Gensyn med Perry Andersons "vestlig marxisme"

Resumé

Mikkel Bolt: Perry Anderson’s Western Marxism’ Revisited, Arbejderhistorie 1/2012, s. 84-96.
Perry Anderson’s Considerations on Western Marxism from 1976 remains an influential account of Western European Marxism in the 20. Century. Anderson analyse the difference between an earlier generation of Marxists such as Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg and a later generation including Karl Korsch, Jean-Paul Sartre and Theodor W.
Adorno that all were forced into political isolation in a context characterised by the consolidation of bourgeois liberal democracy in
Western Europe and the disappearance of a revolutionary perspective. The consequence according to Anderson is a kind of philosophical withdrawal where Marxist intellectuals take up teaching positions in the university distancing themselves from politics. The article argues that Anderson’s mapping of the development of Marxism is a misreading that misses the explicit critique of the then
dominant Marxism and its pretended objectivism and overlooks Western Marxism’s attempt to critically analyse the emergence of
new forms of control in post-war Europe.