10.2.25

The Influence of Marxism 1945 – 83

 

The bibliography of Marxist philosophical publications multiplied after 1960, and indeed the national and international debates among Marxists which attracted most attention among radical intellectuals were those associated with philosophers: Lukacs and the Frankfurt School, the Gramscians, and Della Volpe, Sartre, Althusser and their various followers, critics and opponents. [...] Taste for such philosophical discussions also became very marked where philosophy was not a part of general humanist higher education, as in the Anglo-Saxon countries.Philosophy tended to encroach upon other disciplines, as when Althusserians seemed to consider Marx’s Capital as though it were primarily a work of epistemology.

The rethinking of the bases of Marxist theory was an essential element in the necessary critical scrutiny of Marx’s own work and of Marxism as a coherent and consistent body of thought. 

Eric Hobsbawm
1917 - 2012