Wikipedia:Peer review/Western Marxism/archive1

Western Marxism

I've listed this article for peer review because I made extensive edits to it earlier this year.

Thanks, Hanshans23 (talk) 14:28, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

General comments

1. The lede of the article too closely paraphrases the "Western Marxism" entry in the Encyclopedia Dictionary of Marxism Marxist Thought (for example, the phrase "an interpretation of Marxism distinct from that codified by the Soviet Union" is almost directly borrowed from the entry, but completely misuses the term codified, which is used correctly in the EoM.)
2. The lede should mention by name those most closely identified with non-humanistic versions of Western Marxism (ie Althusser and Poulantzas)
3. "Western Marxism mainly found its adherents in academia, especially after the Second World War. Prominent figures included Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse." These two sentences mix and elide far too much. This is not about Western Marxism, but basically about the Frankfurt School, they date as academics from the 1920s and Benjamin never became an academic.
4. The lede should mention explicitly the significant schools of thought which developed out of Western Marxism, viz: Structural Marxism, British Cultural Studies, Autonomist Marxism, Critical Theory, Subaltern Studies (I'm unconvinced that Council Communism is derived from Western Marxism, since it is less a response to Leninism than a contemporaneous alternative).
5. Other than Marx (who by his own words was not a Marxist), the lede highlights six Western Marxists ― all men; at the very least Simone de Beauvoir could be included. The list of Western Marxists lists only men.
6. The article should be broken up into more sections, the present single "History and distinctive elements" covers too much and the "terminology" section too little. Terminology should be covered with a section on "Origins" describing the emergence of the term and its application. A second section would cover Frankfurt School/Benjamin and Gramsci (although as very distinct branches). A third section to cover the New Left, student movements, Eurocommunism. A fourth section could cover the post-state socialist epoch ― does Western Marxism even exist anymore as a distinct theoretical endeavor? (My answer would be no, but I leave it for the academics to debate).
7. Claims that authors are not Western Marxists (eg E P Thompson) are problematic, since the entire history of Western Marxism has been characterised by its eclecticism and heterogeneity.
8. The article hews fairly closely to Perry Anderson's political interpretation of the mid-1970s; the influence of the CPI and PCE (and Eurocommunism more generally) from the late 70s through to the early 1990s ― whatever one thinks of their line ― undermine to some extent Anderson's characterisation.
9. Max Pensky's chapter "Western Marxism: Revolutions in Theory" in the Cambridge History of Modern European Thought (vol 2, 2019) and Douglas Kellner's "Western Marxism" in Modern Social Theory: An Introduction (OUP, 2005) are worth consulting as good encyclopedic entries and would allow a departure from the present over-reliance on Anderson.

Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 19:46, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

The phrase "an interpretation of Marxism distinct from that codified by the Soviet Union" is mine. Where is this Encyclopedia of Marxism that you are referring to? It could be that as often happens, a website has copied Wikipedia, not the other way around. As discussed on the talk page, British Marxists such as E.P. Thompson, Raymond Williams, Ralph Miliband, Stuart Hall, are generally not considered part of the tradition of Western Marxism, but to be a distinct tradition. Perry Anderson's not including them within this classification was actually a matter of controversy within the pages of the New Left Review in the 70s. Other works dealing with the tradition of Western Marxism such as Martin Jay's Marxism and Totality and Russell Jacoby's Dialectic of Defeat also don't mention the British Marxists as belonging to this school. The term is not a catch-all for every single non-Soviet Marxist. -- Hanshans23 (talk) 22:01, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Apologies, writing without references in front of me and relying entirely on memory! It's Bottomore's Dictionary of Marxist Thought, of course. The lifted phrase is " ... challenged Soviet Marxism which was codifying the gains of the Russian revolution.". FWIW, Anderson was long at pains to separate himself from Thompson (hence Arguments within English Marxism - see Millner (1981) for a good summary of the debate between the two), I'm assuming Anderson is the source of your justification for refusing to categorise Thompson as a Western Marxist. However, my wider point is that the overall perspective presented here is heavily dependent on Anderson, whose views on the subject are more or less five decades old and were formed as a reaction to the failure of the soixante-huitards. More generalist *contemporary* understanding, however, sees British Cultural Studies (the Old New Left) as a product of Western Marxism(s). "The term is not a catch-all for every single non-Soviet Marxist." ― of course not, but given Anderson has so much skin in the game, he's hardly an apolitical observer on this topic.

References

Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 04:23, 28 January 2021 (UTC)