Considerations on Western Marxism

"Western Marxism" first made its appearance in the early 1920s and rapidly developed and spread after the Second World War, especially since the mid-1950s. Currently, it is not only popular in the advanced capitalist countries of Europe and America, but also commands considerable influence in some socialist and Third World countries. One of the major reasons for its broad influence is that it has managed to grasp the modern-day characteristic of scientific technology increasingly becoming the primary force of production, and to use this to carry out multi-faceted observations and criticisms of contemporary capitalist society. In this way, it has expressed a positive and actively critical spirit. In this article, we shall provide a general survey of some critical theories of Western Marxism.

Much as what we now call ‘the Marxism of the Second International’ long ago passed from the scene, the Age of ‘Western Marxism’ has apparently come to an end. Internal theoretical developments, changes in intellectual culture and, above all, political circumstances have joined together to hasten the demise of this episode in the history of radical theory. It would be instructive to trace the trajectory of Western Marxism, and to reflect on the political conditions for its decline. In both Western and Eastern Europe, Marxian politics has been in crisis at least since the watershed year of 1968, and in disarray for more than a decade. Western Marxism has always been joined programatically to currents within these political movements and has suffered grave, indeed fatal, damage in consequence. But it is not my intention to reflect on the vicissitudes of Western Marxism here. What follows will consider instead a style of theorizing that has effectively superceded Western Marxism, just as Western Marxism earlier replaced the Marxism of the Second International. This new kind of radical theory is widely designated—approvingly by some, disparagingly by others—‘analytical Marxism.’

For 'Western Marxism' — a term introduced by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in 1955 in his Adventures of the Dialectic (1973) to describe the philosophical tendency stemming from Georg Lukács' History and Class Consciousness (1971; originally published in 1923) — no concept internal to Marxism has been more antithetical to the genuine development of historical materialism than the 'dialectics of nature'. Commonly attributed to Engels rather than Marx, this concept is often seen as the differentia specifica that beginning in the 1920s separated the official Marxism of the Soviet Union from Western Marxism. Yet, as Lukács, who played the leading role in questioning the concept of the dialectic of nature, was later to admit, Western Marxism's rejection of it struck at the very heart of the classical Marxist ontology — that of Marx no less than Engels.KeywordsHistorical MaterialismHuman PraxisClass ConsciousnessDialectical MaterialismMetabolic RelationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Mikkel Bolt: Perry Anderson’s Western Marxism’ Revisited, Arbejderhistorie 1/2012, s. 84-96.Perry Anderson’s Considerations on Western Marxism from 1976 remains an influential account of Western European Marxism in the 20. Century. Anderson analyse the difference between an earlier generation of Marxists such as Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg and a later generation including Karl Korsch, Jean-Paul Sartre and Theodor W.Adorno that all were forced into political isolation in a context characterised by the consolidation of bourgeois liberal democracy inWestern Europe and the disappearance of a revolutionary perspective. The consequence according to Anderson is a kind of philosophical withdrawal where Marxist intellectuals take up teaching positions in the university distancing themselves from politics. The article argues that Anderson’s mapping of the development of Marxism is a misreading that misses the explicit critique of the thendominant Marxism and its pretended objectivism and overlooks Western Marxism’s attempt to critically analyse the emergence ofnew forms of control in post-war Europe.

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.

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.

Bhagat Singh, one of the most iconic revolutionaries in Indian history, was not merely a freedom fighter but also a profound thinker whose ideological foundations were deeply rooted in Marxist philosophy. His writings in English, though relatively limited in volume, provide an insightful reflection of his intellectual engagements with class struggle, historical materialism, and the necessity of revolution. Unlike many of his contemporaries who were driven solely by nationalist fervor, Singh critically examined the economic and social structures that perpetuated oppression, advocating for a radical transformation of society beyond mere political independence. This paper explores the Marxist tendencies in Bhagat Singh’s English writings and compares his ideological framework with those of Western Marxist thinkers such as Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, and Friedrich Engels. Through a detailed textual analysis, the paper highlights Singh’s nuanced understanding of class struggle, his emphasis on scientific socialism, and his rejection of religious orthodoxy as a tool of oppression. The study first establishes the foundational Marxist principles that inform Singh’s thought, tracing his engagement with key texts like The Communist Manifesto, Engels’ Anti-Dühring, and Lenin’s works. It then delves into Singh’s writings, particularly his essay Why I Am an Atheist and other political treatises, illustrating how his arguments resonate with Marxist materialist philosophy and Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony. Additionally, Singh’s revolutionary praxis is examined in light of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution and Leninist strategies of class struggle. While Western Marxists largely theorized about working-class emancipation within industrial capitalist societies, Singh adapted these ideas to the Indian colonial context, where feudal remnants and imperialist exploitation coalesced to oppress the masses. His vision extended beyond mere anti-colonial resistance, aspiring instead toward a socialist restructuring of Indian society. This paper also addresses how Singh’s English writings challenge religious and nationalist dogmas, aligning with Marxist critiques of ideology. His rejection of religious determinism, a key theme in Why I Am an Atheist, parallels Marx’s assertion that religion serves as the “opium of the people,” designed to pacify the oppressed. Singh’s critique of economic structures, moreover, reflects an early awareness of dependency theory, anticipating later postcolonial Marxist thought. By juxtaposing Bhagat Singh’s ideas with those of Western Marxists, this paper argues that his writings should not be viewed merely as political tracts but as significant contributions to the intellectual history of Marxism in the Global South. Singh’s synthesis of Western socialist thought with the realities of colonial India offers a unique lens through which to understand revolutionary ideology and praxis. The study ultimately positions Bhagat Singh as not just a nationalist martyr but a profound Marxist thinker whose intellectual legacy deserves deeper academic engagement within English literary and political discourse.

The idea of praxis was explored in the 1960s, contemporaneously with the publication of an English translation of History and Class Consciousness—the early writings of Hungarian Marxist Georgy Lukacs. Reminding us that Marx titled Capital Volume One ‘The Process of Production’, his dynamic, processional and revolutionary brand of Marxism inspired many would-be radicals by its contrast with the official Marxism of the Eastern Bloc (and Western European communist parties). Like Elias, his notion of social figurations going through long-term processes of change as the motor of history represented a dynamic breakthrough from the rigidities of previously held versions of necessary stages of historical development. When Lukacs wrote in the 1920s he was countering the determinism represented by the Second International Marxism of Kautsky and Plekhanov, the leading theoreticians of Western social democracy and Russian menshevism. By the 1960s and 1970s this ‘objectivist’ brand of Marxism was associated with Althusser and the structuralists. The political sense of liberation represented by the Paris uprising in May 1968 gelled with Lukacs’ revolutionary ‘subjectivism’, which affirmed that the working class could make history in the dynamic process of making social change. Like his contemporary Antonio Gramsci, Lukacs was centrally involved in a revolutionary uprising in 1919, in Turin and Budapest respectively. Both sought what Lukacs called ‘the algebra of revolution’;1 both wrestled with the ways in which the state and its rulers hegemonised, and the tactics of the resistance; and both wrote in a style that was both suggestive whilst being open to a range of interpretations. Ninety years on, this article explores the extent to which these two ‘Western Marxists’ agree, and still provide relevant insight, and how linked ideologies from contemporaries such as Mannheim and Elias2—and later, Wacquant—have further developed ‘praxical’ sociology. 1 J. Rees, The Algebra of Revolution (London: Routledge, 1998). 2 R. Kilminster, Praxis and Method (London: Routledge, 1979).

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.

No Marxist thinker, apart from Marx himself, is so universally respected and admired as Antonio Gramsci, one of the originators of what Merleau–Ponty called ‘Western Marxism’, a tradition including Lukacs, Korsch, Sartre and Frankfurt School theorists such as Adorno and Marcuse. In their different ways, these thinkers all attacked Marxist positivism for its determinism and its objective materialist theory of history. Marxism, they thought, would have to admit the importance of human agency, of creative human action, of the ‘subjective factor’. Disenchantment with the deterministic modes of analysis championed by classical Marxists began to gather momentum by the turn of the century. Economic depressions had come and gone without producing a general systemic collapse; rather than increased misery, the working classes were experiencing higher living standards and shorter working hours as the capitalist economy expanded; socialist parties, reflecting the demands of their constituents, became less and less revolutionary and more and more concerned with the melioration of conditions within the framework of capitalism. This stabilization of the bourgeois regime evoked grave disquiet within the Marxist community, bound together as it was by the firm belief that capitalism would crumble under the weight of its inherent contradictions. The outbreak of war in 1914, and the subsequent disintegration of proletarian internationalism, further nourished the suspicion that the European masses had ceased to be a revolutionary force. With the ignominious defeats of the post–war rebellions in Germany and Hungary, and the rapid rise of popular right-wing movements, it became progressively difficult to cling to the optimistic Marxist assumption that ‘history is on our side’.

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.

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Labour and the ecological crisis: The eco-modernist dilemma in western Marxism(s) (1970s-2000s)