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, ...

and

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

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 politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

itself, bypassing

orthodox Marxism Orthodox Marxism is the body of Marxist thought that emerged after the death of Karl Marx (1818–1883) and which became the official philosophy of the majority of the socialist movement as represented in the Second International until the Fir ...

. The term "post-Marxism" first appeared in

Ernesto Laclau Ernesto Laclau (; 6 October 1935 – 13 April 2014) was an Argentine political theorist and philosopher. He is often described as an 'inventor' of post-Marxist political theory. He is well known for his collaborations with his long-term partner ...

and

Chantal Mouffe Chantal Mouffe (; born 17 June 1943) is a Belgian political theorist, formerly teaching at University of Westminster. She is best known for her contribution to the development—jointly with Ernesto Laclau, with whom she co-authored her most f ...

'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 The University of Essex is a public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, Essex is one of the original plate glass universities. Essex's shield consists of the ancient arms attributed to the Kingdom of Es ...

by Laclau and Mouffe, and was further developed by

Louis Althusser Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. 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 Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity. In early Western thought, Plato's idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an "idea" or "form". In ''Categories'', Aristotle sim ...

(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, Göran Therborn, and Gregory Meyerson.

History

Post-Marxism dates from the late

1960s File:1960s montage.png, Clockwise from top left: U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War; the Beatles led the British Invasion of the U.S. music market; a half-a-million people participate in the 1969 Woodstock Festival; Neil Armstrong and Buzz ...

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 transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

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 Ch ...

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 (a ...

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