Marksizmden Post-Marksizme

by Göran Therborn, Devrim Evci (Translator)

Dünyanın önde gelen toplum kuramcılarından biri olan Göran Therborn, bu özlü ve panoramik yapıtında, Marksizmin yirminci yüzyılda izlediği yörüngeyi ve onun yirmi birinci yüzyılda radikal düşünceye nasıl bir miras bıraktığını inceliyor.

Therborn, Marksizm ve eleştirel kuramın son yüzyıl içerisinde çizdiği parabole tarihsel bir perspektiften bakarken, radikal düşüncenin yirmi birinci yüzyılın başında girdiği özgün arayışlara eğilmeyi de iek, Negri, Badiou ve diğer düşünürlerin yapıtlarını tartışarak ihmal etmiyor. Modernite, postmodernizm ve post-Marksizm üzerine süregelen tartışmalara çağdaş bir bakış açısıyla yaklaşan yazar, Marksist ve Marx'la ilintili kuramsal akımların değişen iktisadi, siyasi ve entelektüel koşullarla nasıl başa çıkabileceğini irdeliyor. Yirmi birinci yüzyıl siyasetinin parametrelerini küresel ölçekte soruşturan bu eleştirel-kuramsal bakış, yeni yüzyılda da Marksizmin dünyayı açıklama ve değiştirme gücüne duyulan güvenin bir ifadesi olarak karşımıza çıkıyor.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Theory, Sociology, History, Economics, Nonfiction

227 pages, Paperback

First published November 24, 2008

About the author

Göran Therborn is a professor of sociology at Cambridge University and is amongst the most highly cited contemporary Marxian-influenced sociologists. He has published widely in journals such as the New Left Review, and is notable for his writing on topics that fall within the general political and sociological framework of post-Marxism. Topics on which he has written extensively include the intersection between the class structure of society and the function of the state apparatus, the formation of ideology within subjects, and the future of the Marxist tradition.

Reviews

[C. Varn · Rating 3 out of 5]

That to make of a book that has a profile of Marx in sand for a cover. The shortish book is primarily three essays, one on the back political backdrop of Marxism in the Neo-liberal period, and two on the early parts of the 20th century. The three essays were previously available, and were functionally a material overview with some challenges to "orthodoxy." The first essay "Into the Twenty-First Century: The New Parameters of Global Politics," Therborn posted that the irreverence and class politics were the core of the left, class politics has declined and irreverence in the form of post-modernism and identity concerns has predominated. Interestingly, this assumption seems to be completely in line with the left after the G-8 protests during the Anti-War movement, but completely wrong about the left right now. It was dated within a year of being written. Furthermore, he definition of class seems like it is totally economistic as Therborn sees the decline in class struggle to be largely related to de-industrialization as if class society was only obvious in an industrial proletariat. While there are some illuminating statistics in this essay-particularly on corporate earnings in comparison to GDP-the move seems to fetishize the labor-process in its early form. A mistake made my many Marxists, but not one that is sound and not one that all Marxists make. Yet his call at the end seems very in step with the times (both Kasama Project and Platypus Affiliated Society seem to be attempting something like a trans-socialist view) :

Trans-socialism is a perspective of social transformation going beyond the strategies and historical institutions of socialism, the centrality of the working-class and the agency of the labour movement, of public ownership and large-scale collective planning of production. It is not `postsocialist', because it does not imply an acceptance of capitalism as the only possible game and because it implies a rejection neither of the goals of historical socialism nor of the attempts to `build' it. On the contrary, it starts from an acceptance of the historical legitimacy of the vast socialist movement and its heroic epic of creativity and enthusiasm, of endurance and struggle, of beautiful dreams and hopes as well as of blunders, failures and disillusions -- in short, of defeats as well as victories. It retains the fundamental Marxian idea that human emancipation from exploitation, oppression, discrimination and the inevitable linkage between privilege and misery can come from struggle by the exploited and disadvantaged themselves. It then continues by recognizing that the twenty-first century is beginning to look very different from the twentieth -- not more equal and just, but with new constellations of power and new possibilities of resistance. (61)

In short, Therborn is calling us to take assessment of our history but not merely try to relive it. This is crucial in the current situation.

The second essay is a bit more telling and a little more theoretically substantive, although it spends entirely too much time on what is essentially a text-book overview of the history of Marxist critical theory. As he asserts in this essay, . "Marxism defended modernity with a view to creating another, more fully developed modernity" (67) and calls Marxism the loyal opposition to modernity. He then focuses on the Frankfurt School as providing the dialectic of modernity, and Western Marxism not as a defeatist move, but as an extension of Lenin and Marx without dependence on an actual state. Therborn quite interestingly asserts here that " Therborn argues that "the main function of the 1960s Western Marxism was to open up an intellectual horizon and a field of reflection, where theoretical and conceptual issues could be discussed without being foreclosed by party-line polemics or divisive political loyalties" (90-91). Most of which had stopped in the Soviet Union, although most theorizing and debating was going on in Maoist China which is left out of the book. This period does not really cover the theories within the various leftist parties in the US or the related movements with critical reading, but largely focuses on sociologists and theorists. It overs the period from 1917-1991.

The last essay, "After Dialectics: Radical Social Theory in the North at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century" goes from 1991 to somewhere around late 2008. Yet for all the discussion of Derrida's Spectres of Marx, and LaClau while making pithy comments about the world social forum and European "theological" turn in Marxism, Therborn ignores the Naxalite insurgency or the debates in non-academic Marxism that have come back to the surface. Furthermore, the assumption is that Marxism is in its "post," but this hardly seems to be the case lately.

While I found bits of the book quite, the way pan-Arabian Socialism was crushed by the US and Western European governments supporting Islamists, and the bits of the World Social Forum in Mumbai, but this work seems highly selective, over-broad, and could benefit from being more than three thematically related essays.

[Rhys · Rating 2 out of 5]

You know, when you are at a lake, it's calm and nothing is really happening. So you find a flat rock, not too large, but large relative to its flatness. You move up close to the water and bend a bit sideways so when you release the rock, you are as close to the water's surface as possible. But the rock can't touch the water too soon, or it will just enter the surface and sink. No, the rock must first touch the surface as tangentially as possible, and with enough velocity so as to leave the surface again. You do this exactly right and the rock will skip across the lake. And you will stand back up and watch the concentric ripples of each contact intersect, amplifying or nullifying as they collaboratively interfere with each other. In time the lake will grow calm again. And there will be more rocks to choose from

That's what I was thinking about while reading this book.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why did Marxists turn all philosophical in the 20th Century? Therborn explains why.

[Peter Harrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short book which reprints revised versions of essays previously published elsewhere. As is often the case with books of this sort, that means it doesn't always feel like it holds together as a single book. Similarly it also lacks a strong set of analytical goals or key messages. What it does do well is survey the intellectual landscape of the left, and in particular the impact of the fall of the Soviet Union and the "end of history" (in the words of Francis Fukuyama). In particular there is a good short section on 'modernity' and how after the Soviet Union theory has lost faith in the modern, moving into a 'post-modern' world where we can only reflect and justify the status quo rather than seek radical change. We no longer 'believe' in the future as something to be sought out.

As a brief survey and a guide for further reading, this is quite effective. But in some ways disappointingly short and while quite broad, with little theoretical depth.

I wrote some thoughts on post-modernism inspired by reading this book on my blog here: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...

[6655321 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Therborn ignores a number of Marxist or pseduo-Marxist movements that lack political/academic backing (at least in the traditional sense) especially the Autonomist-Marxist movement (especially glaring is the lack of coverage given to the midnight notes collective); despite this this is a crisp, concise, well written analysis of the "movements" within Marxist thought.

[Kavish Gandhi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating. First chapter especially, rest was hard for me to understand, but four stars for the first chapter in particular, an extraordinarily cogent portrait of where we are, especially from a Left perspective

[Mu-tien Chiou · Rating 5 out of 5]

see here: http://wp.me/pOOVy-BB

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not often a book feels so particular and has a good image of what it's target audience is or should be (and if the author is aware how they should approach that audience). This overview of the post-WW2 western left feels difficult to recommend, not because it's bad. But because of how intermediate it is (I feel like many intermediate texts don't exist). It basically assumes the reader have some familiarity with central Marxism and presents a series of essays which seeks to catch the audience up to speed with what has happened in the field so to speak.
To put it plainly it imagines you're a leftist whose been frozen in time and needs to catch you up to speed. The transition between the sections aren't the smoothest...but every section is fulfilling enough on its own it doesn't matter.
The intermediate nature of this book makes it hard recommend. Most people who are aware of the history won't get much value from this. And people who haven't read enough will think this is alien speech. But if you're an 'intermediate' marxist this is a good read. I think the most important part is I left with a sense of wanting to know more. and thus leaving with a handful of authors and book titles.

I put four stars. my rating is closer to 3.5

[Titus Hjelm · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of three essays, one a sweeping overview of the fate of the left for the New Left Review, and two originally written for academic social theory handbooks, this is an interesting if disjointed book. The first essay sort of sets the scene for the other two, but remains somewhat detached--especially as much of what is said there is repeated in the others. The second essay on critical theory is internally disjointed, jumping from a discussion of Adorno to the historical fate of socialist parties to a descriptive overview of some current thinkers. The final essay is the best one, although readers unfamiliar with Marxist theory will only get a surface scratch of what the discussed theorists say. But overall useful in positioning different strands of Marxist and post-Marxist thought, and most of all, as a window into the thinking of one of the main protagonists in Marxist social science since the 1960s.

[Burak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marksizm'in tarihsel gelişimini akademik ama akıcı bir üslupla anlatan bir kitap. Daha çok 20. yüzyılın Batı Marksizm'ine odaklanan kitap esas olarak postmodernizmin Marksizm üzerindeki zayıflatıcı etkisine odaklanıyor. Geniş bir literatür taraması olarak görülebilecek kitabın en büyük şansızlığı ise 2008 yılında yazılmış olması. 2008 ekonomik krizinin yıllara yayılan toplumsal etkisi ve düşünsel alanı değiştirici gücünü doğal olarak göremeyen bu Marksizm ve Post-Marksizm analizi aradan geçen yıllardan sonra çok daha olumsal bir yerden ele alınması gereken bir noktada duruyor.

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Saved itself towards the end mulling over the possibilities of what a new left would look like, but I think most of it was just an excuse to hate on Bush because it was easy to dump on somebody who just left office. And did anybody else catch the whole shitting on Hillary without naming names? Anyhow, a corollary to the Bush hate was a turning of a blind eye to the political nihilism of radical Islam.

[Tathagat Singh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chaotic and mis-structured. Expected it to be a thesis on the philosophical movement from Marxism to post-Marxism, but the author spends most of the time on an overview of International Left movements- in a news-report style.

[Cris Álvarez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Therborn es quizás el mejor analista político vivo. No sacrifica radicalidad por objetividad ni viceversa. Al contrario, está consciente de que reconocer las circunstancias reales es la condición primera para imaginar otra sociedad.

[Aolbain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite what it claims to be, but a decent overview of marxist and marxish intellectual production in the 20th century.

[Tommy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Milquetoast academic marxism... criticizes class as a dated Eurocentric category and can only imagine the world being saved tomorrow by a diverse coalition of social forces, predominately from the "global south", engaged in analysing society through the categories of race, gender and nationality along with a mandatory respect for religious faith. If "textual explication" means something to you then there's a lot in here for you.

A South led by China, India, Brazil and South Africa is replacing the Third World. What this tilt of the globe will mean is still uncertain. Left-of-centre political forces are better located in the South than in the US or in the NATO world generally. All four countries of the Big South even have Communist parties with governmental influence, ruling in China and playing minor parts in the governing coalitions of the other three countries. But the meaning of left-of-centre forces is very unclear in China, ambiguous in Brazil and South Africa, and clearly minoritarian in India. A weakening of US domination will, ceteris paribus, increase the prospects of peace and strengthen national sovereignty.

Simple geopolitical brilliance!

The worldwide student movement of 1968 was a major advance for the forces of irreverence across the world, for it attacked not only tradition and reaction but also the complacency of social liberalism, social democracy, Communism and national revolutions. It rejected the formula of economic growth and expanded mass education as an adequate fulfilment of the classical Left–Enlightenment demands for emancipation and equality, and set new agendas for human liberation and self-realization.

Lets thank baby boomers for economic dedevelopment and new agendas of "self-realization".

[Alice Nilsson · Rating 1 out of 5]

god this was so fucking dry and so fucking boring

[Callum Thorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic look at how Marxism has developed and where its potential future lies

[O. H. Nür-Nathoo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Often reading like a literature review, Therborn's writing flows nicely making it a great introduction to contemporary Marxist thought. On a more substantive note, the historical illiteracy and disregard for nuance (particularly around the Israel-Palestine conflict) is somewhat galling considering the prominence of the academic. In other places, Therborn's veneration of the Russian or Venezuelan regimes have not aged particularly well.