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Marxism (Literary and Critical Theory)

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  1. Introduction
  2. Marxism encompasses a wide range of both scholarly and popular work. It spans from the early, more philosophically oriented, Karl Marx of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the German Ideology, to later economic works like Das Kapital, to specifically polemical works like The Communist Manifesto. While our focus is not Marx’s own contributions to philosophy or political economy, per se, it is important to note that the sheer breadth of scholarship rightly regarded as “Marxist” or “Marxian,” owes itself to engagement with texts ranging across the works of a younger, more explicitly Hegelian, “philosophical Marx” to those of the more astute, if perhaps more cynical, thinker of his later work, to the revolutionary of the Manifesto’s “Workers unite!” Hence, while it is not surprising to see an expansive literature that includes feminist, anti-racist, and environmental appropriations of Marx, it is also not unexpected to see considerable conflict and variation as a salient characteristic of any such compilation. Indeed, it is difficult to capture the full range of what “Marxism” includes, and it is thus important to acknowledge that to some extent the choice of organizing category is destined to be arbitrary. But this may be more a virtue than a deficit since not only have few thinkers had more significant global impact, few have seen their work applied to a broader range of issues, philosophic, economic, geopolitical, environmental, and social. Marx’s conviction that the point of philosophy is not merely to know the world but to change it for the good continues to infuse the essential bone marrow of virtually every major movement for economic, social, and now environmental justice on the beleaguered planet. Although his principle focus may have been the emancipation of workers, the model he articulates for understanding the systemic injustices inherent to capitalism is echoed in Marxist analyses of oppression across disciplines as otherwise diverse as political economy, feminist theory, anti-slavery analyses, aesthetic experience, liberation theology, and environmental philosophy. To be sure, Marxism is not Marx; it is not necessarily even a reflection of Marx’s own convictions. But however far flung from Marx’s efforts to turn G. F. W. Hegel on his head, Marxism has remained largely true to its central objective, namely, to demonstrate the dehumanizing character of an economic system whose voracious quest for capital accumulation is inconsistent not only with virtually any vision of the good life, but with the necessary conditions of life itself.
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  4. General Overviews
  5. For a general overview of Karl Marx, look to Sidney Hook’s Toward the Understanding of Karl Marx: A Revolutionary Interpretation (1933), Isaiah Berlin’s Karl Marx (1963), Louis Dupré’s The Philosophical Foundations of Marxism (1966), Frederic Bender’s Karl Marx: The Essential Writings (1972), or David Mc’Lellan’s Karl Marx: Selected Writings (1977). General overviews of Marxism present, however, a more daunting challenge. These range not only over an expansive array of subject matter, but also across a wide and diverse span of application. A distinctive feature of Marxist scholarship is the effort to include interpretation of Marx’s original arguments and their application to a range of issues. Georg Lukacs offers an example of this strategy in History and Class Consciousness (Lukacs 1966). Louis Althusser takes a similar tack in Reading Kapital (Althusser 1998) and For Marx (Althusser 2006) arguing for an important philosophical transition between the young Marx and the Marx of Kapital—that Marxism should reflect this “epistemological break.” Throughout a career which included Marx and Literary Criticism (Eagleton 1976), Why Marx was Right (Eagleton 2011), and Marx and Freedom (Eagleton 1997), Terry Eagleton demonstrates why Marx and Marxism remain relevant to our reading of literature. In On Marx (Lee 2002), Wendy Lynne Lee endeavors to bridge the gap between general introduction and application via contemporary examples relevant to Marxist scholars and civic activists across a range of disciplines and accessibility. John Sitton’s Marx Today (Sitton 2010) takes a historically contextualized approach to contemporary socialist theorizing via The Communist Manifesto. Through a diverse selection including Albert Einstein’s “Why Socialism?,” John Bellamy Foster and Robert McChesney’s “Monopoly-Finance Capital and the Paradox of Accumulation,” and Terry Eagleton’s “Where Do Postmodernists Come From?,” Sitton demonstrates the continuing relevance of the Marxist commitment to make philosophy speak to real world issues. One of the best general works, however, is Kevin M. Brien’s Marx, Reason, and the Art of Freedom (Brien 2006). Brien argues that Marxism can and should proceed from the assumption that, contrary to Althusser, Marx can be read as a coherent whole. As Marx Wartofsky puts it, Brien’s reading of Marx creates opportunities to theorize an internally consistent Marxism, but also incites “lively criticism.” Lastly, though perhaps less a general introduction to Marxism than to a Marxist view of political/economic revolution, the Norton Critical Edition of The Communist Manifesto (Bender 2013) includes essays situating Marx’s incendiary pamphlet in the history of Marxist scholarship. It includes a rich selection of pieces devoted to themes including the revolutionary potential of Marx’s critique of capitalism (Mihailo Markoviç), his theory of wage labor (Ernest Mandel), Marxist ethics (Howard Selsam), and the applicability of Marxist analyses to contemporary dilemmas (Slavoj Zizek, Joe Bender).
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  7. Althusser, Louis. Reading Kapital. London: New Left Review/Verso, 1998.
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  11. In Reading Kapital Althusser argues for an epistemological break between the young Marx and the Marx of Kapital. Marxist analyses, according to Althusser, should not only reflect this maturation in Marx’s thinking, but should seek to understand and capitalize on the important changes in Marx’s view of capitalism.
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  15. Althusser, Louis. For Marx. London: New Left Review/Verso, 2006.
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  19. In For Marx Althusser continues his argument for an epistemological break between the young Marx and the Marx of Kapital utilizing specifically Freudian and Structuralist concepts to support his analysis. The focus here is on the “scientific” Marx as opposed to the younger, more Hegelian thinker. But, as Althusserlater acknowledged, more attention needed to be paid to class struggle.
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  23. Bender, Frederic, ed. The Communist Manifesto: A Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton, 2013.
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  26.  
  27. The Norton Critical Edition of The Communist Manifesto includes essays situating Marx’s incendiary pamphlet in the history of Marxist scholarship. It includes a rich selection of pieces devoted to themes including the revolutionary potential of Marx’s critique of capitalism (Mihailo Markoviç), his theory of wage labor (Ernest Mandel), a socialist feminist interpretation (Wendy Lynne Lee), a Marxist-inspired ethics (Howard Selsam), and an analysis of the applicability of Marxist work to contemporary dilemmas (Slavoj Zizek, Joe Bender).
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  31. Brien, Kevin M. Marx, Reason, and the Art of Freedom. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2006.
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  35. In Marx, Reason, and the Art of Freedom Brien argues that Marxism can and should proceed from the assumption that Marx can be read as a coherent whole, that is, that there’s no “epistemological break” as identified by Althusser. As Marx scholar Marx Wartofsky puts it, Brien’s reading of Marx creates opportunities to theorize an internally consistent Marxism, but also incites “lively criticism.”
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  39. Eagleton, Terry. Marx and Literary Criticism. Oakland: University of California Press, 1976.
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  43. In Marx and Literary Criticism, Eagleton’s seminal work, he shows how and why it is that Marx is relevant to our reading not only of political economy, but to a wide array of literature. Among other topics, he offers an analysis of the relationship of literature to its historical context, and of literature to political activity. He also situates Marxist critique in the larger context of understanding the human relationship to society and civilization.
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  46.  
  47. Eagleton, Terry. Marx and Freedom. London: Phoenix House, 1997.
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  50.  
  51. In Marx and Freedom, Eagleton continues his critique of capitalism, arguing that freedom means not only liberation from material constraints to more creative praxis, but emancipation from capitalist labor as a variety of alienation. Eagleton incorporates a very rich account of individual perception and activity as key to realizing freedom.
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  54.  
  55. Eagleton, Terry. Why Marx Was Right. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.
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  58.  
  59. In Why Marx Was Right Eagleton adopts a more combative tone, defending against the claim that Marxism has outlived its usefulness. He takes on a number of common objections to Marxism, including that it leads to tyranny, or that it’s ideologically reductionistic.
  60.  
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  62.  
  63. Lee, Wendy Lynne. On Marx. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2002.
  64.  
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  66.  
  67. Lee’s aim is to offer an introduction to Marx and to Marxism accessible to a wide range of disciplines and audiences. On Marx also provides concise possible applications of Marxist themes for use in environmental philosophy and feminist theory with an emphasis on bridging the gap between philosophical comprehension and activist application—theory and praxis.
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  70.  
  71. Lukacs, Georg. History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1966.
  72.  
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  74.  
  75. History and Class Consciousness offers a classic example of a strategy common in Marx scholarship, namely, an interpretation of Marx’s work (particularly the concept of alienation), the influence of G. W. F. Hegel on Marx, and an application of Marx to contemporary themes, in Lukacs’s case, the defense of Bolshevism.
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  77. Find this resource:
  78.  
  79. Sitton, John. Marx Today: Selected Works and Recent Debates. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
  80.  
  81. DOI: 10.1057/9780230117457Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  82.  
  83. Marx Today takes a historically contextualized approach to contemporary socialist theorizing via The Communist Manifesto, among other Marx’s works. Aimed at a broad audience, this anthology includes both sympathetic and critical readings. Sitton’s selections demonstrate the relevance of the Marxist commitment to make philosophy speak to real world issues.
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  87. Critical Theory
  88. Originally associated with the Frankfurt School, critical theory spans an array of Marxist critique including political, cultural, psychological, aesthetic, and technology-focused appropriations of central Marxist themes such as alienation, the capitalist culture industry, and the critique of wage labor. The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory (Macey 2000, cited under the Frankfurt School) offers an excellent introduction to these themes in addition to a post-Marxist/critical theory lexicon of key concepts and terms. One of critical theory’s trademark characteristics is immanent critique, that is, critical analysis of Marx and Marxist arguments from within a constellation of Marxist concepts, themes, and tropes. Indeed, this strategy is utilized across an array of approaches to Marxist work, including existentialist, postmodernist, feminist, anti-racist, and environmental adaptations of Marxist concepts and arguments. Another significant characteristic of critical theory concerns exploring the effects of capitalist expansion not only for potentially alienated social relationships, but for familial bonds and individual identity. Critical theory, in other words, includes a psychological as well as a social and geopolitical dimension. In essence, it opens the door to an application of essentially Marxist themes to disciplines well beyond philosophy and political economy, and this is one of the reasons Marx and Marxism has remained relevant well beyond Marx’s Communist Manifesto.
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  90. The Frankfurt School
  91. Among the names most commonly associated with the Frankfurt School are Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and Walter Benjamin, some of whose key essays are compiled in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (Arato and Gebhardt 1982). It is also important, however, to reference, a number of seminal stand-alone works. These include Horkheimer and Adorno 2002, Dialectic of Enlightenment, in which the authors seek to comprehend how, contrary to Marx’s predictions, late capitalism has given rise not to a revolt against capitalism, or the awakening of the proletariat as a revolutionary class, and the eventual emergence of the communist society, but the fascism of the corporatized state bolstered by ever more authoritarian (and often nationalist) regimes. In his Prison Notebooks (Gramsci 1971), early-20th-century Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci augments the Marxist concept of class hegemony, that is, domination by the bourgeoisie, by showing how it maintains its status not only through threats of violence and economic oppression, but through a version of “culture” that mirrors capitalist values. In Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (Benjamin 1969) Walter Benjamin provides a Marxist reading of the art and culture of the 1950s–1960s. In One-Dimensional Man (Marcuse 1991), Herbert Marcuse offers an analysis of the increasing social and political repression of contemporary capitalist society particularly with respect to its creation of what Marx called “false consciousness,” that is, the creation of “needs” for mass-manufactured products. Marcuse’s “one dimensional man” personifies Horkheimer and Adorno’s “culture industry,” mirroring the society for which he has been fitted as a worker and consumer, a “man” in whose very identity is epitomized the necessity to convert all value to exchange value.
  92.  
  93. Arato, Andrew, and Eike Gebhardt. The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. New York: Continuum, 1982.
  94.  
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  96.  
  97. The Essential Frankfurt School Reader offers a wide selection of essays by authors commonly associated with the Frankfurt School, for example, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and Walter Benjamin. Many of these have become among the most cited from this tradition, setting the tone and broad constellation of topics identified as “critical theory” or “post-Marxian.”
  98.  
  99. Find this resource:
  100.  
  101. Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. New York: Knopf Doubleday, 1969.
  102.  
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  104.  
  105. Illuminations and Reflections provides a Marxist reading of the art and culture of the 1950s–1960s. The volume includes “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” a ground-breaking essay concerning the effects of contemporary mechanization and mass production on what we mean by “art.”
  106.  
  107. Find this resource:
  108.  
  109. Gramsci, Antonio. Prison Notebooks. New York: International Publishers, 1971.
  110.  
  111. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  112.  
  113. Prison Notebooks augments the Marxist concept of class hegemony, that is, domination by the bourgeoisie, by showing how it maintains its status not only through threats of violence and economic oppression, but through a version of “culture” that mirrors capitalist values. Gramsci’s notion of culture is similar to Horkheimer and Adorno’s “culture industry” in that by placing its highest value on mass production and consumption, “culture” becomes essentially another kind of factory for the production of class itself.
  114.  
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  116.  
  117. Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.
  118.  
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  120.  
  121. In Dialectic of Enlightenment the authors seek to comprehend how, contrary to Marx’s predictions, late capitalism has given rise not to a revolt against capitalism, an awakening proletariat, and the eventual emergence of the communist society, but instead the fascism of the corporatized state bolstered by ever more authoritarian nationalist regimes. Referring to the state as an incubator of the “culture industry,” Horkheimer and Adorno show how consumption has come to eclipse class-consciousness.
  122.  
  123. Find this resource:
  124.  
  125. Macey, David. The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory. London: Penguin, 2000.
  126.  
  127. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  128.  
  129. The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory offers an excellent introduction to some of the main themes of critical theory and to the post-Marxist/critical theory lexicon of key concepts and terms, including immanent critique, that is, critical analysis of Marx and Marxist arguments from within a constellation of Marxist concepts, themes, and tropes.
  130.  
  131. Find this resource:
  132.  
  133. Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon, 1991.
  134.  
  135. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  136.  
  137. One-Dimensional Man offers an analysis of the increasing social and political repression of contemporary capitalist society particularly with respect to its creation of what Marx called “false consciousness,” that is, the creation of “needs” for mass-manufactured products. Marcuse’s “one dimensional man” personifies Horkheimer and Adorno’s “culture industry,” mirroring the society for which he has been fitted as a worker and consumer, a “man” in whose very identity is epitomized the necessity to convert all value to exchange value.
  138.  
  139. Find this resource:
  140.  
  141. Beyond the Frankfurt School
  142. Benjamin 1998 offers a Marxist analysis of the meaning of aesthetic “authenticity” for a society alienated from its appreciation of history or cultural context. Art, he argues, becomes just one more product of mass (re)production for a one-dimensional man whose aesthetic sensibilities have been conscripted to consumption: in a world dominated by the culture industry, everyone can boast the “Picasso” hanging in his suburban living room. Frederic Jameson expands on these themes in Postmodernism: Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Jameson 1999). He explores the ways in which capital conquest has come to redefine the spaces wherein human life and work take place. Architecture, argues Jameson, instantiates the physical, aesthetic, and psycho/social structures of life within the now globalized culture industry. As is evidenced in their very design, such spaces are constructed less in accord with human (or humanizing) relationships, and more to institutionalize capitalist values: productivity, efficiency, profitability, consumption. Claude Levi-Strauss’s The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Lévi-Strauss 1969) also takes this broadly structuralist approach to an understanding of family relationships. Laclau and Mouffe 2001 explores what the authors identify as a crisis in left-wing politics, and offers a “third way” which shows the relevance of Marxism to late-20th-century issues. David Ingram’s collection of essays (Ingram 2013) introduces us not only to Levi-Strauss’s essentially Marxist roots, but also to Hannah Arendt, Carl Schmitt, Eric Fromm. Terrell Carver’s The Postmodern Marx (Carver 1998) both returns to critical theory’s specifically Marxist roots, and introduces us to thinkers further afield of Marxism per se, but still very much within its ambit, for example Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jacques Derrida. He proposes a reading of Marx through a “mildly” postmodern lens, that is, through a hermeneutic or interpretive strategy which aims to shed light not only on modern political economy, but on the expansion of broadly Marxist/critical theory to contemporary political, cultural, and intellectual dilemmas. Lastly, though it may reach somewhat beyond our scope here, it would be remiss not to mention the impact of critical theory on the work of George Bataille, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Slavoj Žižek whose work, though not Marxist per se, has certainly grown out of the critical theory tradition in addition to being influenced by postmodernism, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis.
  143.  
  144. Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1998.
  145.  
  146. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  147.  
  148. Benjamin offers a Marxist analysis of aesthetic “authenticity” for a society alienated from its appreciation of history or cultural context. Art becomes one more product of mass (re)production for a one-dimensional man whose aesthetic sensibilities have been conscripted to the preeminent capitalist value: consumption. In a world dominated by the culture industry, everyone can boast the “Picasso” in his living room—but what counts as “art” becomes compromised and potentially irrecoverable.
  149.  
  150. Find this resource:
  151.  
  152. Carver, Terrell. The Postmodern Marx. University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1998.
  153.  
  154. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  155.  
  156. The Postmodern Marx returns to critical theory’s specifically Marxist roots, introducing us to thinkers further afield of Marxism, but still located within its preoccupation with issues of class, alienation, and the effects of the culture industry. Terrell proposes a reading of Marx through a “mildly” postmodern lens, a hermeneutic or text-interpretive strategy aiming to shed light on political economy and on the expansion of Marxist/critical theory to contemporary political, cultural, and intellectual dilemmas.
  157.  
  158. Find this resource:
  159.  
  160. Ingram, David. Critical Theory to Structuralism: Philosophy, Politics and the Human Sciences. New York: Routledge, 2013.
  161.  
  162. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  163.  
  164. This essay collection introduces us to Levi-Strauss’s Marxist roots, and to Hannah Arendt, Carl Schmitt, and Eric Fromm, important writers in a tradition influenced by Marx and by critical theory, namely, structuralism. Deriving its impetus at least in part from Marx’s argument that society is best understood in terms of how capitalism structures human relationships to its advantage, these authors pursue analyses of structures like the family, the society, and the human psyche.
  165.  
  166. Find this resource:
  167.  
  168. Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism: Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999.
  169.  
  170. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  171.  
  172. Postmodernism: Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism explores the ways in which capital conquest has come to redefine the spaces wherein human life and work take place. Architecture, argues Jameson, instantiates the physical, aesthetic, and psycho/social structures of life within the now globalized culture industry. As is evidenced in their very design, such spaces are constructed less in accord with human (or humanizing) relationships, and more to institutionalize capitalist values: productivity, efficiency, profitability, consumption.
  173.  
  174. Find this resource:
  175.  
  176. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso, 2001.
  177.  
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  179.  
  180. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy explores what the authors identify as a crisis in contemporary left-wing politics, and offer a “third way” which shows the relevance of Marxism to late-20th-century issues, especially to our fraught concepts of “democracy” and “representation.”
  181.  
  182. Find this resource:
  183.  
  184. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Boston: Beacon, 1969.
  185.  
  186. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  187.  
  188. The Elementary Structures of Kinship takes a structuralist approach to an understanding of family relationships. Lévi-Strauss rejects the notion of a “primitive” or pre-social “man,” arguing that institutions like the family must be understood in the context of broader social structures such as class. The Marxist notion of “species being” is reflected here in that “man” cannot be understood apart from the environmental and social conditions that inform “his” life and survival.
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  191.  
  192. Marxist-Inspired Existentialism and Postmodernism
  193. While it is difficult to either quantify or qualify the influence of Marxist theorizing on the 20th-century movement in philosophy, literature, political critique, and art identified as existentialism, or on its more contemporary incarnation as postmodernism, it is equally difficult to deny it. Ranging at least from Jean-Paul Sartre’s attempt to reconcile central existentialist themes with Marx’s critique of capitalism to Jean Baudrillard’s postmodern assessment of the culture industry, the imprint of Marxist themes on French theorizing is as indelible as it is somewhat mercurial. In Critique of Dialectical Reason (Sartre 1984) Sartre seeks to reconcile the highly individualistic existentialism of his seminal work, Being and Nothingness, with the emergence of class-consciousness in Marx’s theorizing the proletariat. This is no easy task, and Sartre reformulates G. W. F. Hegel’s master/slave dynamic in an attempt to square individual freedom and its attendant moral responsibility with social and economic forces beyond individual control. Although scholars differ with respect to whether Sartre succeeded in this quest, his work stands as a reminder of just how difficult it is to reconcile praxis in its expression as civil liberty with justice understood as collective equality. In Marx: A Philosophy of Human Reality (Henry 1983) Michel Henry advises the reader to cast aside the political Marx in favor of a thinker whose theorizing of species being and praxis constitute a decisive rejection of Cartesian dualism. Opting instead for a materialistic conception of human nature grounded in labor and the concrete social world, Henry’s reading is consistent with Sartre’s existentialism, but less anguished about economically oriented class consciousness. In “The Body,” in Theory Histories of Cultural Materialism: Simulacra and Simulation (Baudrillard 1994), and particularly “The Ecstasy of Communication,” Jean Baudrillard argues that what distinguishes late-20th-century capitalism from earlier incarnations is that it depends less on the exchange value of commodities than on the symbolic value of advertising. The “hyperreality” that results from the simulation of value without any actual content, argues Baudrillard, signifies the extent to which the distinction between the illusion of value and its reality has been elided and effaced in contemporary political economy. Lastly, in Specters of Marx (Derrida 1994), particularly “What is Ideology?” Jacques Derrida undertakes a reading of Marx from the point of view of a “new world order” that proclaims the death of Marxism. But as opposed to resignation to the “dogmatism” of global capital conquest, Derrida insists that the “specters” haunting The Communist Manifesto still have something of value to say to us.
  194.  
  195. Baudrillard, Jean-Claude. Theory Histories of Cultural Materialism: Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.
  196.  
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  198.  
  199. In Theory Histories of Cultural Materialism: Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard argues that contemporary capitalism differs from earlier incarnations because it depends less on exchange value than on the symbolic value of advertising. The “hyperreality” that results from the simulation of value sans content signifies the extent to which the distinction between the illusion of value and its reality has been elided and effaced in contemporary political economy.
  200.  
  201. Find this resource:
  202.  
  203. Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx. London: Routledge, 1994.
  204.  
  205. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  206.  
  207. In Specters of Marx, particularly “What is Ideology?” Jacques Derrida undertakes a reading of Marx from the point of view of a “new world order” that proclaims the death of Marxism. But as opposed to resignation to the “dogmatism” of global capital conquest, Derrida insists that the “specters” haunting The Communist Manifesto still have something of value to say to us.
  208.  
  209. Find this resource:
  210.  
  211. Henry, Michel. Marx: A Philosophy of Human Reality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.
  212.  
  213. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  214.  
  215. In Marx: A Philosophy of Human Reality, Michel Henry advises the reader to cast aside the political Marx in favor of a thinker whose theorizing of species being and praxis constitute a decisive rejection of Cartesian dualism. Opting instead for a materialistic conception of human nature grounded in labor and the concrete social world, Henry’s reading is consistent with Sartre’s existentialism, but less anguished about economically oriented class consciousness.
  216.  
  217. Find this resource:
  218.  
  219. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Critique of Dialectical Reason. London: Verso, 1984.
  220.  
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  222.  
  223. In Critique of Dialectical Reason Sartre seeks to reconcile the individualistic existentialism of Being and Nothingness with the class-consciousness of Marx’s proletariat. Sartre reformulates Hegel’s master/slave dynamic in an attempt to square freedom and its attendant moral responsibility with social and economic forces beyond individual control. Critique stands as a stark reminder of just how difficult it is to reconcile praxis with justice understood as collective equality.
  224.  
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  226.  
  227. Socialist/Marxist Feminism
  228. It is difficult to exaggerate the influence of Marx and Marxism on feminism, particularly the development of socialist feminism. As a response to liberal feminism’s failure to interrogate its own neoliberal premises and as a critical response to capitalist excess, socialist/Marxist feminism offers an array of scholarly work that takes advantage of immanent critique and critical theory read through the emancipatory discourses of the women’s liberation movement From early theoretical works like Friedrich Engels’s Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State to seminal historical contributions like Gerda Lerner’s The Creation of Patriarchy, to the emergence of a specifically feminist socialist voice in the work of Third Wave feminists like Sheila Rowbotham, Allison Jaggar, and Donna Haraway, Socialist/Marxist feminism has become one of the most compelling traditions in feminist scholarship and activism. This is in no small measure due to the powerful opportunity presented to feminists seeking to theorize the intimate connections between class oppression and the oppression attendant on the patriarchal family. Indeed, among the most significant of socialist feminist insights is that the very structure of oppressive social and economic relationships takes its cue from the commodification of sexuality identified by Engels and reiterated not merely in gender or race—but also in the class relationships upon which capitalism is dependent. That, moreover, the capacity to labor in the world outside the home is itself dependent on the unpaid domestic labor of women provides socialist feminism with its foundational justification for liberation. More recently, socialist feminist theorists such as Wendy Lynne Lee and Karen Warren have sought to expand on these themes, utilizing central Marxist concepts to critique oppressive institutions beyond those that directly impact women, for example, the exploitation of developing word labor, animal agriculture, and environmental destruction.
  229.  
  230. Historically Oriented Accounts
  231. Among the most important historical influences toward the development of socialist feminism is Friedrich Engels’s Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (Engels 2010). Engels argues that the concept of private property derives from the commodification of women’s sexuality—the assignment of exchange value to the production of the capacity to labor and to offspring. Capitalism is thus existentially dependent on the subjugation of sex as a class of unpaid domestic and reproductive labor. Subjugation to home and hearth also insures the paternity of future progeny and future claims to inheritable property. Capitalism takes advantage of patriarchy’s provision of labor and laborers and patterns the commodification of literally everything—including institutionalized slavery and animal agriculture—after its foundational subjugation of sex. Unsurprisingly, Engels’s work had a profound effect on the communist movement. Russian Marxist Alexandra Kollontai (Kollontai 1984) insisted on the full inclusion of women into the paid working class (the proletariat), and as revolutionaries engaged in the overthrow of capitalism alongside their male counterparts. During the 1918 International Socialist Conference of Women Workers, Kollantai asked: “What is the women’s socialist movement, and what are its objectives and aims?” Many socialist feminists have risen to the occasion to answer Kollantai’s question, but perhaps first among these is historian Gerda Lerner in The Creation of Patriarchy (Lerner 1987), Lerner provides the historical evidence to Engels’s insight concerning the commodification of sexuality, but she also goes further to show that any account of human history that fails to include gender, along with class, as key to understanding produces only a distorted and impoverished view of history. In a similar spirit, Sheila Rowbotham’s Women, Resistance, and Revolution (Rowbotham 1974) treats the feminist slogan “the personal is political” as an opportunity to raise women’s consciousness both as women, as human beings, and as members of a political class. Rowbotham argues that “the liberation of women necessitates the liberation of all human beings.” However, she continues, while “revolutionary consciousness” has largely been defined by men, the first step toward a genuinely feminist consciousness is coming to understand how “deeply internalized” is women’s subjugation under patriarchy.
  232.  
  233. Engels, Friedrich. Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. London: Penguin, 2010.
  234.  
  235. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  236.  
  237. Engels argues that the concept of private property derives from the commodification of women’s sexuality, and that capitalism is existentially dependent on the subjugation of sex as a class of unpaid domestic and reproductive labor. Subjugation to home and hearth insures the paternity of future progeny and claims to inheritable property. Capitalism takes advantage of patriarchy’s provision of labor and laborers, patterning commodification—including slavery and animal agriculture—after its foundational subjugation of sex.
  238.  
  239. Find this resource:
  240.  
  241. Kollontai, Alexandra. Selected Articles and Speeches. New York: International Publishers, 1984.
  242.  
  243. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  244.  
  245. Demanding the full inclusion of women into the paid working class (the proletariat) and as revolutionaries engaged in the overthrow of capitalism alongside their male counterparts, Kollontai argues that no revolution of the proletariat can succeed without the endorsement and participation of women. During the 1918 International Socialist Conference of Women Workers Kollantai asked: “What is the women’s socialist movement, and what are its objectives and aims?”
  246.  
  247. Find this resource:
  248.  
  249. Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Patriarchy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
  250.  
  251. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  252.  
  253. Besides providing an excellent account of human history in light of one of its central and enduring institutions, male domination, The Creation of Patriarchy offers historical evidence to Engels’s insight concerning the commodification of sexuality. Lerner also goes further to show that any account of human history that fails to include gender, along with class, as key to understanding human events produces only a distorted and impoverished view of history.
  254.  
  255. Find this resource:
  256.  
  257. Rowbotham, Sheila. Women, Resistance, and Revolution. New York: Random House, 1974.
  258.  
  259. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  260.  
  261. Women, Resistance, and Revolution treats the feminist slogan “the personal is political” as an opportunity to raise women’s consciousness both as women, as human beings, and as members of a political class. Rowbotham argues that “the liberation of women necessitates the liberation of all human beings.” Nonetheless, coming to understand women’s subjugation under patriarchy is internalized is the first step toward a genuinely feminist, thus revolutionary, consciousness.
  262.  
  263. Find this resource:
  264.  
  265. Feminist Theory
  266. In Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Jaggar 1988), Alison Jaggar offers a survey of feminist theories of human nature from liberal, radical/cultural, and socialist feminist perspectives. She concludes, however, that only socialist feminism provides a realistic path to women’s liberation. Barker and Feiner 2004 takes a broadly Marxist approach to the relationship between the domination of women in the domestic sphere and the fact that wage labor deemed “women’s work” remains poorly paid, insuring that women are disproportionately represented among the world’s poor. Hanson and Philipson 1990 includes both classic essays such as Zillah Eisenstein’s “Constructing a Theory of Capitalist Patriarchy and Socialist Feminism,” Juliet Mitchell’s “Women: The Longest Revolution,” and Heidi Hartmann’s “Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Job Segregation.” It also includes Marxist-oriented immanent critique such as Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Life Without Father” and Donna Haraway’s groundbreaking “A Manifesto for Cyborgs.” Here, Haraway returns to Jaggar’s interrogation of “human nature,” adding a new and disturbing dimension. She argues that that insofar as we are all “cyborgs,” that is, both animals and laboring machines, the traditional “identity politics” of sex, gender, and class may wear out its usefulness—leaving open Kollantai’s question: “What is the women’s socialist movement, and what are its objectives and aims?” Another example of immanent critique is Lee 2013, a discussion of Marx’s short-sightedness with respect to the role of women in the just society before and after the revolution. Lee argues that we can’t abandon Marx in light of his own indefensibly patriarchal disposition, but we can’t simply ignore the possibility that a Marxist future liberated from capitalism isn’t necessarily freed from other forms of oppression. Nonetheless, Lee takes a broadly Marxist approach to issues facing 21st century feminists. In Six Global Issues (Lee 2010), she applies a socialist feminist perspective to terrorism, sex-trafficking, sexual identity politics, outsourced surrogacy, and animal agriculture. The anthology Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women’s Lives (Hennessy and Ingraham 1997) expands socialist feminist scholarship to include responses to homophobia, the struggles of developing world women, and the rise of postmodernism. Charlotte Bunch’s “Not for Lesbians Only,” Christine Delphy’s “For a Materialist Feminism,” Swasti Mitter’s “Women Working Worldwide, and Carol Stabile’s “Feminism and the Ends of Postmodernism” retain a Marxist character while reaching beyond traditional Marxist categories to contemporary issues.
  267.  
  268. Barker, Drucilla K., and Susan F. Feiner. Liberating Economics: Feminist Perspectives on Families, Work, and Globalization. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.
  269.  
  270. DOI: 10.3998/mpub.11867Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  271.  
  272. Liberating Economics takes a broadly Marxist approach to the relationship between the domination of women in the domestic sphere—and the fact that wage labor deemed “women’s work” remains poorly paid, insuring that women are disproportionately represented among the world’s poor. Citing what some feminists call the “casualization of labor,” the authors argue that gender is the key difference between life-sustaining wages and endemic poverty.
  273.  
  274. Find this resource:
  275.  
  276. Hanson, Karen V., and Ilene J. Philipson, eds. Women, Class, and the Feminist Imagination. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.
  277.  
  278. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  279.  
  280. Women, Class, and the Feminist Imagination includes classic essays and Marxist-oriented immanent critique. Haraway, for example, returns to Jaggar’s interrogation of “human nature,” adding a new and disturbing dimension, arguing that that insofar as we’re all “cyborgs,” both animals and laboring machines, the traditional “identity politics” of sex, gender, and class will likely wear out its usefulness—leaving open Kollantai’s question “What is the women’s socialist movement, and what are its objectives and aims?”
  281.  
  282. Find this resource:
  283.  
  284. Hennessy, Rosemary, and Chrys Ingraham, eds. Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women’s Lives. New York: Routledge, 1997.
  285.  
  286. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  287.  
  288. Materialist Feminism expands socialist feminist scholarship to include responses to homophobia, the struggles of developing-world women, and the rise of postmodernism. It offers readings for grounding a socialist feminist approach to issues concerning the relationship of class and gender, the status of women in capitalist patriarchy, and the relationship of women’s status to environmental deterioration. Each essay retains a distinctly Marxist character while reaching beyond traditional Marxist categories to contemporary issues.
  289.  
  290. Find this resource:
  291.  
  292. Jaggar, Alison M. Feminist Politics and Human Nature. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1988.
  293.  
  294. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  295.  
  296. Feminist Politics and Human Nature offers a survey of feminist theories of human nature from liberal, radical/cultural, and socialist feminist perspectives. Jaggar concludes, however, that only socialist feminism provides a realistic path to women’s liberation precisely because it offers an analysis of the contribution of women’s labor both to the paid workforce and, following Engels, to the unpaid domestic labor upon which the workforce depends.
  297.  
  298. Find this resource:
  299.  
  300. Lee, Wendy Lynne. Six Global Issues: Contemporary Feminist Theory and Activism. Ontario, Canada: Broadview, 2010.
  301.  
  302. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  303.  
  304. Taking a broadly Marxist approach to issues facing 21st-century feminists, Lee applies a socialist feminist perspective to terrorism, sex-trafficking, sexual identity politics, outsourced surrogacy, and animal agriculture, arguing that Marxist, and especially critical theory strategies for analysis, not only have relevance to contemporary issues, but offer avenues for feminist theorizing and activism that can carry the feminist movement well into the 21st century.
  305.  
  306. Find this resource:
  307.  
  308. Lee, Wendy Lynne. “Socialist Feminist Critique and the Communist Manifesto.” In The Communist Manifesto: A Norton Critical Edition. Edited by Frederic Bender, 195–209. New York: Norton, 2013.
  309.  
  310. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  311.  
  312. Immanent critique best describes Lee’s discussion of Marx’s short-sightedness with respect to the role of women in the just society before and after the revolution in this essay. She argues that we cannot abandon Marx in light of his own indefensibly patriarchal disposition, but we also cannot ignore the possibility that a Marxist future liberated from capitalism is not necessarily freed from other forms of oppression, especially patriarchy.
  313.  
  314. Find this resource:
  315.  
  316. Eco-Feminism
  317. Socialist eco-feminism emerges from several sources, including the need to address inadequacies in the liberal feminist response to environmental destruction, environmental lacuna in Marx and Marxist scholarship, and a planet increasingly jeopardized by ecological deterioration. A distinct characteristic of socialist eco-feminism is its commitment to the view that just as environmental integrity provides the necessary conditions for the pursuit of social/economic justice, so too the pursuit of justice encourages the moral and political will necessary to combat environmental crises locally and globally. Like their Marxist predecessors, socialist eco-feminists see capitalism as incompatible with realizing a sustainable future. But unlike these forerunners, they recognize that what “sustainable” demands is a stable planetary ecology. It is thus not surprising that Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late 20th Century” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (Haraway 1989, p. 149–181) have shaped socialist feminist scholarship. Haraway’s analysis of science informs a Marxist approach to theorizing the environment as more than the material substructure of human action, and she offers insight concerning the extent to which the subjugation of women is mirrored in the subjugation of nonhuman nature. Merchant 1992 argues that “[r]adical ecology emerges from a sense of crisis in the industrial world, and that key to addressing this is recognizing that the domination of nature entails the domination of human beings along the lines of race, class, and gender.” Kirk 1997 lays essential groundwork in “Standing on Solid Ground: A Materialist Ecological Feminism.” Vandana Shiva takes a similar approach in Culture of the Land Ser: The Vandana Shiva Reader (Shiva 2014), where she expands on eco-feminist premises via analyses of the impacts of seed monopolies, water and food insecurity, and changing environmental conditions in the developing world. Gaard 1993, the anthology Ecofeminism: Women Animals, Nature, includes contributions by Ellen O’Loughlin, Carol Adams, and Gaard’s own “Ecofeminism and Native American Cultures,” where she argues for the incorporation of nonhuman animals in eco-feminist theorizing about social justice. Rocheleau, et al. 1996 offers essays including Josepa Bru-Bistuer’s “Spanish Women Against Industrial Waste,” Gladys Buenavista’s “Developing and Dismantling Social Capital,” and Barbara Thomas-Slayter, and Esther Wangari, and Dianne Rocheleau’s “Feminist Political Ecology.” Warren 1997, an edited volume, includes Robert Sessions’s “Ecofeminism and Work” where he argues that “[t]o use Marx’s language, modern agribusiness has driven a wedge between the farm worker and the processes, means, and products of production. His land and animals, like his family and community . . . increasingly are alienated from the farmer and he from them” (italics in original). The anthology also includes Lori Gruen’s critique of Murray Bookchin and Janet Biehl’s, “Revaluing Nature.” Mies and Shiva 1993 offers a duet of eco-feminist essays each rooted in the Marxist critique of capitalism. Several theorists in this tradition are now taking on climate change, for example, Lee 2017 and Cuomo 2011.
  318.  
  319. Cuomo, Chris. “Climate Change Vulnerability, and Responsibility.” Hypatia 26.4 (Fall 2011): 690–714.
  320.  
  321. DOI: 10.1111/j.1527-2001.2011.01220.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  322.  
  323. In “Climate Change Vulnerability, and Responsibility,” Cuomo takes a specifically eco-feminist approach to examining the potential effects of climate change, who is made most vulnerable to these effects, and who bears the greatest share of responsibility.
  324.  
  325. Find this resource:
  326.  
  327. Gaard, Greta, ed. Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993.
  328.  
  329. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  330.  
  331. The anthology Ecofeminism: Women Animals, Nature includes contributions by Ellen O’Loughlin and Carol Adams, among others. It offers a wide array of ecofeminist perspectives, including socialist analyses such as Gaard’s own “Ecofeminism and Native American Cultures,” where she argues for the incorporation of nonhuman animals in eco-feminist theorizing about social justice.
  332.  
  333. Find this resource:
  334.  
  335. Haraway, Donna. Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York: Routledge, 1989.
  336.  
  337. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  338.  
  339. Including the groundbreaking “A Manifesto for Cyborgs,” Haraway’s Primate Visions set the course for much of feminist scholarship to follow, particularly with respect to analyses of the relationship of science to human endeavors. Her Marxist approach theorizes the environment as much more than the material substrate of human action, and she offers insight concerning the extent to which the subjugation of women is mirrored in the subjugation of nonhuman nature, including the treatment of nonhuman animals.
  340.  
  341. Find this resource:
  342.  
  343. Kirk, Gwyn. “Standing on Solid Ground: A Materialist Ecological Feminism.” In Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women’s Lives. Edited by Rosemary Hennessy and Chrys Ingraham, 345–363. New York: Routledge, 1997.
  344.  
  345. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  346.  
  347. In “Standing on Solid Ground: A Materialist Ecological Feminism,” Kirk provides a thorough and articulate grounding for an eco-feminist perspective rooted in a specifically socialist/Marxist understanding of our relationship to nonhuman nature.
  348.  
  349. Find this resource:
  350.  
  351. Lee, Wendy Lynne. Eco-Nihilism: The Philosophical Geopolitics of the Climate Change Apocalypse. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017.
  352.  
  353. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  354.  
  355. In Eco-Nihilism: The Philosophical Geopolitics of the Climate Change Apocalypse, Lee takes an eco-feminist and critical theory approach to the critique of capitalism in light of the facts of anthropogenic climate change, arguing that, given the implications of global warming for both the environment and for global social justice, there are no incarnations of capitalism salvageable, and that the only viable strategy to realize the desirable future requires revolution.
  356.  
  357. Find this resource:
  358.  
  359. Merchant, Carolyn. Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World. New York: Routledge, 1992.
  360.  
  361. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  362.  
  363. Radical Ecology substantiates the claim that a socialist feminist ecofeminism, “[r]adical ecology,” “emerges from a sense of crisis in the industrial world,” and that key to addressing this is recognizing that “the domination of nature entails the domination of human beings along the lines of race, class, and gender.” Merchant shows through a wide selection of examples how capitalism affects environmental deterioration, and how this in turns affects the domination of human beings, especially indigenous peoples and women.
  364.  
  365. Find this resource:
  366.  
  367. Mies, Maria, and Vandana Shiva. Ecofeminism. London: Zed Books, 1993.
  368.  
  369. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  370.  
  371. Ecofeminism offers a duet of eco-feminist essays each rooted in the Marxist critique of capitalism spanning over theoretical, geographical, and cultural ground. From seed monopolies to the exploitation of women’s paid and domestic labor, the authors conclude that multinational capitalism poses a threat to the planet and its most vulnerable inhabitants.
  372.  
  373. Find this resource:
  374.  
  375. Rocheleau, Dianne, Barbara Thomas-Slayter, and Esther Wangari. Feminist Political Ecology: Global Issues and Local Experiences. New York: Routledge, 1996.
  376.  
  377. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  378.  
  379. In Feminist Political Ecology, the editors offer essays including Josepa Bru-Bistuer’s “Spanish Women Against Industrial Waste,” Gladys Buenavista’s “Developing and Dismantling Social Capital,” and Barbara Thomas-Slayter, Esther Wangari, and Dianne Rocheleau’s “Feminist Political Ecology.” All modeled after a broadly Marxist and/or critical theory perspective, each offers a specifically global take on a topic connecting environmental damage to capitalist excess.
  380.  
  381. Find this resource:
  382.  
  383. Shiva, Vandana. Culture of the Land Ser: The Vandana Shiva Reader: Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2014.
  384.  
  385. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  386.  
  387. In Culture of the Land Ser: The Vandana Shiva Reader Shiva expands on her tremendous corpus of work at the intersection of feminist theory and environmental philosophy by offering an eco-feminist analysis of the impacts of seed monopolies, water, and food insecurity. She shows how changing environmental conditions in the developing world affect sustainability, and how capitalism is at the root of much of the world’s current food and water dilemmas.
  388.  
  389. Find this resource:
  390.  
  391. Warren, Karen J., ed. Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
  392.  
  393. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  394.  
  395. Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Native, includes Robert Sessions’s “Ecofeminism and Work” where he argues that “[t]o use Marx’s language, modern agribusiness has driven a wedge between the farm worker and the processes, means, and products of production” (pp. 356–374). The anthology also includes Lori Gruen’s critique of Murray Bookchin and Janet Biehl’s “Revaluing Nature,” a socialist feminist examination of a socialist approach to nonhuman nature.
  396.  
  397. Find this resource:
  398.  
  399. Marxist Anti-Racism/Critical Race Theory
  400. Marxist anti-racist/critical race theory analyses offer a significant contemporary application of Marxist ideas. Theorizing race as a contested class, these contributions intersect at a number of junctures with socialist feminist work and with socialist eco-feminism—especially with respect to environmental, developing world social justice issues, and environmental racism. But Marxist anti-racism also occupies a distinct genre of Marxist scholarship all its own, as can be found in the work of, for example, W. E. B. Dubois, Frantz Fanon, Cedric Robinson, and Derrick Bell. In “Socialism and the Negro Problem” (Dubois 1913), for example, Dubois asks, “[C]an you exclude the negro and push socialism forward?” He concludes the answer is a resounding “no.” “The essence of social democracy,” he writes, “is that there shall be no excluded or exploited classes . . . that there shall be no man or woman so poor, ignorant, or black as not to count.” In Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon 2008) and Wretched of the Earth (Fanon 1963), Fanon takes on colonialism from a therapeutic, sociological, and Marxist perspective. He is critical of generic Marxist notions of “class,” arguing that they’re inadequate to comprehend what it means to be “racially colonized” both as a social and psychological phenomenon, and that any “radical” or revolutionary perspective not anchored to specific historical, cultural, and economic conditions is more likely to reproduce racialized colonialism than combat it. Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism (Robinson 1983) explores the question whether it is possible to comprehend the historically and culturally specific experience of oppression of black people through an exclusively Marxist lens. He concludes that the answer is “no,” but that the attempt illuminates in what ways Marxism privileges Eurocentric historical perspective. Derrick Bell, however, is commonly credited with the introduction of critical race theory circa (1970), a project stemming partly from disillusion with the American civil rights movement, and partly from the influence of the critical theory of earlier Marxist thinkers and cultural critics. Bell returns to Marxist categories of analysis in hopes of achieving a better—and more effective—response to racist oppression, producing works such as Faces at the Bottom of the Well (Bell 1993) and Confronting Authority (Bell 1994). An excellent introduction to critical race theory can be found in Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic’s Critical America: Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (Delgado and Stefancic 2001).
  401.  
  402. Bell, Derrick. Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. New York: Basic Books, 1993.
  403.  
  404. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  405.  
  406. Also stemming partly from disillusion with the American civil rights movement, and partly from the influence of the critical theory of earlier Marxist thinkers and cultural critics, Bell continues formulating his response to racist oppression. Faces at the Bottom of the Well follows the model provided by earlier critical theorists, offering an analysis of the effects of racial oppression in a capitalist society.
  407.  
  408. Find this resource:
  409.  
  410. Bell, Derrick. Confronting Authority: Reflections of an Ardent Protester. Boston: Beacon, 1994.
  411.  
  412. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  413.  
  414. Credited with the introduction of critical race theory, Bell’s project stems both from disillusion with the American civil rights movement and from the influence of the critical theory of earlier Marxist thinkers and cultural critics, Bell returns to Marxist categories of analysis in hopes of achieving a better, more effective response to racist oppression. In Confronting Authority, Bell considers what it might mean to confront a system of racialized oppression, with particular emphasis on the risks—and the potential gains.
  415.  
  416. Find this resource:
  417.  
  418. Delgado, Richard, and Jean Stefancic. Critical America: Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. New York: New York University Press, 2001.
  419.  
  420. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  421.  
  422. Critical America: Critical Race Theory offers an excellent introduction to critical race theory spanning its original impetus in the work of writers like Daniel Bell and expanding to include a number of contemporary issues at the fraught intersection of race and class.
  423.  
  424. Find this resource:
  425.  
  426. Dubois, W. E. B. “Socialism and the Negro Problem.” The New Review: A Weekly Review of International Socialism (1 February 1913).
  427.  
  428. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  429.  
  430. In this famous and impassioned essay, Dubois asks, “[C]an you exclude the negro and push socialism forward?” He concludes the answer is a resounding “no.” “The essence of social democracy,” he writes, “is that there shall be no excluded or exploited classes . . . that there shall be no man or woman so poor, ignorant, or black as not to count.” No social democracy can survive, much less thrive, he argues, without full inclusion regardless skin color or class status.
  431.  
  432. Find this resource:
  433.  
  434. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Constance Farrington. New York: Grove, 1963.
  435.  
  436. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  437.  
  438. In Wretched of the Earth Fanon takes on colonialism from a psychiatric, sociological, and Marxist perspective. He’s critical of generic Marxist notions of “class,” arguing that they’re inadequate to comprehend what it means to be “racially colonized” both as a social and psychological phenomenon, and that any “radical” or revolutionary perspective not anchored to specific historical, cultural, and economic conditions is more likely to reproduce racialized colonialism than combat it.
  439.  
  440. Find this resource:
  441.  
  442. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Atlantic, 2008.
  443.  
  444. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  445.  
  446. Originally published 1952. In Black Skin, White Masks Fanon takes on colonialism from a therapeutic, sociological, and Marxist perspective. He’s critical of generic Marxist notions of “class,” arguing that they’re inadequate to comprehend what it means to be “racially colonized” both as a social and psychological phenomenon, and that any “radical” or revolutionary perspective not anchored to specific historical, cultural, and economic conditions is more likely to reproduce racialized colonialism than combat it.
  447.  
  448. Find this resource:
  449.  
  450. Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. London: Zed Books, 1983.
  451.  
  452. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  453.  
  454. Black Marxism explores the question whether it is possible to comprehend the historically and culturally specific experience of oppression of black people through an exclusively Marxist lens. He concludes that the answer is “no,” but that the attempt illuminates in what ways Marxism privileges Eurocentric historical perspective. This insight is important in a number of ways, not the least of which is that it demonstrates both the strengths and limitations of a Marxist approach to issues of race.
  455.  
  456. Find this resource:
  457.  
  458. Socialist Feminist/Anti-Racist Critical Race Theory
  459. In “Women, Race & Class” (Davis 1983), Angela Davis takes on the unpaid “drudgery” of domestic labor performed primarily by women. Appealing to Engel’s Origin of the Family (Engels 2010, cited under Historically Oriented Accounts), she observes that “sexual inequality as we know it today did not exist before the advent of private property.” But she also expands on this analysis, arguing that the status of women is not historically fixed, but rather depends on other factors, including race. “Throughout this country’s history,” she contends, “the majority of Black women have worked outside their homes . . . In labour, slave women were the equals of their men. Because they suffered a grueling sexual equality at work, they enjoyed a greater sexual equality at home in the slave quarters than did their white sisters who were “housewives.” In Women, Culture, Politics (Davis 1990), and in Freedom Is a Constant Struggle (Davis 2016), Davis expands her black feminist, intersectional, anti-racist narrative to include both a critique of the prison industry and “state terror from Ferguson to Palestine.” In Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Hooks 2000), Bell Hooks (Gloria Watkins) argues, following Rita Mae Brown, that “class” includes something more than a designation of the worker’s relationship to the means of production, and that the feminist movement had failed to see the roles played not only by gender, but by race. “Class structure, “she writes, “has been shaped by the racial politic of white supremacy,” and that “with no institutionalized other that we may discriminate against, exploit, or oppress” black women “often have a lived experience that directly challenges the prevailing classist, sexist, racist social structure and its concomitant ideology.” Also belonging to this tradition are Rose M. Brewer’s “Theorizing Race, Class, and Gender” (Brewer 1997, p. 236–247) and Barbara Smith’s “Where’s the Revolution?” (Smith 1997, p. 248–252). In Theorizing Anti-Racism: Linkages in Marxism and Critical Race Theory (Bakan 2014), Abigail Bakan argues that there remains a need for critical dialogue between Marxism and anti-racist theorizing, and that where some see “seemless integration,” others see discord between the two traditions. She argues that events in the United States and elsewhere “framed by the post-9/11 climate of contemporary imperialism and globalization” and a “climate of domestic targeted repression” make such rapprochement even more important. Returning to Marx, she incorporates Marxist concepts such as “alienation” into her contention that the gulf between Marxism and anti-racism is the consequence of a misreading of Marx.
  460.  
  461. Bakan, Abigail. Theorizing Anti-Racism: Linkages in Marxism and Critical Race Theory. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014.
  462.  
  463. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  464.  
  465. Theorizing Anti-Racism argues that there remains a need for critical dialogue between Marxism and anti-racist theorizing, that where some see “seemless integration,” others see discord between the two traditions. Bakan argues that events in the United States and elsewhere “framed by the post-9/11 climate of contemporary imperialism and globalization” and a “climate of domestic targeted repression” make such rapprochement even more important.
  466.  
  467. Find this resource:
  468.  
  469. Brewer, Rose M. “Theorizing Race, Class, and Gender: The New Scholarship of Black Feminist Intellectuals and Black Women’s Labor.” In Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women’s Lives. 236–247. New York: Routledge, 1997.
  470.  
  471. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  472.  
  473. “Theorizing Race, Class, and Gender” offers an analysis of the complex relationship between race, class, and gender from a feminist/socialist point of view. Brewer argues that without an understanding of how and where these concepts intersect to inform oppressive institutions, we’ll not be in a position affect real change for those affected—and harmed by capitalism.
  474.  
  475. Find this resource:
  476.  
  477. Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race & Class. New York: Random House, 1983.
  478.  
  479. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  480.  
  481. Women, Race, & Class takes on the unpaid “drudgery” of domestic labor performed primarily by women. Appealing to Engel’s Origin of the Family, Davis observes that “sexual inequality as we know it today did not exist before the advent of private property.” She then expands on this analysis, arguing that the status of women is not historically fixed, but rather depends on other factors, including race.
  482.  
  483. Find this resource:
  484.  
  485. Davis, Angela Y. Women, Culture, Politics. New York: Random House, 1990.
  486.  
  487. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  488.  
  489. Women, Culture, Politics expands Davis’s specifically black feminist, intersectional, anti-racist narrative to include both a critique of the prison industry as well as other forms of state-sponsored terrorism whose racial and class-based forms of oppression continue to haunt Western democracies.
  490.  
  491. Find this resource:
  492.  
  493. Davis, Angela Y. Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement. Chicago: Haymarket, 2016.
  494.  
  495. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  496.  
  497. Expanding on her original analysis from Women, Culture, Politics, Freedom is a Constant Struggle offers a critique of the prison industry and “state terror from Ferguson to Palestine.” Davis treats the racial dynamic of the prison industry as an example of racial and class oppression.
  498.  
  499. Find this resource:
  500.  
  501. Hooks, bell (Gloria Watkins). Feminist Theory from Margin to Center. Boston: South End, 2000.
  502.  
  503. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  504.  
  505. In Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, bell hooks argues that “class” includes something more than a designation of the worker’s relationship to the means of production, and that the feminist movement has failed to see the roles played by gender and by the relationship of race to gender. This, she argues, must be remedied if we are to understand oppression across the spectrum of race, class, and gender.
  506.  
  507. Find this resource:
  508.  
  509. Smith, Barbara. “Where’s the Revolution?” In Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women’s Lives. Edited by Rosemary Hennessy, 248–252. New York: Routledge, 1997.
  510.  
  511. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  512.  
  513. No revolution will become possible—or be enduring in the direction of genuine social justice—if it does not include an analysis of the specific forms of oppression that accompany race, sex, sexual identity, and gender, argues Smith. Indeed, that we have seen no revolution to date is largely because those who remain disenfranchised in capitalist society now are likely to continue to do so—thwarting any possibility of revolutionary change.
  514.  
  515. Find this resource:
  516.  
  517. Marxist Environmental Philosophy
  518. While Marx’s references to the material conditions of the human species form a key component of his understanding of the relationship between human action and the nonhuman world, he (arguably) treats the latter in a fashion not unlike his capitalist nemeses, namely, as an endless storehouse of exploitable resources and commodities. Still, because Marx understood human being as materially dependent on nonhuman nature both as existential condition and as the stuff of praxis, or creative labor, he leaves a door wide open to environmental theorizing with a distinctively Marxist focus. In fact, a number of theorists, including John Bellamy Foster, Jason Moore, and Wendy Lynne Lee have argued, following in the tradition of immanent critique, that central Marxist themes such as alienation, the commodification of sexuality, and the conversion of all value into exchange value offer an invaluable window into the ways in which the material conditions of living things are not merely existentially dependent on nonhuman nature, but profoundly threatened by the logic of conquest capitalism. It is no surprise, for example, that the CEOs of multinational hydrocarbon and animal agriculture corporations deny climate change; to acknowledge it—much less any human contribution to a warming planet—is to acknowledge not only resource limits, but the possibility of a planet both exhaustible and destructible, therefore not an endless opportunity for capital accumulation. Recent critiques of multinational and monopoly capitalism may seem far afield from Marx’s original critique of the consequences of the Industrial Revolution, but even its images of smoldering smoke stacks, oil-slicked rivers, and deforested countrysides offer a hint of the potential for a Marxist environmental theorizing.
  519.  
  520. Critical Theory in Environmentalism
  521. Marx’s view of nonhuman nature is no doubt anthropocentric, that is, human-centered. But as Carolyn Merchant points out in her edited anthology, Key Concepts in Critical Theory: Ecology (Merchant 1994), the concept of ecology has been important to theorists in the Marxist tradition from early on, particularly for critical theorists. She credits Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno in their essay “The Concept of Enlightenment” (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002) from The Dialectic of Enlightenment for “turning their attention” not only to the domination of human beings, but of nonhuman nature, arguing that the creation of “bourgeois” consumer society depends on our alienation from the conditions of wage labor (especially wage labor outsourced to the developing world), but it also depends on denying the fact that the planet’s ecologies are limited, and at some point potentially damaged beyond recovery by human exploitation, pollution, and waste. Merchant profiles Herbert Marcuse’s “Ecology and Revolution” (Marcuse 1972), an exploration of nonhuman nature as a “revolutionary force of life” and his explicit connection of genocide to ecocide in the context of the Vietnam War. She makes specific note of William Leiss’s analysis of the role technology has played in the domination of nonhuman nature in The Domination of Nature (Liess 1972,) and Robyn Eckersley’s critique of critical theory’s failure to offer a viable alternative to anthropocentrism in works like Environmentalism and Political Theory (Eckersley 1992).
  522.  
  523. Eckersley, Robyn. Environmentalism and Political Theory. Albany, NY: SUNY, 1992.
  524.  
  525. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  526.  
  527. This critique of critical theory’s failure to offer a viable alternative to anthropocentrism shows how even views ostensibly committed to the environment and to social justice often fail, with significant consequences, to adequately address the former. The reason, she argues, is because even Marxist analyses begin with the premise that it is human well-being that serves as the highest value, not ecological integrity.
  528.  
  529. Find this resource:
  530.  
  531. Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. “The Concept of Enlightenment.” In Dialectic of Enlightenment. By Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, 1–34. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.
  532.  
  533. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  534.  
  535. In “The Concept of Enlightenment” from The Dialectic of Enlightenment Horkheimer and Adorno turn their attention not only to the domination of human beings, but the destruction of nonhuman nature. They argue that the creation of “bourgeois” consumer society depends on our alienation from the conditions of wage labor, denying the fact that the planet’s ecologies are limited, and that we’ve potentially damaged them beyond recovery by human exploitation, pollution, and waste.
  536.  
  537. Find this resource:
  538.  
  539. Liess, William. The Domination of Nature. New York: George Braziller, 1972.
  540.  
  541. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  542.  
  543. The Domination of Nature explores the role technology has played in the domination of nonhuman nature. Liess argues that this role has been undervalued––but is important for understanding the ways in which the nonhuman nature has been degraded—dominated by technological prerogative.
  544.  
  545. Find this resource:
  546.  
  547. Marcuse, Herbert. “Ecology and Revolution.” Liberation 16 (September 1972).
  548.  
  549. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  550.  
  551. “Ecology and Revolution” offers an exploration of nonhuman nature as a “revolutionary force of life.” Here, Marcuse explicitly connects genocide to ecocide in the context of the Vietnam War.
  552.  
  553. Find this resource:
  554.  
  555. Merchant, Carolyn. Key Concepts in Critical Theory: Ecology. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1994.
  556.  
  557. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  558.  
  559. In Key Concepts in Critical Theory: Ecology, Merchant argues that although it may have not received as much attention as it deserves, the concept of ecology has been important to theorists in the Marxist tradition from early on, particularly for critical theorists, and that it has played a central role in critical theorist analysis of class, alienation, and mass production.
  560.  
  561. Find this resource:
  562.  
  563. Beyond Critical Theory
  564. Though devoted to a wide array of seminal readings in environmental philosophy, David Keller’s edited anthology Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions (Keller 2010) offers several key essays in the Marxist tradition including Murray Bookchin’s “What is Social Ecology?” Here Bookchin argues for the contentious claim that virtually every ecological problem arises from “deep-seated” social problems. ”Unless,” he continues, “we realize that the present market society, structured [as it is] around the brutally competitive ‘grow or die,’ [ideology] is a thoroughly impersonal self-operating mechanism, we will falsely tend to blame technology or population growth as such for environmental problems.” In “Socialism and Ecology” (O’Connor 1991), James O’Connor argues that there is no way to solve our current ecological crises within any capitalist mode of production, and that the central premise of “green-red political action” must be to see that environmental crises and economic crises are essentially one and the same. A number of stand-alone works also belong to this tradition. In Marx and Engels on Ecology (Parsons 1977), Howard Parsons makes the case that Marx offers a richer and more astute source for environmental philosophy than has been typically understood. In A Planet to Choose: Value Studies in Political Ecology (Miller 1978), Alan Miller argues that “[t]he capitalist mode of production provides the key to understanding the nature of the existing global environmental crisis.” Frederic Bender offers a Marxist critique of anthropocentrism in The Culture of Extinction: Toward a Philosophy of Deep Ecology (Bender 2003). Drawing extensively from a Marxist conception of human material nature to make his case, Bender argues that all versions of human-centeredness are ultimately incompatible with a sustainable environment. In Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature (Foster 2000), John Bellamy Foster argues that contrary to the misconception that Marx was an “anti-ecological” thinker, ecology actually plays a key role in Marx’s central works, for example, Grundrisse. Foster argues that Marx draws more from an Epicurean philosophical tradition emphasizing the continuity of human beings and nonhuman nature as opposed to the legacy of Frances Bacon’s domination of nature. Jason Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life (Moore 2015) pursues a similarly historical tack. He argues for what he calls the “double internality” of the relationship of capitalism through nature—and nature through capital accumulation, and Moore insists that capitalism is a “way of organizing nature,” but in no way an escape from the deterioration caused by the conversion of all value into exchange value.
  565.  
  566. Bender, Frederic. The Culture of Extinction: Toward a Philosophy of Deep Ecology. Amherst, NY: Humanities Books, 2003.
  567.  
  568. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  569.  
  570. A Marxist critique of anthropocentrism, The Culture of Extinction draws extensively from a Marxist conception of human material nature. To make his case, Bender argues that all versions of human-centeredness are ultimately incompatible with a sustainable environment, and, personified as homo Colossus, capitalism is irreparably anthropocentric.
  571.  
  572. Find this resource:
  573.  
  574. Foster, John Bellamy. Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000.
  575.  
  576. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  577.  
  578. Foster argues that contrary to the misconception that Marx was an “anti-ecological” thinker, ecology actually plays a key role in Marx’s central works, for example, Grundrisse. He argues that Marx draws more from an Epicurean philosophical tradition emphasizing the continuity of human beings and nonhuman nature as opposed to the legacy of Frances Bacon’s domination of nature.
  579.  
  580. Find this resource:
  581.  
  582. Keller, David, ed. Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions. Maldan, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
  583.  
  584. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  585.  
  586. This anthology offers essays in the Marxist environmental tradition including Bookchin’s “What is Social Ecology?” where he argues that “unless we realize that the present market society . . . is a thoroughly impersonal self-operating mechanism, we will falsely tend to blame technology or population growth as such for environmental problems.” In “Socialism and Ecology” O’Connor argues that the premise of “green-red political action” must be to see environmental crises and economic crises as essentially one and the same.
  587.  
  588. Find this resource:
  589.  
  590. Miller, Alan. A Planet to Choose: Value Studies in Political Ecology. New York: Pilgrim, 1978.
  591.  
  592. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  593.  
  594. A Planet to Choose: Value Studies in Political Ecology argues that “[t]he capitalist mode of production provides the key to understanding the nature of the existing global environmental crisis.” That mode, argues Miller, includes not only mass production with its necessity for massive consumption, but global-scale free trade, including its reckless penchant for resource depletion.
  595.  
  596. Find this resource:
  597.  
  598. Moore, Jason. Capitalism in the Web of Life. London: Verso, 2015.
  599.  
  600. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  601.  
  602. Capitalism in the Web of Life pursues an historical analysis of how capitalism insinuates itself into what he calls “the web of life.” He argues for what he calls the “double internality” of the relationship of capitalism through nature, and nature through capital accumulation. Moore insists that capitalism is a “way of organizing nature,” but in no way an escape from the deterioration caused by the conversion of all value into exchange value.
  603.  
  604. Find this resource:
  605.  
  606. O’Connor, James. “Socialism and Ecology.” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 2.3 (1991).
  607.  
  608. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  609.  
  610. O’Connor argues that we cannot solve our current ecological crises within a capital economic structure. The central premise of what he refers to as “green-red political action” is to recognize environmental and economic crises are essentially one and the same.
  611.  
  612. Find this resource:
  613.  
  614. Parsons, Howard. Marx and Engels on Ecology. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1977.
  615.  
  616. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  617.  
  618. Marx and Engels on Ecology makes the case that Marx offers a richer and more astute source for environmental philosophy than has been typically understood. Far from a mere substructure of human creative activity or praxis, the environment forms a central aspect of human identity.
  619.  
  620. Find this resource:
  621.  
  622. Contemporary Marxist Theory
  623. Lastly, contemporary Marxist theory—work undertaken after the turn of the 21st century—occupies a place in Marxist scholarship all its own. Contemporary Marxist Theory: A Reader (Pendakis 2014) begins after the fall of the Berlin Wall and treats a number of issues from a global Marxist perspective. Like Kollantai’s question about what Marx had to offer women, Pendakis explores what Marx and Marxist literature have to offer to current crises, especially planetary “eco-emergencies.” In a similar tone, Chris Harmon’s Zombie Capitalism (Harmon 2009) takes on the bank crash of 2008 arguing that some of the “too big to fail” banks effectively becamezombies—accomplishing very little, but a threat to the global economic system. Kevin Anderson’s Marx at the Margins (Anderson 2010) probes a selection of neglected or unknown essays written by Marx, arguing for a more globally astute thinker not restricted to the concept of class. In Reclaiming Marx’s Capital (Kilman 2006), Andrew Kilman argues that, contrary to standard interpretation, Marx is not inconsistent with respect to his theory of value. Sherry Wolf’s Sexuality and Socialism (Wolf 2009) offers (among others) a Marxist analysis of sexual identity oppression, drawing conclusions relevant to the contemporary struggle against all forms of oppression. Last, but by no means least, Michael Roberts’s The Long Depression (Roberts 2016) explores the fate of global capitalism post–bank crash—but also post-sluggish recovery.
  624.  
  625. Anderson, Kevin. Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Nonwestern Societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
  626.  
  627. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226019840.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  628.  
  629. Marx at the Margins probes a selection of neglected or unknown essays written by Marx, arguing for a more globally astute thinker not restricted to the concept of class. Anderson mines these essays to produce a more nuanced version of a thinker whose application to issues that reach well beyond class offers much to contemporary theorizing.
  630.  
  631. Find this resource:
  632.  
  633. Harmon, Chris. Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx. London: Haymarket, 2009.
  634.  
  635. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  636.  
  637. A very recent addition to the Marxist literature, Zombie Capitalism takes on the bank crash of 2008 arguing that some of the “too big to fail” banks effectively became zombies—accomplishing very little, but, revealed in particularly acute terms via a Marxist perspective, a threat to the global economic system.
  638.  
  639. Find this resource:
  640.  
  641. Kilman, Andrew. Reclaiming Marx’s Capital: A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006.
  642.  
  643. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  644.  
  645. Reclaiming Marx’s Capital offers an argument that, contrary to the received view, Marx is not inconsistent with respect to his theory of value, and that this theory may still speak to useful analyses of value as exchange.
  646.  
  647. Find this resource:
  648.  
  649. Pendakis, Andrew, ed. Contemporary Marxist Theory: A Reader. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.
  650.  
  651. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  652.  
  653. Contemporary Marxist Theory: A Reader begins after the fall of the Berlin Wall and treats a number of issues from a global Marxist perspective. Like Kollantai’s question about what Marx had to offer women, Pendakis explores what Marx and Marxist literature have to offer to current crises, especially planetary “eco-emergencies.” They conclude that Marx and Marxism remain relevant, perhaps more so than ever.
  654.  
  655. Find this resource:
  656.  
  657. Roberts, Michael. The Long Depression. London: Haymarket, 2016.
  658.  
  659. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  660.  
  661. The Long Depression explores the fate of global capitalism since the 2008 bank crash—but also in light of the sluggish recovery. He argues that the Marxist lens can offer insight missed by more typical neoliberal analyses of the Great Recession.
  662.  
  663. Find this resource:
  664.  
  665. Wolf, Sherry. Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics, and Theory of LGBT Liberation. London: Haymarket, 2009.
  666.  
  667. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  668.  
  669. Sexuality and Socialism offers a Marxist analysis of sexual identity oppression, drawing conclusions relevant to the contemporary struggle against all forms of oppression, and revaluing important insights concerning the relationship of not only sex and gender, but sexual identity, from a broadly socialist point of view.
  670.  
  671. Find this resource:
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