in inflation crises after World and II and again in the and early The very recent history of inflation most of the world a major shift from the to be whether inflation is a that has been As Rogoff (2003) has including especially the advent of independent central banks with a have been an important in this in but so was the that political on central banks to in unanticipated to be whether the period will another many in as opposed to a shift and 2. Share of countries in inflation crisis, countries that were independent in the given Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), sources cited and if one truly that fiscal dominance will never again in most countries, historical of outright default may the true the of default inflation has been effectively The recent of public debt this 3 gives the share of the world banking crises since Note the remarkably small of banking crises during the years of financial repression that during World War II and in many countries into the 1970s. By historical this was a quiescent is also from the that this era has been long but to be to an Share of countries in banking crisis, countries that were independent in the given Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), sources cited and next three the of high-income countries with of middle- and low-income countries (including Latin what we have in Table 3 but more on external debt crises, for example, illustrates two First, as middle- and low-income countries are in default on external debt a of the time than high-income countries. high-income countries had a in external defaults in the with (as of this since the advent of rates in the 1970s. we at on since the last default crisis. We from our middle- and low-income countries very low-income countries that do not have external default by of the fact that they are not able to at all on private Share of countries in external default crisis, high-income versus middle- and low-income countries. countries high-income and middle- and low-income that were independent in the given Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), sources cited and countries seem to have graduated from default crisis, or at least into But most middle- and low-income countries have not yet the of inflation crises in middle- and low-income countries versus high-income countries. countries have had inflation crises more recently than external default crises, but the has to since the early For middle- and low-income countries, a in the has been followed by a during the is of the of very high inflation we note that it does not episodes of sustained high inflation 20% that, if unanticipated and depending on the maturity structure of government debt, may a substantial de facto default on domestic Share of countries in inflation crisis, high-income versus middle- and low-income countries. countries high-income and middle- and low-income that were independent in the given Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), sources cited and on banking crises a very different data for countries begin more the line for middle- and low-income countries only in the course, many of today's countries did not their independence until One can see that in to external default and inflation crises, banking crises are (Reinhart and Rogoff 2009, chap. Although banking crises have up in

This article analyzes two most widespread approaches towards interpretation of the humanistic content of Marx’s doctrine, which have developed within the framework of Western Marxism in the 19550s – 1970s. The first approach – Marxist humanism – describes humanism as the “initial” form of Marx's doctrine of the early period. The second approach – theoretical antihumanism – views the concept of “humanism” as ideological, unscientific and incompatible with Marxism. The analysis of modern Russian and foreign bibliographies indicates the existing ambiguity in assessment of both, Western Marxism and humanistic content of the original ideas of Marx, which defines relevance of this research. The novelty lies in the proposal to view Marxist humanism and theoretical antihumanism in conjunction with the historical establishment of Marx's theory, rather than in contraposition to each other. The author suggest to forgo the interpretation of Marx’s ideas from the perspective of humanism or antihumanism. Such interpretation not only idealizes and mystifies the content of his works, but also creates a prerequisite for narcissistic view of the surrounding material objects and nature. The latter thought is reflected in undertaken at the margin of “Capital” Marx's criticism of the commodity fetishism as one of the central elements of the capitalist manner of production.