Post‐Marxist Trajectories: Diagnosis,Criticism, Utopia*

In this article, I examine the troublesome notion of “post‐Marxism.” First, I read post‐Marxism as an expression of the transformations entailed by our post‐1968 entry into what world‐systems thinkers call “an age of transition.” Second, drawing on Tormey and Townshend's work, I explore the thematic unity of post‐Marxism in terms of six problems posed to Marxism—the problems of history, revolutionary subjectivity, ethics, positivism, vanguardism, and democracy. Third, I suggest that, given the many questions raised by post‐Marxist efforts to go beyond these problems, and given the passing of the phase of what Holmes has called “happy globalization,” serious doubts are raised about the theoretical and utopian gains achieved by post‐Marxism and the distance we might want to travel from the suggestions offered by the Marxian tradition.