Post-Marxism

Post-Marxism is the trend in ] Karl Marx's writings as alive as Marxism itself, bypassing orthodox Marxism. a term "post-Marxism" first appeared in Ernesto Laclau together with Chantal Mouffe's theoretical pull in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. It can be said that post-Marxism as a political conviction was conceived at the University of Essex by Laclau and Mouffe, and was further developed by Louis Althusser and Slavoj Žižek. Philosophically, post-Marxism counters derivationism and essentialism for example, it does not see economy as a foundation of politics and the state as an instrument that functions unambiguously and autonomously on behalf of the interests of a given class. Recent overviews of post-Marxism are presentation by Ernesto Screpanti, Göran Therborn, and Gregory Meyerson.

History

Post-Marxism dates from the slow 1960s and several trends and events of that period influenced its development. The weakness of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc paradigm became evident and Marxism faced a lack since the Second International. This happened concurrently with the occurrence internationally of the strikes and occupations of 1968, the rise of Maoist theory and its synthesis with Marxism–Leninism, and the proliferation of commercial television which forwarded in its broadcasts the Vietnam War. Subsequently, Laclau and Mouffe mention the proliferation of "new forwarded positions" by locating their analysis on a post-Marxist non-essentialist framework.