1.2 Why do we need Marxist humanism today?
Marxist humanism emerged in 20th-century social theory. Its theoretical foundations are Hegel’s dialectical philosophical and Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Its axiological and political concern has been the establishment of democratic socialism as an alternative to capitalism, fascism, Stalinism, and other forms of authoritarian statism. Its analyses focused on the human being, human essence, human practices, alienation, political praxis, class struggles, ideology critique, and the dialectics of subject/object, practices/structures, labour/capital, the economic/the non-economic, continuity/discontinuity, etc.
Representatives of Marxist humanism have, among others, included Theodor W. Adorno, Günther Anders, Kevin Anderson, Simone de Beauvoir, Ernst Bloch, Angela Davis, Raya Dunayevskaya, Zillah Eisenstein, Barbara Epstein, Frantz Fanon, Erich Fromm, Lucien Goldmann, André Gorz, David Harvey, Max Horkheimer, C. L. R. James, Karl Korsch, Karel Kosík, Henri Lefebvre, Georg Lukács, Herbert Marcuse, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Bertell Ollmann, the Praxis Group in Yugoslavia, Sheila Rowbotham, M. N. Roy, Edward Said, Jean-Paul Sartre, Adam Schaff, Kate Soper, E. P. Thompson, Raymond Williams (see Alderson and Spencer 2017; Fromm 1965). Marxist humanism’s decline had to do with the general decline of the Marxist theory under neoliberal conditions, the postmodern turn against Marxism, structuralism’s attack on the human being that fostered the rise of post-humanism, and the influence of Althusser and Foucault in social theory (Alderson and Spencer 2017).
There are six reasons why we need a renewal of Marxist humanism today.
The first reason is the emergence of authoritarian capitalism. In critical theory, the concept of authoritarianism goes back to Erich Fromm (1969), who defines it as a social character who submits to those in power and enjoys dominating others. For Fromm, fascism is the most developed form of authoritarian society and authoritarian capitalism. Max Horkheimer (1939/1989, 78) sees authoritarian and therefore also fascist potentials immanent in capitalism itself. But not every form of capitalism fully develops its authoritarian potentials. Adorno et al.’s (1950) F-scale outlines a large number of characteristics of the authoritarian personality. The core of this approach are four features: authoritarianism combines the antidemocratic belief of the necessity of strong, top-down leaders, nationalism, the friend/enemy-scheme and ideological scapegoating, and the belief in law-and-order politics, violence, militancy, and war as the best political means (Fuchs 2018). Authoritarian capitalism is a society that combines capitalism with these principles. New forms of nationalism and authoritarianism have emerged in recent years. They pose dangers to democracy and can result in a new world war, genocide, fascism, etc. Marxist humanism stresses socialism and humanism as opposed to fascism.
Racism has intensified in contemporary authoritarian capitalism. The police killing of George Floyd became a symbol of how racism denies people of colour their humanity. Racist anti-humanism led to the Black Lives Matters movement.
The second reason is the limits of postmodernism in contemporary capitalism. Althusser and Foucault have had a major influence on the emergence and development of postmodernism and poststructuralism that have attacked Marxist theory, class politics, the notions of the human being, truth, alienation, commonalities, universalism, etc. While there are postmodern theorists who made productive use of Marx, certain versions of postmodernism have contributed to the decline of Marxist theory in an age when class contradictions have been exploding. Marxist humanis...
