What Is a Marxist Today?

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.

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The treatise mainly deals with the Polish philosopher Brzozowski's thought. It sketches his life and writings and discusses his relations to Orthodox Marx ism. The recent research reveals him as inclined to Western Marx ism. However, unlike other thinkers of Western Marxism such as Lukacs and Gramsci his intellectual position was controversial and not unquestionably accepted by the Western world. The reason may be found in his overwhelming devotion to the study of Polish arts, literature and nationhood. Polish nationalism was more close to his heart than Marxism. Thus, he was stripped of the name of a Marxist by official Marxism which condemned and treated him as a deviator and betrayer due to his idea blended with classical German Idealism. The above-mentioned controversy may be clarified through revisit of his theory of history and practice. This article aims at illuminations and evaluations by Brzozowski's contribution to Marxism.

Introduction Health disparities between Eastern and Western part of Europe have been the subject of many studies. Eastern Europe experienced delay in health improvement compared to Western Europe. Life expectancy differences between East and West average 7 years in men and 5 years in women, in favor of the West. Cancer contributes to 12% and 9% of this difference in men and women, respectively. For those 20-64 years, contribution of cancer to this difference is higher at 16% and 24%, respectively. Methods Cancer mortality data and population data (1959-2010) for each country separately were derived from the WHO Mortality Database. Standardized mortality rates were calculated using the world standard population. Results In young men (20-44 years) cancer mortality was equal in Eastern and Western Europe in late 1960s. Since then, a decline in cancer mortality occurred in Western countries while Eastern countries experienced a cancer mortality increase trend. This increase began to decline in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, decreasing the cancer mortality gap between the two European regions for this sex and age group. Similar trend disparities were observed in middle-aged men (45-64 years). However, the decline since 1990 was much slower in Eastern Europe than Western Europe, resulting in a residual gap between the two regions. The oldest men (65+ years) in Western Europe had a higher cancer mortality rate than Eastern Europe for many decades. In early 1990s cancer mortality in Western Europe declined whilst rising in the East. The trends intersected a decade later and despite the plateau observed in recent years in Eastern Europe, the gap remains persistent. In young women (20-44 years), cancer mortality diverted in the early 1970s as cancer mortality declined steadily in Western Europe while rising in the east, similarly in trend to cancer mortality among young men. By the 1990s, rates declined and the gap between the two regions trended towards closure. In middle-aged women (45-64 years) cancer mortality rates in Eastern Europe plateaued for the whole observation period, while western rates fell steadily since the 1970s, resulting in a residual gap between the two regions. For several decades, cancer mortality rates in the oldest women (65+ years) in Western Europe were higher than in the east and both regions experienced plateaus. By the 1990s western cancer mortality rates declined with little change in eastern trends. A small gap persists between the two regions. Conclusions Despite health improvement, a cancer mortality rate gap between Eastern and Western Europe persists across all sex and age strata. In particular, men at age of 45 years and more, and women at age of 45-64 years, experience the greatest disparities between the two regions. Deficiency of primary prevention and poor health awareness remain biggest challenge in Eastern part of Europe. Citation Format: Marta Manczuk, Urszula Sulkowska, Dana Hashim, Paolo Boffetta. The gap in cancer mortality between Western and Eastern Europe. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2015 Apr 18-22; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(15 Suppl):Abstract nr 3710. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2015-3710

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’.

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.

Conducive to a comprehensive understanding of the Black Wave is a familiarity with a particular facet of early Marxist rhetoric, in addition to the influential and progressive currents of ‘Western Marxist’ thinking that championed such an approach. That the Black Wave can and possibly should be viewed through a Marxist lens is not an arbitrary endeavor. The filmmakers of the Black Wave came of age in a socialist republic that prioritized a Marxist worldview.

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.

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.

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 paper aims at retracing Nicola Badaloni's interpretation of Gramsci’s thought. We will try to show that, starting from an approach that can be described as “historicist”, Badaloni has gradually changed his reading, up to a wholly different position, characterized by the use of categories that are quite unrelated to Gramsci’s thinking. Badaloni ends up supporting a position that lies at the crossroads between the subjectivism typical of Western Marxism and scientism. Badaloni Nicola; Gramsci Antonio; Hegemony; Western Marxism; Scientism, Praxis.

Before the 1960s, the terrain was not completely barren, but the limited political influence of Marxism on the workers' movement the United States and Britain corresponded to the relative weakness of Marxism as a theoretical discourse in these countries. One of the main preoccupations of New Left Review (NLR) under the editorship of Perry Anderson (1962–83) was the humiliating gap between the Western Marxism of Lukacs and Gramsci, Adorno and Horkheimer, Sartre and Althusser, Della Volpe and Colletti, and the stunted growth in Britain. In considering Aronson's claim in the Anglo-Saxon context it is necessary to draw a critical distinction.15 Marxism has always operated in two registers. It is both an intellectual tradition and a political movement. Keywords: Anglo-Saxon Marxism; Aronson; Perry Anderson; Western Marxism

This is a theoretical-political critique of Perry Anderson’s arguments in“Renewals,” an editorial in the introductory issue of the new version of theNew Left Review . The pessimism that emanates from the text expresses thecontemporary state of an intellectual current within the Anglo-Saxon “newleft,” which arose in the 1960s. Anderson’s own analyses of the process thatcreated “western Marxism” during the interwar period are useful for studyingthe trajectory of this current, whose principal exponent has been the New LeftReview .

Vico and Western Marxism

The paper deals with the development of philosophy research and scholarship at the State University of Milan since 1930. At the beginning of the essay the author place Piero Martinetti's religious and transcendent idealism, which had also the significance of a moral opposition to fascism. To the school of Martinetti belongs among others Antonio Banfi, who was the most influential philosopher in Milan between the two World Wars. Banfi's critical rationalism originated a new trend in aesthetics, philosophy of culture and history of philosophy, and was widely spred thanks to the journal Studi filosofici (1940-1949). Banfi's thought was critically received and discussed by thinkers such as Remo Cantoni, Giulio Preti and Enzo Paci, who nevertheless increasingly took distance from their mester. Existentialism, logical empiricism and philosophical anthropology became the items preferred by Banfi's most important pupils, so that after 1945 the school of Milan came to an end. During the fifties a different philosohpical climate arose, characterized by both new standards in the field of history of philosophy (Mario Dal Pra), and the debate promoted by the so-called neoilluminism about human knowledge, reason and the necessity of renewing the Italian philosophical tradition. But it was particularly in the sixties that the philosophy in Milan changed quite radically its face, with the return to Husserl advocated by Paci, the reappraisal of dialectical materialism fostered by Ludovico Geymonat, and the diffusion of structuralism, western marxism and human sciences. According to the author, however, the philosophical legacy of that period comes out as being no more significant in the last two decades, which are rather characterized by the exhaustion of a specifically milanese way of philosophizing.