Research on Western Marxism and Contemporary Radical Thoughts in Mainland China

Ever since Mr. Xu Chongwen first introduced the concept of “Western Marxism” to mainland China in 1982, the study of foreign Marxism has experienced a vicissitudinous time of 20 years. This introduction is of vital importance for the academia of Marxist study in China. Although there is still disagreement over the usage of the word “Western Marxism,” its relatively definite realm of study has in effect opened up a new range of questions . In my opinion, this extension of Marxist study changed traditional Marxist research, broke its narrowness and gave rise to the possibility of new creative theories.

However, I have to admit that most of the achievements of Chinese scholars in this field in the past 30 years are confined to translation and introduction based on individuals. Most of the classical texts of traditional “Western Marxism” (up to the 1970s) have been translated into Chinese, and translated works mainly focused on philosophy, culture, aesthetics, and psychology, and other subjects such as sociology, economics, politics and history were barely covered (of course, some recent researchers started to pay more attention to these fields.). There is still a lot of work that needs to be done in this area, especially an appropriate theoretical positioning of the new development of the Western Marxism since the end of the 20th century. Compared with our Western counterpart, our current research situation does not make us proud, but at the same time it provides two important prospects for our future study: a deep understanding of the classical texts and the construction of a new paradigm.

First of all, when we look at the classics of Western Marxism starting from History and Class Consciousness, it is not difficult to find that most of our achievements are general commentations. Even though some more specific studies have started, few are intensive and meticulous examinations. What we have are mostly second‑hand data, repeating of the original views, and labeling of certain –isms. We failed to enter into the philosophical contexts of the original discourse. I have once pointed out the main reasons for this situation: First, we have not sincerely confronted the classics of Marxism that have been under scrupulous studies by the Western Marxists. Without this basic precondition, how can we come up with “Marxist criticism”? “Marxist criticism” requires first intensive reading of Marxist classics, what I call “Back to Marx.” Without this condition, any simplistic commentation or assertion is illegal or ideological, leading to a rootless theoretical research. Second, schools of Western Marxism usually integrate Marx with philosophical and cultural traditions of their time in order to construct new radical discourses out side of modern western mainstream bourgeoisie ideology. Most of the Western Marxists themselves are experts in the fields of contemporary western philosophy. They tend to explain Marx through their original philosophical discourses, for example, before young Lukacs started to read Marx, he was already familiar with Georg Simmel’s aesthetics of modern life, Max Weber’s sociology, Jean‑Paul Sartre’s early Existentialism, Merleau‑Ponty’s early phenomenology, Fromm‑Marcuse psychoanalysis, Theodor W. Adorno’s theory of atonal music. Without a good understanding of the complicated philosophical background, any effort to grasp the fundamental problematic (the “‑ism” taken for granted) will be in vain, not to mention the possibility to deconstruct the profound theoretical structure of the object of our criticism. Besides, we are still unfamiliar with the historical context where the western researchers were situated, even though we have translated a lot of western Marxist works since the 1980s. This absence of background support, again, leads to the loss of the specific discourse and its context that the Chinese researchers should possess. Therefore, what is most important for the present research in China is to turn around, confront again the texts and the philosophers that we supposed as being “present‑at‑hand,” and to construct historical contexts, find out the “symptoms” behind their theoretical logic. Only by this kind of reading can we start a new round of profound criticism.

In the second place, a precondition of contemporary Marxism research is to understand the transformation of paradigms. Since the 1968 “Red Storm” in France, there have been great changes in the New Left and the traditional Western Marxism camp. In particular, under today’s postmodern background, the paradigm of the traditional “Western Marxism” (for example, its two main themes, “authenticity” of Marx and political criticism of capitalism), from its conception to its practical application, will not be able to contain the theoretical direction of the spectacles in the diverse and complex postmodern world. In order to avoid another wave of theoretical chaos, we need to clarify the historical boundaries of theory and logic, and reflect on the new situation‑‑first identify the historical ending of the Western Marxism and then construct a new pattern where the post‑modern Marxism, the post‑Marxian trend and the late Marxism co‑exist. Only by doing so could we start to have a clear understanding of the new development of the Western Marxism.

Adorno’s criticism of totality and identity signifies the end of Western Marxism and its necessity of historical existence as a theoretical trend. This ending is signified in practice by the revolutionary movements of the western students in late 1960s and the failure of “Rose Revolution.” Western Marxism, as a special theoretical trend, was unconsciously constructed by the philosophers, who were against the “orthodox Marxism” of the Second International in the 1920s. They refuse any ideological or political structuring of Marxism, especially the “scientific” interpretation to idolize Marx. Through re‑interpreting Marx’s original texts they intend to find a new Marxism different from the orthodox one in the Engels‑Stalin system. This rebirth of Marx is conceived within the western cultural and philosophical tradition. Even though these Left theorists insist that they have the authentic Marxism, the real nature of their theory is after all the ideology against the bourgeois political system within the framework of industrial civilization.

In the early construction of Western Marxism, Georg Lukacs’ totality of historical dialectics,, Antonio Gramsci’s monism of practice and Karl Korsch’s identity of subject and object were all contributed to oppose the separation of theoretical logic from capitalist reality. After the 1930s, based on the newly published young Marx’s The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Western Marxism developed into Humanist Marxism, which inherited the theoretical logic of the Neo‑humanism. In addition to the early activities of the Frankfurt School, it also includes the humanist construction by Ernst Bloch, Jean‑Paul Sartre, Erich Fromm and Henri Lefebvre. Humanist Marxism reached its peak in the mid‑1960s and was severely attacked by Scientism, whose representative was Althusser, who rejected the concept of the non‑historical human and subjectivity. The antagonism between Humanism and Scientism within Western Marxism rehearsed again the split inside of the modern western rationality.

Afterwards, an important theoretical transition happened during the mid to late Frankfurt School period‑the publication of Dialectic of Enlightenment co‑authored by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer and Negative Dialectics by Adorno opened a new theoretical direction, an inherent refusal of the whole industrial civilization. Enlightenment, the bourgeois liberal discourse, is criticized as an assistant of instrumental reason, by which man enslaves nature and rules man. Any attempt to pursue the freedom and liberation based on the essence of identity (whether identical to man or to law) is considered as taking part in the hidden conspiracy of the capitalist totality. The violent relation imposed on nature by man is under critical introspection. As the most important foundations of Marx’s Historical Materialism, the growth of productive forces and the logic of human liberation, are both negated. Different from the ontological divergence of Lukacs’ criticism of reification and Sartre’s criticism of the alienated practice, Adorno’s theoretical direction already runs over the border of the Western Marxism and announces the ending of its very logic. He sets a theoretical starting‑point to the post‑modern trend, with a new critical attitude toward Marx. I call this new theoretical inclination Post‑Marx, which basically denies all the important foundations of Marxism while in its essence inherits Marx’s critical tradition in terms of methodology and basic standpoint. Their writings no longer piously refer to Marx’s “classical texts”, but instead express their agreement or disagreement with Marx more freely and relaxingly. This Post‑Marx trend represents the theoretical image of many former Western Marxists and central‑Left thinkers in the 1970s. Based on Adorno’s thought, Frankfurt School experiences a great theoretical turning point. Post‑Humanism becomes a new basis. For example, Fromm, the second‑generation Humanist Marxist philosopher, in his last work To Have or to Be (Haben oder Sein) (1976), abandons the abstract subject‑centrism and distinguishes the “possessive” humanist subject from the non‑possessive, non‑central subject. He is strongly against the old humanist “self‑centalism, egoism and desire to monopolize,” and also against man “enslaving nature” and the “enemy attitude” towards nature. Later on, both Friedrich Pollock and Jürgen Habermas establish their theories based on the very theoretical turning point. Without understanding this background, it would be difficult to understand Habermas’ anti‑identity communication theory, which supersedes the labor economy. Therefore, it is Adorno who first started the post‑ (modern) Marxian trend. At the same time, I also noticed another important theoretical event that occurred almost at the same time, the important change of the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre in his late academic studies, which happened in his criticism of modern everyday life after 1962. Lefebvre started to divert from his early criticism of the alienation of everyday life. He identifies the transformation of modern capitalist controlling and ruling structure from production and economy to consumption and symbol. Lefebvre is the first to undermine the foundation of Marx’s conception of history, namely, the mode of material production. In his later studies of space, he argues for the existence of a super‑real representational space to replace the field constructed by social relations (or the traditional spaces: the absolute space of nature, the historical space of politics and the abstract space of economics) in Historical Materialism. His point of view has a direct influence on Jean Baudrillard’s turning to Post‑Marx. Adorno and Lefebvre, while having remained Western Marxists in their lifetime, initiated the new Post‑Marx trend.

In the Marxist camp after Adorno, there appears a radical trend, which negates the industrial civilization and all of its cultural forms. Its main force derives from the post‑modern Marxism, which is established in and influenced by the post‑modern thought, for instance, the ecological Marxism and new feministic Marxism. Although they consider themselves as Marxists, their ideas already depart from the traditional Western Marxism. Their essential difference from Western Marxism is that they completely deny the most important principles underlying Marxist philosophy. For instance, ecological Marxism is against the idea that productive forces are the basis of historical development. They consider this idea as a non‑ecological attitude of man as subject enslaving nature. By this critique, they actually refuse the growth model of productive forces in Historical Materialism. Feminist Marxism criticizes Marx’s analysis of social classes as a form of patriarchy. Their reasoning is that in Marx’s discussion of the relation between labor and capital, by labor he means only the labor realized in the exchange market but leaves out the labor women contribute in their household work, and by this negligence, Marx fails to give an appropriate position of the women as labor forces. In their opinion, this neglected “shadow labor” also creates surplus value. The theories above, even though claim themselves as Marxism, have already departed from the “authentic Marxism” asserted by the traditional Western Marxists, and diverted form the original intention to criticize modern capitalist society.

After the “May Storm,” a group of young Western Marxists in Europe left Marxism and turned to a more radical post‑Marxian thought in the post‑modern trend. The vigorous thinkers, for example, Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard, and Jacques Derrida, openly express their disagreement with Marxism, while claiming that they have inherited the critical part from Marx. They belong to the mainstream of the postmodernist thought, which was founded by Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan and Jerry Fodor, but do not agree with political standpoint of the Right Post‑Modernists, including Jean‑François Lyotard, Richard Rorty, and Ihab Hassan. The new representative of this trend is the Slovenian Lacanist Slavoj Zizek. These theorists standing in their own specific field criticize fiercely modern capitalism, but also keep carefully a certain distance from Marxism. Post‑Colonialism and the cultural criticism of Neo‑historicism are also included in this trend. Above is what I call Post‑Marxian Trend. It is a theoretical metamorphosis of Western Marxism during its abrupt turn to the right in the post‑modern context. It should be noted that these Marxist philosophers are not or no longer Marxists. With this regard, they are different from Adorno and Lefebvre, and their political position is different from the post‑modern Marxists who consider themselves as Marxists as we mentioned earlier, and also different from the late Marxism, which we are about to discuss.

The post‑Marxian philosophy is proud of its historical transcendence over the fundamental framework of Marxism. In this sense of historical ontology, post‑modern Marxism has similarity with post‑Marxian philosophy: they are all built on the historical transcendence of modernity by post‑modernity. The post‑Marxian philosophers believe that the social and historical foundation, on which Marxism is based, has already become the old traces of the development of history. The entirely new social civilization will provide a different practical foundation for the corresponding radical criticism. Therefore, most of the post‑Marxian thinkers on one hand criticize Marx, on the other hand, attempt to construct their own critical platform. Baudrillard, whose works Mirror of Production and For a Critique of Political Economy of Sign published in the 1970s, is a typical representative. As a student of Lefebvre, Baudrillard is also influenced by Roland Barthes and Guy Debord. In Society of Spectacle, Debord rewrites the beginning of Marx’s Capital: “an immense accumulation of spectacle” replaces Marx’s “immense accumulation of commodities.” From the Society of Spectacle to The Consumer Society, the commodity exchange of Marx is turned into the exchange of signs. The mirror of production on which Marx relies is broken while the fantasy of post‑modern media becomes the real ruler in today’s capitalist society. In addition, Baudrillard declares the death of modernity and industry (the mode of material production), and rejects Marxism altogether. The latest events include Mark Poster’s replacement of Marx’s mode of production with his mode of information and Zizek’s adoption of the Lacanian symptoms instead of Marx’s material relations. In general, the post‑Marxian philosophy attempts to stride beyond the old Marxist domain, which is a significant change in theory.

After the post‑modernity becomes the main subject of western radicals, there appears a special kind of Marxist discourse. Compared with the above two trends, this new discourse is closer to the traditional Western Marxism. It remains a close relationship with the traditional Western Marxism in the post‑modern space and time. The thinkers of this trend insist on the basic principles and ideas of Marxist philosophy, and think that the philosophical framework of Marxist philosophy is indestructible and will not be superseded in the post‑industrial society. Faced with the rapid development of capitalism, they refuse to admit that any qualitative change has ever happened, but only strategically identified the current stage as the Late Capitalism (Ernest Mandel) or global capitalism. I prefer to define this trend as the Late Marxism. Its representatives include the Avant‑guard members such as Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagleton, Arif Dirlik, Steve Best and Douglas Kellner. Among them, the most creative idea is probably from Dirlik’s discussion on capitalism in the era of “flexible production”. The Late Marxism surpasses the traditional Western Marxism by the fact that they are situated in the post‑industrial society and faced with the new problems of globalization. Even though they still rely on the basic framework and principles of their predecessors, it is after all a brand new discourse. It must be pointed out that the Late Marxism and the post‑Modern Marxism are both looking at the same historical horizon. However, while the post‑Modern Marxism’s reassurance of Marxism is based on its recognition of the transition from modernity to post‑modernity, the Late Marxism, on the other hand, does not recognize the existence of post‑modernity, and considers the new historical period as a later stage of capitalist development. Both identify themselves to be Marxist and insist on Marxism. This makes them completely different from the post‑Marxian trend.