Post-Marxism is a trend in

political philosophy Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. Its topics include politics, l ...

and

social theory Social theories are analytical frameworks, or paradigms, that are used to study and interpret social phenomenon, social phenomena.Seidman, S., 2016. Contested knowledge: Social theory today. John Wiley & Sons. A tool used by social scientists, so ...

which deconstructs

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

's writings and

Marxism Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialec ...

itself, bypassing orthodox Marxism. The term "post-Marxism" first appeared in Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's theoretical work '' Hegemony and Socialist Strategy''. It can be said that post-Marxism as a political theory was conceived at the University of Essex by Laclau and Mouffe, and was further developed by Louis Althusser and

Slavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek (, ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New ...

. Philosophically, post-Marxism counters derivationism and essentialism (for example, it does not see economy as a foundation of politics and the state as an instrument that functions unambiguously and autonomously on behalf of the interests of a given class). Recent overviews of post-Marxism are provided by

Ernesto Screpanti Ernesto Screpanti (born 1948, in Rome) is a professor of Political Economy at the University of Siena. He worked on the “rethinking Marxism” research programme, in the attempt to update Marxist analysis by bringing it in line with the reality o ...

Göran Therborn Göran Therborn FAcSS (23 September 1941, Kalmar, Sweden) is a professor of sociology at Cambridge University and is amongst the most highly cited contemporary Marxian-influenced sociologists. He has published widely in journals such as the '' Ne ...

, and Gregory Meyerson.

History

Post-Marxism dates from the late 1960s and several trends and events of that period influenced its development. The weakness of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

and

Eastern Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...

paradigm became evident and Marxism faced a lack since the

Second International The Second International (1889–1916) was an organisation of Labour movement, socialist and labour parties, formed on 14 July 1889 at two simultaneous Paris meetings in which delegations from twenty countries participated. The Second Internatio ...

. This happened concurrently with the occurrence internationally of the strikes and occupations of 1968, the rise of

Maoist theory Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realise a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of Chi ...

and its synthesis with Marxism–Leninism, and the proliferation of

commercial television Commercial broadcasting (also called private broadcasting) is the broadcasting of television programs and radio programming by privately owned corporate media, as opposed to state sponsorship. It was the United States′ first model of radio ( ...

which covered in its broadcasts the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

. Subsequently, Laclau and Mouffe address the proliferation of "new subject positions" by locating their analysis on a post-Marxist non-essentialist framework.

References

External links

* Kurz, Robert (1995)
''Postmarxismus und Arbeitsfetisch''
''Krisis''. No. 17 , * Marchart, Oliver (1998)

Eintrag für Vladimir Malachov, Vadim Filatov: ''Sovremennaja zapadnaja filosofia'', Moscow {{in lang, de. Critical theory Eponymous political ideologies Marxist schools of thought Social theories

History

See also

References

Further reading

External links