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Home , Economic determinism, Structural Marxism

Description of the Module

Items Description of the Module Subject Name Paper Name Contemporary Social Theory

Module Name/Title Neo Marxist perspectives : introductory overview Objectives This module seeks to introduce the readers to the transition in Marxian thinking and new modes of understanding social reality that were being produced in the 1960s and 70s. Neo- dealt with a variety of issues and also grappled with methodological questions of how to study society. Neo-Marxism covers newer and newer areas, in which Marxist research has ventured into since Marx and Engels.

Key words Destalinisation, Crisis of , Hegemony, Ideological state apparatus, Public sphere,

Module Structure

Neo Marxist Perspectives Introduction, The Marxism in Crisis and the Orthodoxy of Economic , The Foundation of Gramscian Neo-Marxism as Hegelian Marxism, “Destanilization” as the Next Crisis and Althusser‟s , the of Habermas, Summary, References, Learn More.

Role Name Affiliation Subject Coordinator Prof. Sujata Patel Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad Paper Coordinator Dr. Dev Pathak Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, South Asian University

Content Writer Anubhav Sengupta & Research Scholar, JNU Dr. Dev Pathak

Content Reviewer Prof. Sujata Patel Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad Language Editor Prof. Sujata Patel Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad

NEO MARXIST PERSPECTIVES

Introductory Overview

1. Introduction: Towards a definition of Neo-Marxism

Neo-Marxism is a corpus of social theorization derived from the works of Marx and Engels. Neo- Marxism can include a wide range of theorization cutting across disciplines. According to George Ritzer, a prominent contemporary sociological thinker, the following schools of thought forms part of Neo- Marxist tradition: , Hegelian Marxism, Critical Theory, Neo-Marxian Economic Sociology, Historically Oriented Marxism, Neo-Marxian Spatial Analysis, Post Marxist Theory (Ritzer 2011).Gordon Marshall defines Neo-Marxism in A Dictionary of Sociology (2003), as „A term loosely applied to any social theory or sociological analysis which draws on the ideas of and , but amends or extends these, usually by incorporating elements from other intellectual traditions…”. Jacques Bidet and Stathis Kouvelakis adds that Neo-Marxism is more of a response to „the crisis of Marxism‟ in the beginning of twentieth century and an effort by various groups, individuals engaged in social theorization to reclassify and innovate within Marxist critical thinking as a challenge to Marxist orthodoxy.

In what follows, we therefore begin from this crisis of Marxism in general as the rise of . We try to define orthodox Marxism. Then we try to analyze how the journey of Neo-Marxism began as a response to orthodox Marxism in the form of Hegelian Marxism. Then, the next crisis of Marxism is described in 1950s and how Althusserian Structural Marxism emerged as another Neo Marxist response to this crisis. In the end, a brief excursion is made to see how another school of Neo- Marxism, the critical theory responds to the crisis of capitalist society in general.

2. The Marxism in Crisis and the Orthodoxy of Economic Determinism

Socialism as a political idea existed even before Marx. But Marx and later Engels established idea of on a scientific basis. Before Marx, there were socialist thinkers who critiqued injustice, oppression and exploitation prevailing in society from a moral stand-point. They were seeking change because that was ethically good for whole humanity. Separating from this, Marx and Engels gradually developed an analysis of history and capitalism in particular. Instead of appealing to conscience of the humanity that capitalism is wrong, they actually showed capitalism as a system cannot survive because it is inherently contradictory. This enabled, Marx and Engels to demonstrate that it is not dependent on voluntary action of few individuals or good will of a section of society to change this inhuman capitalist system to more human socialism. History is a process, consisting of class struggles and when studied, history shows that capitalism would be overcome by socialism. The class struggle between and capitalists would lead to socialism as through their class struggle, proletariat becomes conscious of this historical trajectory of human society (ibid.).

The scientific discovery of human history, that Marx and Engels made, hinges on the discovery of the relationship in which society is structured. In its fundamental form, in any given epoch, a society can be thought of consisting of two elements: the base (or ) and the superstructure (, culture, politics and state etc.). The relationship between the two is dialectical. The ways in which the economy in a society is structured influences way in which its legal institutions, ideology, culture will shape; on the other hand, the latter will have impact on the organization of economy. So according to Marx and Engels, studying a society is to study these organizations of economic activities, various relations within it and relationships between the economy and other institutions. Depending of various

combinations of the unity of , Marx and Engels show, human history has passed through various stages to reach today‟s capitalism.

There was however a tension in this Marxist conception. Marx and Engels were just not using dialectical method, which they borrowed from German philosopher Hegel. They also insisted on being materialistic in their philosophical approach. It was a departure from Hegel who was an idealist. For materialist philosophers, matter is the primary object of investigation; while for an idealist philosopher, it is the idea of the matter, which requires attention. Roughly translated, for an idealist philosopher like Hegel, it was superstructural element like the state which was more important in understanding human history and its development. But for materialists like Marx and Engels, the economy as the organization of material life of human society became the primary object in studying society. The tension was surrounding to what extent the primacy of the base in studying society to be accorded; and where to place the importance of superstructure elements like culture, ideas and ideology, the state institutions, and human actions which seem more significant to us, as members of society living everyday life.

This debate seemed to find its temporary closure when in 1876 Engels wrote the book called „Anti- Duhring‟. The book directly addresses the issues of the , materialist dialectics in detail. Engels used various inventions that were taking place in scientific field to argue that dialectics is a natural law. By natural law Engels meant that just like gravitation-pull is objectively out there working on all of us, without us wanting or not, the law of dialectics is also such naturally given law. For Engels, dialectics is everywhere working in the nature and on human society. By early years of 20th century, key Marxist figures like started championing this objective, external character of dialectics, independent of human will or intervention. , led by Karl Kautsky, adopted a position where it was seen that capitalism by „natural necessity‟ would be replaced by socialism. Kautsky and his followers were taking the clue directly from Engel‟s Anti-Duhring. Kautsky and others in Second International extended Engel‟s proposition and claimed dialectical development of capitalism to socialism is therefore equally a natural course of development of society. It is like throwing an apple in the air, we want or don‟t want, the apple is going to come down to the earth. Human society wants or does not want, revolutionary transformation of capitalism to socialism is going to happen anyway. The human society is destined to move towards socialism.

The above mentioned view came to dominate as the official Marxism or later came to be known as orthodox Marxism. It was a form of economic determinism. The base i.e. economic development became all too important while politics and revolutionary actions were reduced to secondary position. The political manifestation of this orthodoxy then reflected into reformism from socialists‟ part. In so long as was bound to come, there was no rush to impose revolution by the proletariat on the natural course of history. The role of a communist party of the workers is to fight for reforms so that condition of existence remains human, till socialism comes and solves all the problems. It was just a wait and watch policy for these Marxists with orthodox economic deterministic view (Callinicos 1976).

3. The Foundation of Gramscian Neo-Marxism as Hegelian Marxism

By 1920s, right after the First World War and Russian Revolution, a new impetus to think Marxism afresh was evident. There were numbers of intellectual and activist who protested against caricature of the revolutionary potential of Marxism in the hands of Second International. Out of these, a particular paradigm of thinking emerged as the Hegelian school of Marxism with three key figures: Georges Lukacs, and . Not necessarily these three thinkers worked together to develop a systematic body of interpretation of Marxist method and concepts. It is rather much later, scholars interested in Marxism have related their work, found continuity and in process Hegelian Marxism has emerged as a body of Neo-Marxist interpretation.

3.1 Theory and practice: Hegelian Marxism’s Stress on Praxis

We have seen that Marxism during Second international, led by giant figure of Marxist thinking and politics like Bukharin, Kautsy, was reduced to . The base and superstructure debate was resolved in favour of the base as the capitalist economy itself held the key to understanding why socialism was about to come. We have further observed the result of this sort of Marxist thinking reflected in practice as the Communist Party world over started rallying for reforms than revolution.

Hegelian Marxism strongly opposes these tendencies for being anti-Marxist. It is anti-Marxist because in the hands of Second international, Marxism departed from revolutionary politics and turned reformist. The great Marxist thinkers-leaders were satisfied with analyzing capitalist economy and theoretically showing its pitfalls; while in their practice they were demobilizing by not taking revolutionary programs seriously. Hegelian Marxism sees this to be a symptom of orthodox Marxism laying its stress entirely on the base. Their obsession with objective, natural laws of capitalism had pushed them towards studying only these laws in abstraction of theory. But what they forgot it is only human actors who, with their conscious actions can bring the real change in a society. Hegelian Marxism holds the view that, as superstructural ideas, consciousness, culture and human action or practice, guided by these are important. The real teaching of Marxist dialectics is there is no theory without practice; and no practice without theory. This dialectical unity is called praxis.

It is argued in Hegelian Marxism that Marx‟s and Engels‟ works are itself the product of this unity of practice and theory. Karl Korsch, a prominent Hegelian Marxist put forth the view that what Marx and Engels were successful to do was to marry revolutionary practice of working class with the theoretical development of bourgeois science. Marx and Engels writing in the early nineteenth century witnessed working class revolutionary actions and practical consciousness critiquing whatever was wrong with capitalism. On the other hand, bourgeois social scientists like Ricardo or Adam Smith were analyzing socio-economic system of capitalism scientifically, without having the critical consciousness of the working class. Marx and Engels took theoretical advancement of Ricardo, Adam Smith et al. and applied it with critical practical experience of the proletariat in understanding Marxism. And therefore Marxism emerged as the science which can guide the action of proletariat at the same time towards a revolutionary transformation. Korsch (2012) believes the development of Marxism as praxis cannot be ignored in any cost.

3.2 Unity of subject and object: reified consciousness

The argument in favour of praxis i.e. dialectical unity of theory and practice paves the way to discuss another Hegelian Marxism‟s intervention in Marxist thinking and practice. While present in Korsch and Gramsci, it is Lukacs, in his book, „History and ‟, develops the idea of the unity of subject and object in detail. We remember that Engel‟s in his „Anti-Duhring‟, claimed that dialectics is like natural law, present and working in nature. The Marxism of Second International elevated it to the objective law of human history like any law in physics or other natural sciences. The implication of this claim is to argue irrespective of subject, the dialectical law of society‟s progress is objectively functioning. Lukacs contests this view. He does not denounce objective natural laws of physical world as such. But in case of dialectics he firmly declares there is no such objective, externality to dialectics in Marxism. Alluding to unity of theory and practice, his argument is that in only through proletarian practice such consciousness of dialectical working of society is achievable. In other words while gravitation pull of the earth is as real as bourgeois and working class struggle, dialectics in society cannot be understood the way gravitational pull is measured. From a bourgeois subject position, one can never really see how society works dialectically. It is only subjective position of the proletariat that enables one to understand the dialectics and thereby analyze society as an objective reality. This unity of subject and object or subjectivism is a strong trend in Hegelian Marxism.

The concept of and rests on this unity of subject and object. Reification explains why it is only proletariat subject position which can observe the social reality as dialectical. Reification as a concept relates to Marx‟s discussion of fetishism in „ (Vol. 1)‟. Marx‟s contention is that in a capitalist society every relation is transformed into exchange relations. Everything is also rendered into commodity to be exchanged, including human labor. As the scope of commodity grows to become ubiquitous, the men start to believe that the world of commodity is something external and independent of them. They forget that these commodities are result of their own human interactions and labor in the economic sphere of production and . Lukacs takes this idea of , which Marx restricts in the economy, to apply it to in society at large. Lukacs holds that capitalism reaches a stage where its actors feel every social structure, (not only economy) is out there objectively existing independent of their subjective will (Kolakowski 1978; also see Ritzer 2011).

As subject and object become separated, Lukacs now claims that in a capitalist society false consciousness prevails. Classes which hold a particular position in the productive system develop their own distorted view of the system. The bourgeois world view of the capitalist system remains imprisoned under the reified consciousness, treating objective reality as external. That way, proletariat is in a truly privileged class historically. Under capitalism, the proletariat is actually in a position of being conscious of their true class condition. Being historically privileged, then the proletariat as a class can become conscious of the real dialectical functioning of the capitalist society (Ritzer 2011). And as long as they are the conscious subject in a capitalist society, successful of escaping the reified consciousness clouding judgments of all other classes, they can transform their reality at the same time through their revolutionary practice.

3.3 The Gramsci as Hegelian Marxist:

In the background of this centrality to Marxism as praxis (i.e. unity of the theory and practice), unity of subject and object, and subjectivism (i.e. subject and its consciousness as real motor of societal change), which Hegelian Marxism explicitly borrows from Hegel, Gramsci‟s intervention must be situated. Gramsci firmly believed that in his time, around 1920s, comprised the subjective agency whose collective practice is in consonance with the historical necessity of his time. He is convinced that workers would develop a culture (in the broad sense of a composite expression of dominant ideas, consciousness, common sense guiding the humanity) and lead from the front which would counter all the regressive elements in bourgeois culture. So the need of the time and thereby a challenge for the working class was to develop a new culture which shall enable them to achieve a new configuration of power. This means, within Gramscian framework, introduction of a body of new intellectual work which would facilitate an understanding of relationship between politics and the economic system. For this the proletariat needs „organic intellectuals‟ who are just not a class of intelligentsia endowed with scientific temper and analyzes the reality objectively. Because there is no such objectivity; and for Gramsci, there is no such separation between thinking and political practice as well. This is why the intellectuals must become organic who as a part of the masses uses their language to express the feeling and thinking of the masses, which latter on their own cannot do at that moment (Kolakowski 1978).

Such centrality, attached to the intellectuals, flows from another concept that Gramsci develops concomitantly. It is the concept of hegemony, which is exercising power without coercion (Ritzer 2011). It is the controlling of the intellectual life of a society by its through cultural means. This readily implies for Gramsci, to attain political power, first the working class must seize these cultural means, destroy, transform and rearrange them to have required intellectual control over society‟s life. Or in other words it must establish its own hegemony. And this is exactly why working class needs its own organic intellectuals working towards creating proletarian culture - in time extending into ideological dominance in the society to seize political power.

4. “Destanilization” as the Next Crisis and Althusser’s Structural Marxism

Althusser‟s interpretation of Marxism has often been labeled as structuralist interpretation of Marxism. Althusser is believed to use structuralist framework, made popular by famous anthropologist, Levi Strauss, in Marxism. However, this may not be entirely true because in some writings, Althusser appears to be highly critical of Levi Strauss (see Choi 2012). But many continue to call this strand of Neo- Marxism as structuralist or structural Marxism to point out Althusser and his followers‟ stress on primacy of structures as processes in thinking about Marxism afresh. This emphasis on structure and processes, contra subjectivity or agency, is a key feature of his Neo-Marxism. But to situate Althusser‟s insistence on structure and processes, against Lukacs, Korsch or Gramsci‟s subjectivism, we must take a detour and revisit the new crisis of Marxism in the wake of Stalin‟s death in 1953.

4.1 ‘Destalinisation’: and Marxism

After Stalin‟s death, within three years time, Khruschev, as the new leader of the Soviet , denounced Stalin in 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist party. He unequivocally blamed Stalin‟s paranoiac personality and growing tentacles of cult-following within Party as the reason of all horrors inside Soviet Union block. Khrushchev wanted to rectify all Stalin‟s mistake and wanted to return to the path of humanistic socialism. Soviet bloc soon would adopt the strategy of peaceful coexistence in the international level. Instead of fighting imperialism for its war-aggression, Soviet was trying to champion peace all over the world as part of socialism. This was vehemently opposed from Chinese Communist party. Chinese communist party denounced Khruschev‟s effort towards „destanlization' and return to of Second International as revisionism. The Chinese communist party‟s criticism of Khruschev‟s humanistic, as „revisionism‟ seemed to prove correct in France as the communist party was following Khruschev‟s line. There was a crisis all across Europe and Althusser, as a member of the communist party of France found himself in a situation where some political intervention was required as a Marxist philosopher (Elliot 2006). Althusser identifies an ironic convergence between Khruschev‟s humanistic socialism and Hegelian Marxism. As philosophers, Althusser and his disciples begin with a criticism of Hegelian Marxism.

Led by Althusser, a younger group of French philosophers like Etienne Balibar, Jacques Rancierre, , Nicholas Poulantzas etc., began the project which would come to be denoted as structural Marxism. This school of thought was trying to respond to subjectivism of Hegelian Marxism and economism still inherent in political practices of communist parties. Their work would include innovative Marxist reinterpretation of ideology, state as an institution, periodization of human society across history, on art and culture etc.

These reworking of the Marxist interpretations largely depend on two conceptual developments put forth by structural school. First is their understanding of history as an objective process without subject; second their conception of Marxist dialectic as over-determination. As we shall see the first concept rejects Hegelian Marxists‟ subjectivism and second refutes any form of orthodox economism.

4.2 History without a Subject

Structural Marxism proposes that there is a break in Marx‟s own writing. While the younger Marx, influenced by Hegel and German idealist philosophy is still concerned with human essence, alienation, consciousness; the matured Marx is truly scientific in trying to develop a materialist theory of history. The wrote „The Economic and Philosophical Manuscript‟ in 1844; the latter Marx wrote the „Capital‟. The structural school holds that the true essence of Marxism can be found in „Capital‟ where he demonstrates what he means by dialectical method and application of it in history.

The structural school rejects Hegelian Marxism for embracing young Marx and disregarding the more mature Marx. Hegelian school and their stress on subjectivism and working class consciousness as the true motor force of history are opposed as another form of ideology, and not scientific Marxism. The ideology that informs Hegelian Marxism, according to Althusser et al. is humanism. Economic dogmatism and orthodoxy holds the view that history of human society is the evolutionary history of the economic organization of society. So, as contradictions in a feudal society develop it leads to capitalism; and as capitalism becomes too conflictual in its economic organization, it will inevitably give away to socialism. Structural Marxism and Hegelian Marxism constitute two sides of the same coin. Instead of objective, external economy, Structural Marxism replaces it with the subjective figure of Man and his/her inner consciousness. Like economy in orthodox view, here humanity remains in false consciousness till the proletariat arrives to evolve into conscious being. Like economy, Man and evolutionary development of his consciousness (more precisely proletariat class) is the motor force of history.

In contrast to this humanistic view (i.e. human being is the center of all historical-civilizational dynamics), which is idealist (because its stress on human ideas and consciousness), structural school proposes studying history as a process without a subject. What does it mean to study history without a subject? It is to study not humanity‟s consciousness but history as an „unconscious process‟ moving through various combinations of relations of its various structures. It is unconscious precisely because the stress is on the material aspect of history, existing irrespective of human will and consciousness. Structural Marxism will go as far as to claim that this material process is not available to human consciousness. Human consciousness is always ideological. It is human beings‟ imagination of real relations existing in society that grounds what we refer to social relations in practical life.

4.3 Marxist Dialectics as Over-determination

One is justified to wonder at this point that how this view of history is any different from orthodox Marxism‟s view of history. Orthodox Marxism reduces the whole history to economy. In contrast as a major difference, structural Marxism sees history consisting of at least four elements: ideological, theoretical, political and economic. All these elements, which structural Marxism prefers to call practices, are active in shaping human history, it is just not economy. Human history in various epochs (like say feudalism, capitalism, socialism) is actually various combinations of these practices. They have their own autonomous processes and structures. Marxism needs to study them in their specificity. So for a Marxist as economy is important so is studying ideology or politics.

A Marxist analysis also needs to study the ways in which these practices are interrelated to compose the society as a structured whole. The structural Marxism proposes that society as a structure is over- determined. The claim is that the structure of society is a complex whole. The complexity lies in the fact that society is just not determined; it is determined twice over and thereby over-determined. So we already know that the economy in Marxism is considered the determining factor. It determines the nature and relationships of superstructural elements. Structural Marxism agrees to this Marxist interpretation. However at the same time, they argue dialectics process that Marx or later Marxists like Lenin had in mind do not end here. The economy determines how the other elements like ideology, politics and theory would be hierarchically ordered. At the same time it also determines which one out of all four elements (i.e. including economy, not excluding) will be the dominant one. The dominant element then in principle comes to determine the hierarchical order for the second time. This over-determined structure is the society as a whole. So in feudalism, economy structures other instances in such a way that the state as a part of political practices becomes dominant and regulates the society in general. But in capitalism economy determines these relationships in such a way that it itself remains dominant.

This understanding of dialectic ensures that the primacy of other instances like polity, ideology or theory and their analysis remains as crucial for revolutionary Marxism as understanding the economy. This also reflects in Althusser‟s own work and the theoretical questions structural Marxism has taken up.

Althusser‟s own celebrated essays - on the state, ideology, art, theater etc. relating these with class struggle in existing society - demonstrates that Althusser‟s Neo-Marxism was not prisoner of Marxist orthodoxy, despite its negation of subjectivism.

5. The Crisis of Capitalist Society in general: the Critical Theory of Habermas

The Neo-Marxism of Jurgen Habermas as a strand of Critical Theory did not emerge out of a crisis intrinsic to Communist politics and Marxist philosophizing. The critical school that Habermas initially belonged was a group of likeminded academicians sharing common interests in issues like knowledge, ideology, rationality or the capitalism in the age of fascism. Not all of them were Marxists in the way Gramsci, Lukacs, Korsch or Althusser were. Marxism for this school was vibrant tradition of critical thinking. But they wanted to subject Marxism itself to their critical theory. In this backdrop, an engagement with Marxism, Jurgen Habermas‟s work has emerged (Corradetti 2011).

5.1 The Critical Theory: Subjectivism and Praxis

Social science, when the Critical Theory was emerging in early 1930s, followed the footsteps of natural science. The mainstream of social science assumed that there are facts out there in reality and the aim is to observe, generalize and reach laws describing such reality. The critical school rejects this idea of external and objective facts. For them there is no fact as an object of observation and perception out there. The fact is in reality historically conditioned. Not only that, there is no neutral observation and perception as well. The subject‟s observation and perception is equally historically given (Kolakowski 1978). The thesis can be illustrated in a simple way. For example we say “X is good in sociology”. The Critical Theory would say that this is not a simple fact which can be accepted or rejected on the basis of some observations. This is because each element in this statement is historically conditioned. It begins with our idea of „good‟ and extends into what we mean by sociology or how someone can be good or bad in sociology (perhaps scoring high score in sociology). Society as a collective fashions such assessment of „good‟ or „bad‟. But here critical theory‟s claim goes deeper than that. It is claimed that even we, who is claiming to observe X and express the fact about X‟s goodness, are historically conditioned. This is because the definition of good (high scores) that society finds acceptable has pre-conditioned us as well, before this observation has even been made. Then there is no point claiming that at the time of observation we are making a neutral observation.

Above mentioned illustration makes sense when critical theory further claims that the critical thinking is equally part of the social behavior. The Critical Theory is a theory which is self-aware of the social milieu in which it is being practiced. So the challenge in a sense is dual in front of critical theorization: on the one hand, it is to recognize its own rootedness in social reality; and at the same time, step outside of that society to criticize the society. Criticizing the society is to criticize the categories through which collective thinks and acts.

Echoing Lukacs, the Critical Theory holds that the capitalist society works with a conception of reality independently working outside, out of the reach of its members. The act of critical thinking is to address this alienation; remedy the distant human faces with himself/herself (Kolakowski 1978). The identity of subject and object in a future is the emancipatory project of the Critical Theory. However the Critical Theory rejects any idea of absolute subject of knowledge; for them the subject-object identity is more of society‟s self-knowledge. This is where the Critical Theory departs from Lukacs (Ibid.). To put it simply, we may recall, for Lukacs the subject of such consciousness was proletariats in practice. Their consciousness through proletarianism was the ultimate unity between subject/object. But the Critical Theory rejects such a privilege accorded to proletariat. They rather seek to make such an enquiry into society‟s collective plain.

5.2 The Problem of Dialectics

We have seen in case of base and superstructure debate on determining the primacy of each element, various positions have been taken in Marxism. The Critical Theory, in the work of Adorno, comes to oppose prevalent ideas of dialectics altogether. It is pointed out that philosophy in general, including dialectics in Hegel and Marx, has always ended up attaching primacy to one or another. To put it simply, if the debate is between subject and object, some have taken position on the side of object, while others have chosen the subject. But both have ended up reducing the whole to either one or the other category. It is similar case with practice and theory. If Marxism has stressed too much on practice, it has negated the thought. Adorno terms this totalitarian tendency in philosophy. In contrast, the Critical Theory ventures to do away with any primacy whatsoever and keep dialectics an open system of investigation. Its main task is to oppose any totalitarian tendency by not assigning absolute importance to any category (Kolakowski 1978). Therefore in Critical Theory, for example, the base and superstructure must always be studied in their interrelatedness, in their relations of contradictions but never ever assuming that either can be subsumed under the other. That is to say, the Critical Theory does not believe that either can be determined or completely explained by another.

5.3 Habermasian Neo-Marxism: The Critical Encounter with Marx as the Foundation

The above mentioned social philosophical assumptions are in direct effect in the critical engagement that Habermas has with Marx. Needless to add, the departure that Habermas takes is also the foundation of his work on communicative action, public sphere or deliberative democracy.

Marx has stressed that man‟s relationship with nature and their mastery over it is the real space of sociological investigation into labour, and , and finally superstructural form every mode of production erects (Marx 1959). Habermas observes this to be Marx‟s correct attempt to move away from Hegelian idealism of sole concentration on consciousness. Instead Marx was right to ground his dialectical analysis into material reality by investigating into man‟s relation to nature and thereby production and reproduction of society. However what Marx is guilty of, according Habermas, is assigning primacy to this aspect alone. Marx wanted to move away from Hegelian idealism but what he has ended up doing is cutting himself off. In the process, what he misses out is an important aspect of human society i.e. intersubjectivity. What Marx does is to give us a partial story as a complete story: we are told about production and reproduction; but what is left out communication or human beings in intersubjective interaction (Flood 1977; also see Kolakowski 1978).

This equal stress on dialogical, communicative aspect of human society in rejecting Marx‟s sole preference for human beings‟ interaction with the nature to satisfy their basic needs is echo of his grounding in the Critical Theory tradition. These are also basis of Habermasian foray into discourse theory; transformation of public sphere as a site where intersubjectivity shapes up; and deliberative democracy (with the stress on communication and dialogue) as the road ahead amid the perils of modernity.

6. Summary

 Neo-Marxism covers new areas since Marx and Engels. These areas primarily consist of understanding subjective consciousness, dynamics of culture, ideological practices, state and its legal apparatuses as part of production and reproduction, and finally even symbolic universe as the part of material reality.

 However all these avenues have opened up due to these thinkers‟ serious mediation on the issue of base and superstructure. Inspirations have come from various sources, but as a common agenda, Neo- Marxists across the spectrum take up social-philosophical questions on methodology in studying society (dialectic), structure and agency, relationships between theory and socio-political practices etc.

 These socio-philosophical concerns of the Neo-Marxism holds the key to understand concepts --- such as hegemony (Gramsci), ideological state apparatus (Althusser) or public sphere (Habermas) - which have been tremendously influential in sociological theorization and theoretical-empirical studies across social sciences.

7. References

Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus (Notes towards an Investigation).” in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Delhi: Aakar Books. 2006.

Callinicos, Alex. Althusser‟s Marxism. Pluto Press: London.1976.

Choi, Won (2012), "A Structuralist Controversy: Althusser and Lacan on Ideology.” Dissertations, pp. 297. http://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/297 (accessed on 12th Jan, 2014)

Corradetti, C. (2011), “The and Critical Theory”, http://www.iep.utm.edu/frankfur/ (accessed on 1st August, 2014)

Elliot, Gregory. Althusser: The Detour of Theory. Brill: Leiden and Boston. 2006.

Flood, Anthony. “Jurgen Habermas‟s Critique of Marxism.” Science & Society XLI, no.4(1977): 448- 464.

Jacques Bidet and Stathis Kouvelakis. “Introduction: Marxism, Post-Marxism, Neo-Marxisms.” in Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism, edited by Jacques Bidet and Stathis Kouvelakis. Brill: Leiden & Boston, 2008. pp. XI-XV.

Kolakowski, Leszek. Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origin, Growth, and Dissolution (3rd Vol. The Breakdown), trans. by P.S. Falla, Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1978.

Korsch, Karl ([1931] 2012), “The Crisis of Marxism”, trans. by Otto Koester, transcribed by Zdravko Saveski, http://www.marxists.org/archive/korsch/1931/crisis-marxism.htm (accessed on 1st August, 2014)

Marshall, Gordon. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2003.

Marx, Karl. Economic and Philosophic Manuscript of 1844. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1959.

- . Prometheus Books: Amherst, New York, 1998.

Ritzer, George. “Varieties of Neo-Marxist Theories.” in Sociological Theory (8th Ed.). The McGraw-Hills Companies: New York, 2011. pp. 277-330.