Marxism Today: An Anatomy

Abstract

What do we expect from a monthly journal of the Left? Obviously it must be different, and distinguishable, from weekly journals such as Tribune and the New Statesman and Society. And with the explicit title of Marxism Today, which it must be assumed indicates a specific commitment to a marxist analysis in the elucidation of society, past, present and future, it would be reasonable to expect a serious review of the contemporary world. We would assume an historical perspective upon the world around us, one which included the kind of constant questioning of social reality to be found in the correspondence between Marx and Engels. It has always been the aim and purpose of Marxist analysis to help situate the individual within historical time; to relate the past to the present and to offer a variety of perspectives for the future; to make sense of individual purpose, a matter of self-enlightenment, within a wider social-political framework and setting. We have often been wrong, confused and blinded by a dogmatic reference to the past which has encouraged a false or one sided understanding of the present, and a mistaken prognosis of things to come. We are all, that is to say, human; but we have not always been mistaken, and readers of a journal that is titled Marxism Today expect a sharpness of intellectual approach which is serious, perceptive, and an encouragement to political action. Alongside all the criticisms we can make of ourselves, the last three decades have witnessed a significant revival of the critical spirit which moved the founding fathers. Marxism Today, after a decade or so of new editorial direction, has established itself as representative of a particular trend of thinking which it is the purpose of this present article to analyse; and to that end, the twelve issues of the year 1988 have been taken to illustrate the tendencies in editorial approach and thinking.