Neo-Marxism

Examples of neo-Marxism include analytical Marxism, French structural Marxism, critical theory, cultural studies, as well as some forms of feminism. Erik Olin Wright's^[9] theory of contradictory class locations is an example of the syncretism found in neo-Marxist thought, as it incorporates Weberian sociology, and critical criminology.^[10]

There is some ambiguity surrounding the difference between neo-Marxism and post-Marxism,^[11][12] with many thinkers being considered both.^[13][14] Prominent neo-Marxist journals include Spectre,^[15] Historical Materialism,^[16] New Left Review, Rethinking Marxism,^[17] Capital & Class,^[18] Salvage,^[19] Cultural Logic^[20] and the Seminar in Contemporary Marxism.^[21]

History

Neo-Marxism developed as a result of social and political problems that traditional

Following World War I, some neo-Marxists dissented and later formed the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School never identified themselves as neo-Marxists. Toward the end of the 20th century, neo-Marxism and other Marxist theories became anathema in democratic and capitalistic Western cultures, where the term attained negative connotations during the Red Scare. For this reason, social theorists of the same ideology since that time have tended to disassociate themselves from the term neo-Marxism.^[23]

Thinkers

Neo-Marxist feminism

Some portions of Marxist feminism have used the neo-Marxist label.^[68][69] This school of thought believes that the means of knowledge, culture, and pedagogy are part of a privileged epistemology. Neo-Marxist feminism relies heavily on critical theory and seeks to apply those theories in psychotherapy as the means of political and cultural change. Teresa McDowell and Rhea Almeida use these theories in a therapy method called "liberation based healing", which, like many other forms of Marxism, uses sample bias in the many interrelated liberties in order to magnify the "critical consciousness" of the participants towards unrest of the status quo.^{[69][70][71][68]}

Neo-Marxian economics

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Such theorists as Samuel Bowles,^[76][77] David Gordon, John Roemer, Herbert Gintis, Jon Elster, and Adam Przeworski have adopted the techniques of neoclassical economics, including game theory and mathematical modeling, to demonstrate Marxian concepts such as exploitation and class conflict.^[78]

The neo-Marxian approach integrated non-Marxist or "bourgeois" economics from the

Concepts

Big business can maintain selling prices at high levels while still competing to cut costs, advertise and market their products. However, competition is generally limited with a few large capital formations sharing various markets, with the exception of a few actual monopolies (such as the Bell System at the time). The economic surpluses that result cannot be absorbed through consumers spending more. The concentration of the surplus in the hands of the business elite must therefore be geared towards imperialistic and militaristic government tendencies, which is the easiest and surest way to utilise surplus productive capacity.

Exploitation focuses on low wage workers and groups at home, especially minorities. Average earners see the pressures in drive for production destroy their human relationships, leading to wider alienation and hostility. The whole system is largely irrational since though individuals may make rational decisions, the ultimate systemic goals are not. The system continues to function so long as Keynesian full employment policies are pursued, but there is the continued threat to stability from less-developed countries throwing off the restraints of neo-colonial domination.

Labor theory of value

Paul A. Baran introduced the concept of potential economic surplus to deal with novel complexities raised by the dominance of monopoly capital, in particular the theoretical prediction that monopoly capitalism would be associated with low capacity utilization, and hence potential surplus would typically be much larger than the realized surplus. With Paul Sweezy, Baran elaborated the importance of this innovation, its consistency with Marx's labor concept of value and supplementary relation to Marx's category of surplus value.^[79]

According to Baran's categories:

• Actual economic surplus: "the difference between what society's actual current output and its actual current consumption." Hence, it is equal to current savings or accumulation.
• Potential economic surplus: "the difference between that output that could be produced in a given natural and technical environment with the help of employable productive resources, and what might be regarded as essential consumption".

Baran also introduced the concept of planned surplus—a category that could only be operationalized in a rationally planned socialist society. This was defined as "the difference between society's 'optimum' output available in a historically given natural and technological environment under conditions of planned 'optimal' utilization of all available productive resources, and some chosen 'optimal' volume of consumption."^[80]

Baran used the surplus concept to analyze underdeveloped economies (or what are now more optimistically called "developing economies") in his Political Economy of Growth.^[80]

Academic journals

• Spectre^[81]
• Historical Materialism^[82]
• Rethinking Marxism^[83]
• Capital & Class^[84]
• Salvage^[85]
• Cultural Logic^[86]
• Seminar in Contemporary Marxism^[87]

See also

References

Sources

• Blackledge, Paul;
  ISBN 978-0-85036-532-0
  .
• Holz, Hans Heinz (1972). Strömungen und Tendenzen im Neomarxismus [Currents and tendencies in neo-Marxism] (in German). Munich:
  ISBN 3-446-11650-8
  .
• Müller, Horst (1986). Praxis und Hoffnung. Studien zur Philosophie und Wissenschaft gesellschaftlicher Praxis von Marx bis Bloch und Lefebvre [Practice and hope. Studies on the philosophy and science of social practice from Marx to Bloch and Lefebvre] (in German). Bochum: Germinal Verlag.
  ISBN 3-88663-509-0
  .
• von Weiss, Andreas (1970). Neomarxismus. Die Problemdiskussion im Nachfolgemarximus der Jahre 1945 bis 1970 [Neo-Marxism. The problem discussion in the successor Marxism from 1945 to 1970] (in German). Freiburg/Munich: Karl-Alber-Verlag.
  ISBN 3-495-47212-6
  .

Further reading

• Willis, Kate. Theories and Practices of Development (2nd ed.). Routledge.
• Woods, Alan. "An outline of Marxist economics." Ch. 6 in Reformism or Revolution.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Neo-Marxism.

• Neo-Marxism: An Attempt at Reformation
• Liberation Based Healing
• Marxist Economics Archived 2009-08-25 at the Wayback Machine Courses, Links and Information
• Marxian Economics (archive from Schwartz center of economic policy analysis)
• Marxian Political Economy
• The Neo-Marxian Schools (archive from Schwartz center of economic policy analysis)
• A Marxian Introduction to Modern Economics
• International working group on value theory Archived 2012-12-17 at the Wayback Machine
• The End of the Market Archived 2020-08-03 at the Wayback Machine A website containing a critical evaluation the idea of the market-clearing price which affirms Marx's theory that in capitalism profitability would decline.
• The Neo-Marxian Schools ("Radical Political Economy")