The post-Marxist critique of Marxism

the case of Agnes Heller

Simon Tormey

pp. 280-298

in: Mark Cowling, Paul Reynolds (eds), Marxism, the millennium and beyond, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000

Abstract

In considering the relevance of Marxism "at the Millennium" we are inevitably drawn to an assessment not just of Marxism's credentials but also those of its ideological and theoretical competitors. Judged by the amount of attention received in recent years one of the most important developments within the discourse of left radicalism has been the emergence of a post-Marxist "movement" (Stuart Sim's description¹) whose goal has been to transcend Marxism as a body of ideas and mode of practice. The best known work of "post-Marxism" is of course Laclau and Mouffe's Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, but the attention this work has received should not detract from the fact that the ideas articulated within it not only have long provenance but have been expressed in similar form by prominent thinkers since at least the 1960s.² Nevertheless, part of the appeal of the work is, evidently, the sense of the break from the unfashionable tenets of historical materialism together with the rendition of a "new" politics built on the twin themes of the "democratic revolution" and the embrace of pluralism and heterogeneity. The problem, as Norman Geras spells out in his notorious "review" of the book, is the undeveloped nature of the analysis.³ Nowhere do they spell out the nature of the radical democracy they seek to foster, how it is to be advanced as a project, or by whom (beyond some airy gestures in the direction of New Social Movements).

Cited authors

Marx Karl

Heller Agnes

Geras Norman