Marx postmarksizma

Abstract

In the late 1970s, an entirely new field of social studies, one positing a radically new ontology and epistemology, had emerged. This new field, which included post-Marxism, rejected the modernist meta-narratives. This framework included the attempt to integrate Marxism as one of the loftiest meta-narratives into this new relativist paradigm. This task is particularly difficult as it requires that Marxism be both integrated and superseded. I argue that this has taken its toll on the post-Marxist understanding of Marxism itself. The purpose of my article is twofold. On the one hand, I situate post-Marxism within the crisis of capitalist economies that has been unfolding ever since the early 1970s. On the other hand, and more importantly, I investigate the post-Marxist conception of Marx. I claim that the Marx of post-Marxists isnot the nineteenth-century humanist thinker who posed a critical and, indeed, irrefutable challenge to the existing social order. My purpose here is not a thorough critique of the post-Marxist critiques of Marxist thinkers; I am aware of the many differences between the theorists of the heterogeneous field that is post-Marxism, and of the wealth of literature that cannot be addressed here. Rather, I am concerned with a critique of a vulgarised, straw-man Marx that has been construed in the minds of neoclassical economists and the like. I try to demonstrate that there are many similarities (both explicit and implicit) between the new, apologetic economics and the new, postmodern Marxism.