The Academicizing of Marxism

In: Dissent: a journal devoted to radical ideas and the values of socialism and democracy, Band 27, Heft 2, S. 172-180

Abstract

Over the past decade, while the European Wc movement has accepted a Marxism endorsing parliamentarianism, the Us have supported Marxist ideas unfavorable to this outlook. The influence of Louis Althusser, Nicos Poulantzas, & Etienne Balibar has been important in this. The key difference is in the Wc movement's acceptance of everyone except the clearly bourgeois groups in society as possible allies; the Althusserians insist on a narrower concept, in which only those who perform productive rather than unproductive labor & who do not perform mental labor are Wc. This second approach treats base & superstructure as reciprocally influencing each other, which amounts to an invitation to a purely descriptive approach to social conflict. This approach is not useful in identifying situations in which socialism can actually be attained. The Althusserians' own position in the superstructure, detached from the Wc, may partially account for this approach. W. H. Stoddard.