Marxism's "Truth": Recent Interpretations of Marxist Theory

Abstract

At the close of the nineteenth century, the validity of orthodox Marxism was challenged within the Marxist camp itself. One of the late nineteenth-century systematizers of Marxism, the German social democrat and friend of Engels, Eduard Bernstein, questioned Marx's predictions about the collapse of capitalism and the imminence of proletarian revolution. These, he asserted, were no longer possible in the more stable economy and more democratic politics of fin de siecle Europe, and he attempted to revise Marxism into an ethically based program of political action that would be more relevant to existing conditions. Bernstein was and still is reviled by numerous Marxists, but the issue of Marxism's ability to explain and predict social developments has not ceased to trouble interpreters of Marx, including those sympathetic to Marxism. Indeed, since Bernstein, the gap between Marxist theory and social and political reality has only seemed to widen as further developments have taken place that have been entirely outside the terms of analysis of classical Marxism. The ability of the capitalist economy to restructure and preserve itself after its collapse in the late 1920s and 1930s; the emergence of ideological movements-Nazism and fascism-that have proved resistant to strictly materialist analysis; the consolidation of socialism in authoritarian forms outside of Western Europe-these central developments of the present century have left Marx's original theory in apparent ruins. From the vantage point of the late twentieth century, classical Marxism looks like an antiquated system of thought defeated by the unfolding of historical events. Thus even a self-avowed New Left