Neo-Marxism

Part of a series on
Marxism
Theoretical works Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 The Condition of the Working Class in England The German Ideology The Communist Manifesto The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Grundrisse Capital Critique of the Gotha Programme Dialectics of Nature The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State What Is to Be Done? The Accumulation of Capital Philosophical Notebooks Terrorism and Communism The State and Revolution Essays on Marx's Theory of Value History and Class Consciousness Prison Notebooks The Black Jacobins On Practice Theses on the Philosophy of History Dialectic of Enlightenment A Critique of Soviet Economics The Long Revolution Guerrilla Warfare The Wretched of the Earth Reading Capital The Society of the Spectacle Pedagogy of the Oppressed Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses Ways of Seeing How Europe Underdeveloped Africa Social Justice and the City Women, Race and Class Marxism and the Oppression of Women Imagined Communities Hegemony and Socialist Strategy The Sublime Object of Ideology Time, Labor and Social Domination The Age of Extremes The Origin of Capitalism Empire Late Victorian Holocausts Change the World Without Taking Power Caliban and the Witch An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital Capitalist Realism Capital in the Anthropocene Towards Socialism or Capitalism? The Revolution Betrayed Literature and Revolution The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany Their Morals and Ours: The class foundations of moral practice
Philosophy Alienation Dialectical materialism Ideology Philosophy of nature Philosophy in the Soviet Union Reification Marxist ethics
Critique of political economy Capital (accumulation) Crisis theory Commodity Concrete and abstract labor Factors of production Falling profit-rate tendency Means of production Mode of production Capitalist Socialist Productive forces Scientific socialism Surplus product Socially necessary labour time Value-form Wage labour
Sociology Base and superstructure Bourgeoisie Class Class consciousness Classless society Commodity fetishism Communist society Critical theory Cultural hegemony Democracy Dictatorship of the proletariat Soviet Radical Democratic centralism Exploitation False consciousness Human nature Immiseration Imperialism Lumpenproletariat Metabolic rift Proletariat Private property Relations of production State theory Working class
History Class struggle Historical determinism Primitive accumulation Proletarian revolution World revolution Theory of historical trajectory
Aspects Aesthetics Archaeology Criminology Cultural analysis Cultural Studies Ethics Film theory Geography Historiography Literary criticism Marxism and religion Sociology Philosophy
Common variants Structural Autonomist Marxism–Leninism Guevarism Maoism Titoism Trotskyism Neo-Gramscianism Regulation school Third-worldist Hegelian Budapest School Frankfurt School Humanist Neue Marx-Lektüre Open Political Praxis School Both Black Classical Communization Feminist Leninism Neo Post Western
Other variants Analytical Austromarxism Centrist Council communism Eurocommunism Instrumental Marxism–Leninism–Maoism Nkrumaism Orthodox Revisionist Situationist Socialism with Chinese characteristics Wertkritik
People Marx Engels Morris Lafargue Rubin Kautsky Plekhanov Du Bois Connolly Lenin Luxemburg Liebknecht Kollontai Bogdanov Stalin Trotsky Grossman Zinoviev Bloch Lukács Korsch Bukharin Ho Serge Gramsci Galiev Pashukanis Bordiga Benjamin Mao Basu Mariátegui Horkheimer Dutt Brecht Marcuse Kalecki Fromm Cox Lefebvre James Adorno Padmore Sartre Deutscher Hoxha Beauvoir Sombart Nkrumah Sweezy Emmanuel Hill Bettelheim Draper Jones Hobsbawm Althusser Hinton Williams Freire Mandel Sivanandan Miliband Cabral Thompson Bauman Fanon Kosik Berger Castro Guevara Liebman Heller Guattari Mészáros O'Connor Wallerstein Mies Tronti Debord Amin Hall Nairn Parenti Negri Jameson Gonzalo Dussel Harvey Laclau Bahro Poulantzas Vattimo Badiou Harnecker Altvater Anderson Löwy Vogel Sison Easthope Rancière Berman Przeworski Cohen Therborn Losurdo Ture Postone Rodney Bannerji Spivak Newton Sakai Wood Federici Wolff Balibar Eagleton Kurz Hartsock Rowbotham Mouffe Geras Brenner Davis Massey Cleaver Bishop Haraway Panitch Clarke Jessop Davis Wright Fraser Burawoy Holloway Rose Screpanti Tamás Hampton Cano Žižek Berardi Sankara Hennessy McDonnell Douzinas Roediger Foster West Ghandy Marcos Heinrich Prashad Kelley Dean Lordon Linera Fisher Li Coulthard Malm Seymour Toscano Bhattacharya Moufawad-Paul Srnicek Horvat Hamza Saito
Journals Antipode Capital & Class Capitalism Nature Socialism Constellations Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory Historical Materialism Mediations Monthly Review New Left Review Race & Class Rethinking Marxism Science & Society Socialist Register
Related topics 21st-century communist theorists Anarchism Creative destruction Conflict theory Criticism of Marxism Communism Communalism Economic determinism History of communism Left-wing politics Marxian economics New Left Old Left Municipalism Political ecology Socialism Authoritarian Democratic Market Reformist Revolutionary Social Utopian Left-wing populism Universal class Vulgar Marxism Economism Worker cooperative Workers' council
Outline Communism portal Philosophy portal Socialism portal
v t e

Neo-Marxism is a collection of Marxist schools of thought originating from 20th-century approaches^[1][2][3] to amend or extend^[4] Marxism and Marxist theory, typically by incorporating elements from other intellectual traditions such as critical theory, psychoanalysis, or existentialism. Neo-Marxism comes under the broader framework of the New Left. In a sociological sense, neo-Marxism adds Max Weber's broader understanding of social inequality, such as status and power, to Marxist philosophy.

As with many uses of the prefix neo-, some theorists and groups who are designated as neo-Marxists have attempted to supplement the perceived deficiencies of orthodox Marxism or dialectical materialism.^[5] Many prominent neo-Marxists, such as Herbert Marcuse^[6] and other members of the Frankfurt School, have historically been sociologists and psychologists.^[7][8]

Examples of neo-Marxism include analytical Marxism, French structural Marxism, political 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]

Neo-Marxism developed as a result of social and political problems that traditional Marxist theory was unable to sufficiently address.^[22]

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]

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.".^{[69][70][71][68]}

Part of a series on
Marxian economics
Concepts Capital (accumulation) Capitalist mode of production Class process Commodity Concrete and abstract labuor Constant capital Critique of political economy Exchange value Exploitation Labour power Labour theory of value Law of accumulation Law of value Means of production Mode of production Monopoly capitalism Organic composition of capital Productive forces Profit Prices of production Primitive accumulation Rate of exploitation Rate of profit Real prices and ideal prices Relations of production Reproduction Reserve army of labour Socially necessary labour time Socialist mode of production Socialization Simple commodity production Surplus value Surplus labour Surplus product Use value Wage labour Wage slavery Value-form Value product Variable capital
Topics Capital controversy Crisis theory Economic determinism Immiseration thesis Imperialism Historical materialism Okishio's theorem Overaccumulation Overdetermination Overproduction Kondratiev wave Technological determinism Technological unemployment Temporal single-system interpretation Falling profit-rate tendency Transformation problem Underconsumption Value
Variants Analytical Marxism Classical Marxism Orthodox Marxism Neo-Marxian economics
Works A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Das Kapital Grundrisse Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 The Accumulation of Capital Monopoly Capital The Theory of Capitalist Development Finance Capital
People Karl Marx Friedrich Engels Vladimir Lenin Rosa Luxemburg Rudolf Hilferding Leon Trotsky Karl Kautsky Ernest Mandel Antonie Pannekoek János Kornai Andrew Kliman Richard D. Wolff Nikolai Kondratiev Paul Sweezy Nobuo Okishio Ian Steedman John Roemer David Laibman Paul A. Baran Stephen Resnick Michał Kalecki
Journals Cambridge Journal of Economics International Journal of Political Economy Monthly Review New School Economic Review Real-World Economics Review Rethinking Marxism Science and Society
Related topics Evolutionary economics Classical economics Marxism Marxist sociology Neoclassical economics Perspectives on capitalism Political economy Schools of economic thought Socialist economics Critiques of capitalism
Economics portal Marxism portal
v t e

The terms "neo-Marxian", "post-Marxian", and "radical political economics" were first used to refer to a distinct tradition of economic theory in the 1970s and 1980s that stems from Marxian economic thought. Many of the leading figures were associated with the leftist Monthly Review School. The neo-Marxist approach to development economics is connected with dependency and world systems theories. In these cases, the 'exploitation' that classifies it as Marxist is an external one, rather than the normal 'internal' exploitation of classical Marxism.^[4][72]

In industrial economics, the neo-Marxian approach stresses the monopolistic and oligarchical rather than the competitive nature of capitalism.^[73] This approach is associated with Michał Kalecki,^[74] Paul A. Baran, and Paul Sweezy.^[75][73]

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 post-Keynesians like Joan Robinson and the neo-Ricardian school of Piero Sraffa. Polish economists Michał Kalecki, Rosa Luxemburg, Henryk Grossman, Adam Przeworski, and Oskar Lange were influential in this school, particularly in developing theories of underconsumption. While most official communist parties denounced neo-Marxian theories as "bourgeois economics", some neo-Marxians served as advisers to socialist or Third World developing governments. Neo-marxist theories were also influential in the study of Imperialism.

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.

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]

• Spectre^[81]
• Historical Materialism^[82]
• Rethinking Marxism^[83]
• Capital & Class^[84]
• Salvage^[85]
• Cultural Logic^[86]
• Seminar in Contemporary Marxism^[87]
• Radical Philosophy^[88]

• Blackledge, Paul; Anderson, Perry (2004). Marxism, and the New Left. Merlin Press. ISBN 978-0-85036-532-0.
• Holz, Hans Heinz (1972). Strömungen und Tendenzen im Neomarxismus [Currents and tendencies in neo-Marxism] (in German). Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag. 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.

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

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")