Marxism Without Class Struggle?

Abstract

A distinguishing characteristic of 'Western Marxism', it is said, has been a separation of theory and practice which has followed inevitably upon the separation of Marxist intellectuals from a revolutionary mass movement.' The result has been a Marxism more at home in the Academy than in the arenas of political struggle. Nevertheless, to say that theory has become divorced from revolutionary practice and from the realities of workingclass politics is not necessarily to say that theory has no implications for practice. In fact, many theoretical innovations in contemporary Marxism, for all their philosophical abstraction, have been intended precisely as political statements. In some cases, the theoretical divorce from working class politics represents a deliberate writing-off of the working class, which is in itself a significant political stance. The most interesting case, however, is the connection between Althusserian, or post-Althusserian, theory with Eurocommunist practice. Some of the most important and influential theoretical developments of contemporary Marxism have emerged as theorisations of Eurocommunist strategy. The political objectives of these innovations have been obscured by their formal abstraction and academicism and their claim to theoretical autonomy and universality. But if people have failed to note their political intentions and consequences, it is probably less because the evidence is obscure-since the theorists themselves are often quite explicit about their practical objectives- than because we have come to take for granted the dissociation of Marxist theory from political practice.