Topic summary
Humanist Marxism
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Marxist humanism.
France: existentialist Marxism
In the aftermath of the occupation of France and the Second World War, the existentialist philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty were among the founders of the independent leftist journal Les Temps Modernes. Shaped by their experiences in wartime and participation in the resistance, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty formulated an independent Marxism that integrated their political concerns into their philosophies. Merleau-Ponty eventually abandoned Marxism by 1955, but Sartre continued to engage with it thereafter. They rejected the deterministic and scientistic approach of Stalinism. Their Marxism instead reinterpreted the tradition as a theory rooted in human agency, creativity, and praxis. This humanist Marxism focused on the lived experiences of the oppressed, aiming to overcome the limitations of both Stalinist orthodoxy and bourgeoisliberalism.