Western Marxism

“Dialectical-humanistic” , which proposed to place man in the center of Marxist philosophy. In this case, combines the development of Marx from the " Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 " and Freudianism , existentialism , neo-Hegelianism . This direction includes:

• Frankfurt School . According to Chinese Marxist professors Yuan Guizhen and Yang Geng, “after the Frankfurt School, Western Marxism and Marx studies had nothing to do with social practice and to a certain extent turned into criticism from the standpoint of the book cabinet” ^[3] .
• Freudo-Marxism ( V. Reich , G. Marcuse , E. Fromm )
• Existential Marxism ( J.P. Sartre , C. Castoriadis , C. Lefort ). Also ideas close to Marxism were developed by E. Fisher , A. Schaff , K. Kosik , F. Marek . Among the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, devoted to this subject, one can single out the “Problems of Method” and “Critique of the Dialectical Mind”. J.P. Sartre represents a practically acting individual as a source of social dialectics. The main focus in this direction is placed on human subjectivity, the problems of alienation (that which early Marx did strongly), the problems of restoring the integrity of a person.
• Phenomenological Marxism, spread mainly in Italy and the United States ( Enzo Paci , P. Picone). Enzo Paci tried to connect Husserl with Marx by combining phenomenology and Marxism. Rowatti, Vigorelli developed the problems of human needs, the revolutionary subject of history, etc.
• Marxist historicism - the followers of A. Gramsci - N. Baladoni, L. Groupi, E. Sereni followed this direction. Based on his understanding of philosophy as a “philosophy of practice”, they rejected the separation of Marxist philosophy into dialectical and historical materialism.
• The Budapest School ( A. Heller , M. Vaida , D. Markus , F. Fecher ) are the followers of the ideas of the young György Lukács (in particular, his work “History and Class Consciousness” is of particular importance), in which dialectics is presented as an interconnection and intersection object and subject, and at the forefront of the concept of society as a whole.
• The Praxis School , which has developed around the Yugoslav magazine of the same name, published in Zagreb ( G. Petrovich , P. Vranitzky , M. Kangrga , R. Supek , M. Markovic , S. Stojanovic ). The basis of their work is the concept of practice as a fundamental relationship between subject and object. They developed the problems of man, and also tried to influence the system of self-government in Yugoslavia.
• Ernst Bloch ( 1885–1977 ) with his “philosophy of hope”. Bloch builds a general concept for the development of the world in which the subject and the object are first merged, then separated, and then reunited again. Marxism, according to Bloch, is a “concrete utopia”, connecting the vision of the future with its possibility of its revolutionary creation.

“ Scientist direction” , which proposed to raise Marxism to a high scientific level, clearing it from abstract philosophizing.

• Louis Althusser and his followers ( E. Balibar , D. Lekur, P. Reymond). This trend is often referred to as " structuralist Marxism " or "Althusserianism." Representatives of this trend believe that Marxism should reveal its specific nature as a science, freeing itself from the philosophy of the subject, from the teleological Hegelian dialectic, from ideology, from empiricism. The concept of "overdetermination" is being advanced - the idea that the main economic contradiction in society should be solved with the help of politics, ideology, etc. Therefore, the revolution does not take place where the economic contradiction is most developed, but where other contradictions superimpose it.
• Galvano della Volpe ( 1895 - 1968 ) and his followers viewed the Marxist theory of society as a specific science. Della Volpe believed that science needed certain abstractions, and philosophy was reduced to a common methodology.
• Analytical Marxism (80-90s of the XXth century) - representatives ( Eric Olin Wright , J. Cohen , J. Elster, J. Remer, and others) - sought to develop the theory of society as a science based on rigorous modern methods. Micro and macro level approaches are being developed. At the macro level, the concept of the relationship between the productive forces and production relations, the basis and the superstructure, is proposed, at the micro level - the study of the behavior of individuals. These studies were carried out using the methods of mathematical modeling, game theory, etc.

• World-system analysis of I. Wallerstein , Andre Gunder Franck , Samir Amin and others.
• The theory of dependent development of A. G. Franca , Theotonio dos Santos , Rui Mauro Marini , Rodolfo Stavenhagen , Raul Prebisch and others.

Since the 60s of the 20th century, Jürgen Habermas, who synthesized the ideas of the dialectical, humanistic and scientistic direction, has gradually become the most important author of Western Marxism. The main disagreement between Habermas and the so-called "Frankfurt School", and especially with his predecessors Adorno and Horkheimer, is the denial of the bookish nature of philosophy and the demand that philosophy change the world and philosophers be involved in the political process. In addition, according to Habermas, the process of humanity’s self-creation is not limited to the labor sphere, as the orthodox Marxists insisted on and the creators of the “critical theory”, in particular, Horkheimer and Adorno, agreed.

But this is the disagreement of Habermas with orthodox Marxism, and not with Marx, who was not a Marxist. Habermas usually refers to modern Marxism as the teachings of K. Marx, F. Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, A. Gramsci, and not the Marxism, which Marx was not a supporter of. Marx in German Ideology responds to Bruno Bauer, who never spoke of communism through the prism of needs and consumption: Marx and his supporters, unlike Marxists, speak of communism in another aspect - as a process of constant growth of self-consciousness, which studying Habermas.

Industrial relations are not only the result of labor, but also a process of communication. If we accept that history is a process of rationalization - building social practice in accordance with some kind of rational thinking program, then it should be recognized that rationalization is of two kinds:

1) as a process of growth of productive forces through the selection and rationalization of funds;

2) rationalization of actions aimed at mutual understanding by eliminating coercive relationships that are built into the structure of communication.

Hence, two types of rationality:

Instrumental (suppresses the personality and its subjectivity, allows creativity only to the extent determined by the calculation and system of power)

and communicative (involves the manifestation and development of subjectivity, individuality, as well as the elimination of violence).

The concept of “communicative rationality” becomes fundamental in the philosophy of J. Habermas and is specifically considered in his main works “Knowledge and Interest” (1968) and “Theory of Communicative Action” (1981). Communicative rationality is intended to regulate such vital areas of life as cultural continuity, upbringing, and social integration. However, in the conditions of a modernizing Western society, communicative rationality is supplanted by economic and administrative rationality, and this is the reason for the injustice and crisis of modern society. ^[four]

Postmetaphysics, according to Habermas, means not just a positive philosophy according to Schelling, but a modern positive philosophy of Habermas and his followers, which he considers along with classical Western Marxism, analytical philosophy , structuralism , and phenomenology as one of the main directions of modern Western philosophy. At the same time, post-metaphysical thinking also plays the role of a synonym for contemporary philosophical thinking as such and, in addition to linguistic turning and situating the mind, also includes procedural rationality, or fallibilism, and non-everyday deflation, which should be understood as the trivialization and functionalization of Habermas. ^[five]

• Neo-marxism
• New Left

• M. Gretsky. Report at the International Scientific Conference “Classical Marxism: what is outdated, what has stood the test of time” (1997). Published in the journal Economic and Philosophical Notebooks, 2004, Issue 2, pp. 179-181

• Anderson P. "Reflections on Western Marxism" M., 1991 (monograph)
• Anderson P. "On the Ways of Historical Materialism"
• Works A. Gramsci on situation.ru
• A. Tarasov on the works of E. Fromm