The Influence of Marxism 1945 – 83

The radical wave of the late 1960s affected Marxism in two main ways. First, it multiplied the number of those who produced, read and bought Marxist writings, in a spectacular manner, and thus increased the sheer volume of Marxist discussion and theory. Second, its scale was so vast – at least in some countries – its appearance so sudden and unexpected, and its character so unprecedented, that it appeared to require a far-reaching reconsideration of much that most Marxists had long taken for granted.

The radical wave was peculiar in several respects. It began as a movement of young intellectuals, who were, specifically, students, whose numbers had multiplied enormously in the course of the 1960s in almost all countries of the globe, or more generally, were the sons and daughters of middle-class families. In some countries it remained confined to students or potential students, but in others – notably in France and Italy – it provided the spark for industrial movements of the working class on a scale not seen for many years. It was an extraordinarily international movement, crossing the boundaries between developed and dependent countries and between capitalist and socialist societies: 1968 is a date in the history of Yugoslavia, Poland and Czechoslovakia as well as Mexico, France and the USA. However, it attracted attention chiefly because it swept through countries which formed part of the core of developed capitalist society, at the peak of its economic prosperity. Lastly, its impact on the political system and institutions of several of the countries in which it occurred, however short-lived, was disproportionately dramatic.

The growth of Marxism since the 1950s took place primarily, and in some cases overwhelmingly, among intellectuals who now formed an increasingly large and important social stratum. Indeed, it reflected the radicalisation of important parts of this stratum, especially of its young members. Formerly Marxism’s social roots had been primarily, and often overwhelmingly, in movements and parties of manual workers. This did not mean that many books or even pamphlets on Marxist theory were written, or even read, by workers, though the self-educated working-class militant (Brecht’s ‘lesender Arbeiter’) formed an important sector of the public for such Marxist literature as was studied in the discussion circles, educational classes, libraries and institutes associated with the labour movement. Thus in the coalfields of South Wales a network of over a hundred miners’ libraries grew up between 1890 and the 1930s, in which the union and political activists of this area – notoriously radical since before 1914 – acquired their intellectual formation. What it meant was that organised workers in such movements accepted, applauded and imbibed a form of Marxist doctrine (‘a proletarian science’) as part of their political consciousness, and that the great majority of Marxist intellectuals, or indeed of any intellectuals associated with the movement, saw themselves essentially as serving the working class, or more generally, a movement for the emancipation of humanity through the historically inevitable rise and triumph of the proletariat.