Post-Marxism
Post-Marxism has two related, but different uses: (i) the socio-economic circumstances of Eastern Europe, especially in the ex-soviet republics after the Soviet Union's end; and (ii) the extrapolations of the philosophers and social theorists basing their postulations upon Karl Marx's writings and Marxism proper, thus, passing orthodox Marxism. Philosophically, post-Marxism counters derivationism and essentialism (e.g. the State is not an instrument that ‘functions’ unambiguously and autonomously in behalf of a given class' interests). Recent overviews of post-Marxism are provided by Ernesto Screpanti, Göran Therborn, and Gregory Meyerson. For a study of the major post-Marxist theorists Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, see Warren Breckman.
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History of post-Marxism
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Post-Marxism dates from the late 1960s. Its development was influenced by several trends and events of that period. The weakness of the Russian Communist soviet paradigm became evident beyond Russia. This happened concurrently with the international student riots in 1968, rise of Maoist theory, and the advent of commercial television, which covered in its broadcasts the Vietnam War.
Semiology and discourse
When Roland Barthes began his sustained critique of mass culture via semiology — the science of signs — and the book Mythologies, some Marxist philosophers based their social criticism upon linguistics, semiotics, and discourse. Basing himself upon Barthes' work, Baudrillard's For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign criticized contemporary Marxism for ignoring the sign value of their philosophic discourse.
Important post-Marxists
- Michael Albert
- Stanley Aronowitz
- Étienne Balibar
- Jean Baudrillard
- Zygmunt Bauman
- Cornelius Castoriadis
- Gilles Deleuze
- Krisis Groupe
- Félix Guattari
- Antonio Negri
- Jürgen Habermas
- Michael Hardt
- Stuart Hall
- Ágnes Heller
- Paul Hirst
- Barry Hindess
- Fredric Jameson
- Boris Yuliyevich Kagarlitsky
- Ernesto Laclau
- Claude Lefort
- Jean-François Lyotard
- Catharine MacKinnon
- Chantal Mouffe
- Moishe Postone
- Jacques Rancière
- Helmut Reichelt
- Ernesto Screpanti
- Alexander Tarasov
- Göran Therborn
- Alain Touraine
- Cornel West
- Slavoj Žižek
See also
- Arena (first series)
- Autonomism
- Marxism and Marxist philosophy
- New Left Review
- Poststructuralism
- Rethinking Marxism
- Specters of Marx
- Open Marxism
- Neo-Marxism
- Frankfurt School
Notes
- ^ Iain Mclean & Alistair Mcmillan, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (Article: State), Oxford University Press, 2003
- ^ "The Postmodern Crisis in Economics and the Revolution against Modernism", “Rethinking Marxism”, 2000
- ^ From Marxism to Post-Marxism. London: Verso, 2008, 208pp.
- ^ Meyerson, G. (2009). Post-Marxism as Compromise Formation. Retrieved from: http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/Meyerson.pdf
- ^ “The Post-Marx of the Letter,” After the Deluge: New Perspectives on Postwar French Intellectual and Cultural History, ed. Julian Bourg. New York: Lexington Books, 2004, 73-100.
References
- Sim, Stuart. Post-Marxism: An Intellectual History, Routledge, 2002.
- el-Ojeili, Chamsy. Post-Marxism with Substance: Castoriadis and the Autonomy Project, in New Political Science, 32:2, June 2001, pp. 225-239.
- el-Ojeili C. After post-socialism: Social theory, utopia and the work of castoriadis in a global age, Antepodium: Online Journal of World Affairs (2011), pp. 1-16.