Description

This book addresses the tradition of Marxism that emerged in the 1920s followed by the work of the Frankfurt School, Sartre and Althusser, and into the contemporary era with Jameson, Hardt and Negri, and other salient versions of neo-Marxism.

The variants of neo-Marxism covered here all attempt to update and reconstruct Marxism in theory and politics to respond to the transformations in economy, society, politics, and culture in the 20th century. The work begins with studies of the key figures, Bloch, Lukacs, Korsch and Gramsci, who, in the 1920s in Europe, began developing revisions of Marxism that responded to the developments in capitalism and politics since Marx, while experiencing World War I, the revolutionary upheavals that emerged or followed the war in Russia and various European countries, and the subsequent rise of fascism which they theorized within the framework of their own neo-Marxian theories. These revolutionary Marxian theorists were followed by the Frankfurt School in the 1930s who responded to many of the same crises of Western capitalism and civilization that had engaged their neo-Marxian predecessors in the 1920s, but also fully engaged fascism which had taken over in Germany and Europe, driving the Frankfurt School to exile in the United States. These thinkers, and the subsequent neo-Marxist who toiled in the wake of these important revisionary attempts, are analysed in terms of their biographies, written texts, politics and influence on contemporary critical social theory and politics. Consequently, this volume provides a critically important overview of how this group of 20th and 21th century Marxists differ from classical Marxism while trying to reinterpret that tradition in the midst of polycrises. As such, the book not only provides an illuminating survey of Neo-Marxism theorists, but also offers insights into the socio-historical context of the period from the 1920s to the 2020s when specific revisions and reconstructions of Marxism appeared throughout the Western world.

The text will be a vital resource accessible to both undergraduate and graduate students for a range of courses in sociology, social theory, political science, modern European and American history, philosophy, and studies of Marxism and Marxist social theory.