Western Marxism

The end of the "ice age" of dogmatism in the USSR has spurred a lively growth of the most varied conceptions of social development, the scientific classification of which, in terms of the political currents to which they belong or the methodological approaches they use, has hardly begun. The situation resembles the painful condition that characterized Western European Marxists after the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU in 1956. As Louis Althusser, the well-known Marxist philosopher, wrote, "The end of philosophical dogmatism has not restored (the former) Marxist philosophy to us. … It has given us real freedom to investigate, but it has also engendered a kind of fever. Some have been overhasty in calling philosophy what was only an ideological commentary on their sense of liberation and their taste of freedom. However, the temperature is falling as inevitably as stones tossed in the air. What the end of dogmatism did was to restore the right to carry out a scrupulous inventory of our intellectual property, to determine both our wealth and our poverty, to ponder over and publicly formulate our problems and to begin to perform the difficult task of true investigation" [1, p. 21]. One of the guarantees that this task will be accomplished is the knowledge of what has been accumulated by world thought and in particular Western European Marxist theoreticians [2]. The latter is all the more important in that we assumed a priori that our theoretical stagnation was inherent in aMarxism in general. Experiencing idiosyncrasy for dogmatism, we turn to non-Marxist theories, even as we disregard what Western Marxist theoreticians have developed. But the evolution of Marxism in the West, which has been through its ups and downs and crises, is important not only in itself; it also is indicative of processes arising in the social sciences in the USSR. It is interesting in this connection to examine how social changes have influenced the frame of mind of Western Manrists, and how these changes have been reflected in the themes of their investigations, in their methodological approaches and political positions, and in the definitions of the subject of social changes. I should first like to discuss the very term "Western Marxism," which for a long time we denied the right to exist. Its theoretical boundaries and essential characteristics have always been the object of heated debates in the West as well, which spurred the American critic of "Western Marxism," Stanley Aronowitz, to say that the "term Western Marxism does not designate any concrete set of doctrines. Its historical function is linked to the anti-Leninist movements of our century as an object of incrimination, and the term is used less often tolabel apostates of various kinds. Its theoretical status is doubtful andproblematic" [3, p. xiii]. Uncertainty about the meaning of the term is expressed even more clearly by T. Long: "I will use the term "Western Marxism" to apply to those who have proclaimed themselves Marxists, as well as to those who have proclaimed themselves non-Marxists since the time of Lukacs, who in large measure took up Marx's challenge, studying the strength and weakness of his theory from the standpoint of the prospects of humankind's potential emancipation" [4, p. 11. The first use of the term is discernible earlierin Comintern materials from 1924 in connection with certain works by G. Lukacs and K Korsch. However, the term came into general currency in 1955 thanks to M. Merleau-Ponty [S] who applied it to Lukacs's book Hktory and Class Conscwusness (1923). For Merleau-Ponty, "Western Marxism" was identified with the tradition of humanistic, subjectivist, and nondogmatic Marxism, in contrast to the official doctrine in the USSRand the Eastern European countries.