The Academicizing of Marxism

Although schisms are nothing new to Western Marxism, the past decade or so has witnessed one doctrinal parting of the ways that is without precedent in the annals of this troubled theory. I refer to the ever-widening gulf between the Marxism of the European working-class movement and the brand of Marxism propagated in the European universities. At more or less the same time as the major Communist parties were, one by one, abandoning their commitment to the “revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat” and endorsing some form or other of that version of parliamentary Marxism known as Eurocommunism, the universities were disseminating Marxist ideas completely at variance with this accommodating stance. It was as if the center of political gravity had shifted from the working-class movement to the academy and the custody of Marxist theory had passed from the party leadership to the new professoriate.

This university-based Marxism was not, of course, all of a piece; there were, and still are, many local varieties. But undoubtedly the most influential of all has been that school of thought inspired by Louis Althusser and his disciples—particularly Nicos Poulantzas and Etienne Balibar. Althusserian Marxism has ...