By Paul E. Gottfried
The unusual dying of Marxism seeks to refute yes misconceptions in regards to the present eu Left and its relation to Marxist and Marxist-Leninist events that existed within the fresh prior. one of the misconceptions that the ebook treats severely and intimately is that the Post-Marxist Left (a time period the publication makes use of to explain this phenomenon) springs from a exceedingly Marxist culture of idea and that it represents an unqualified rejection of yankee capitalist values and practices.
3 precise positive factors of the e-book are the makes an attempt to dissociate the current eu Left from Marxism, the presentation of this Left as whatever that constructed independently of the autumn of the Soviet empire, and the emphasis at the particularly American roots of the eu Left. Gottfried examines the multicultural orientation of this Left and concludes that it has little or not anything to do with Marxism as an economic-historical conception. It does, even if, owe greatly to American social engineering and pluralist ideology and to the unfold of yankee idea and political tradition to Europe.
American tradition and American political reform have foreshadowed similar advancements in Europe by means of years or maybe complete a long time. opposite to the effect that the USA has taken antibourgeois attitudes from Europeans, the writer argues precisely the contrary. because the finish of worldwide conflict II, Europe has lived within the shadow of an American empire that has affected the outdated global, together with its self-described anti-Americans. Gottfried believes that this impact is going again to who reads or watches whom greater than to monetary and armed forces disparities. it's the know-how of yank cultural in addition to fabric dominance that fuels the anti-Americanism that's fairly robust at the eu Left. That a part of the eu spectrum has, even though, reproduced in a extra severe shape what begun as an American bounce into multiculturalism. Hostility towards the USA, even though, might be reworked quick into severe affection for the U.S., which happened throughout the Clinton management and through the foreign efforts to convey a multicultural society to the Balkans.
Clearly written and good conceived, The unusual loss of life of Marxism might be of precise curiosity to political scientists, historians of up to date Europe, and people serious of multicultural developments, really between Euro-American conservatives.
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Extra resources for The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millennium
Example text
Thus Lucio Colletti (1924–2001) added to the charge that Hegelian-Marxists were really Hegelian metaphysicians the even more damning accusation that they were bringing into vogue medieval Catholic fantasies. The implications of this charge can be properly weighed by considering the deep anticlerical feeling found in Colletti and in other Italian Communists. In Colletti’s case, an intense dislike for Catholic thought and for the Christian Democratic Party’s mixing 24. , 208, 210, 102–4; Louis Althusser, Marx et Lénine devant Hegel (Paris, PCM, 1972).
Althusser refers to this combination of revolutionary circumstances as “surdétermination,” a situation characterized by a “unified complexity” of causes. But within this skein of circumstances, a “dominating structure” (structure à la dominante) remains manifest, namely the power relations grounded in productive forms that drive on revolutionary reactions. ”24 Hegel applies an abstract concept, “Spirit,” to political, religious, and historical life, of which particular societies are depicted as passing instantiations.
4. See Jean Ranger, “L’évolution du vote communiste en France depuis 1945,” in Le communisme en France (Paris: Armand Colin, 1969), 211–54. 5. Quoted in Sévillia, Le terrorisme, 15. 03 Gott ch2, p 27-53 30 6/16/05 10:46 PM Page 30 Allan S Johnson Al's G4 HD :Pxt jobs archive:#34 THE STRANGE DEATH OF MARXISM In postwar Europe the Communists exploited trends they did not initiate. The havoc wrought by the war increased this urgency for rebuilding societies in a way that would remove or at least lessen poverty through structural changes and income redistribution.