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| post-Marxism | |
|---|---|
| Name | Post-Marxism |
| Born | Late 20th century |
| Region | Continental philosophy, political theory |
| Main influences | Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida |
| Notable people | Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Nicos Poulantzas, Judith Butler, Ernesto Che Guevara |
| Traditions | Western philosophy, Critical theory, Structuralism, Post-structuralism |
post-Marxism Post-Marxism is a term applied to a cluster of theoretical positions that reassess Karl Marx through engagements with Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and other twentieth-century thinkers. It emphasizes contingency, discourse, and identity over classical Marxist economic determinism, drawing on debates in Structuralism, Post-structuralism, New Left critiques, and critiques associated with theorists from Frankfurt School circles. Proponents rework categories from Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto alongside interventions by Antonio Negri, Herbert Marcuse, and Rosa Luxemburg to address late twentieth- and twenty-first-century politics.
Post-Marxism designates theoretical projects that move beyond strict readings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels by integrating insights from Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Stuart Hall. It reconceives concepts from Das Kapital, The German Ideology, and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte via engagements with Structural Marxism, Cultural Studies, and Post-structuralism traditions associated with Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, École Freudienne de Paris, and Telos magazine. Definitions vary across interventions by Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Che Guevara-influenced activists, and critics from New Left Review, Monthly Review, and Jacobin-aligned writers.
The intellectual genealogy traces to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels but pivots through interpretations by Antonio Gramsci’s writings in Prison Notebooks, theoretical moves by Louis Althusser in Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, and critiques by Nicos Poulantzas in debates with Ralph Miliband. Post-Marxism also inherits methods from Michel Foucault’s history of systems of thought, Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction, and the discursive analyses of Stuart Hall and Edward Said. Influences include institutional contexts such as University of Essex, University of Buenos Aires, University of Warwick, and journals like New Left Review, Telos, and Radical Philosophy.
Prominent exponents include Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe whose work What Is Populism? and Hegemony and Socialist Strategy develop a theory of hegemony engaged with Antonio Gramsci and Sigmund Freud-adjacent psychoanalytic readings; Ernesto Laclau’s Emancipation(s) and Chantal Mouffe’s The Democratic Paradox are central. Nicos Poulantzas debated the state in classes such as The Crisis of Democracy with interlocutors like Ralph Miliband and Nicos Poulantzas’s State, Power, Socialism relates to Karl Polanyi and Pierre Bourdieu concerns. Other contributors include Ernesto Che Guevara-inspired activists and theorists influenced by Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, Alex Callinicos, Tariq Ali, Seyla Benhabib, and Judith Butler. Key texts include interventions in New Left Review, monographs by Ernesto Laclau, edited volumes from Verso Books, and articles in Monthly Review.
Post-Marxist debates center on hegemony, articulatory practices, and the contingency of class identity drawing on Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser. Concepts such as articulation, empty signifier, and chain of equivalence derive from Ernesto Laclau’s lexicon and are discussed alongside Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic democracy influenced by Hannah Arendt and John Rawls critiques. Theorizations of power intersect with Michel Foucault’s genealogies and Jacques Derrida’s displacements, while debates about structural causality invoke Nicos Poulantzas, Althusser, and E. P. Thompson interventions. Disputes involve tensions with Ralph Miliband-style Marxism, critiques by Alex Callinicos and David Harvey, and engagements with Friedrich Engels-centered orthodoxy.
Critics from New Left Review, Monthly Review, International Socialist Review, and scholars such as David Harvey, Alex Callinicos, Terry Eagleton, and Eric Hobsbawm argue post-Marxism abandons class struggle as central and downplays labor analyses from Das Kapital. Debates with E. P. Thompson and Rosa Luxemburg partisans highlight normative disputes over agency, structure, and historical materialism. Accusations involve alleged theoretical eclecticism traced to Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault and political consequences discussed in contexts like Solidarity (Poland), Zapatista Army of National Liberation, and Movimento Sem Terra. Defenders respond invoking democratic pluralism through engagements with Hannah Arendt, John Rawls, and Judith Butler.
Post-Marxist ideas influenced left populist strategies in electoral campaigns by parties linked to Podemos (Spain), Syriza, Labour Party (UK), and movements such as Indignados Movement, Occupy Wall Street, and Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Theorizations of hegemony and articulation were taken up by activists around Movimiento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, Black Lives Matter, and student movements at University of California, Berkeley and University of São Paulo. Organizational experiments reference practices debated in New Socialist Movement (India), Sandinista National Liberation Front, and policy debates within European Union institutions and United Nations forums.
Contemporary scholarship situates post-Marxist debates alongside renewals in critical theory from Jürgen Habermas, Nancy Fraser, Slavoj Žižek, Seyla Benhabib, and returning engagements with David Harvey’s spatial analyses. The legacy persists in curricula at institutions like London School of Economics, University of Buenos Aires, University of Warwick, and publishing venues such as Verso Books, Polity Press, and Cambridge University Press. Ongoing relevance appears in analyses of populism, identity politics, climate justice discussions linked to Extinction Rebellion, and solidarity practices within transnational networks including International Socialist Alternative and Attac (association).