10 Facts About Western Marxism

Western Marxism is a current of Marxist theory that arose from Western and Central Europe in the aftermath of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the ascent of Leninism.

Less concerned with economic analysis than earlier schools of Marxist thought, Western Marxism placed greater emphasis on the study of the cultural trends of capitalist society, deploying the more philosophical and subjective aspects of Marxism, and incorporating non-Marxist approaches to investigating culture and historical development.

Western Marxism argues that the tradition represents a divorce between socialist theory and working-class practice that resulted from the defeat and stagnation of the Western working class after 1920.

Nonetheless, this style of Western Marxism was taken up by Germany's Frankfurt School in the 1930s.

Where the base of the capitalist economy is the focus of earlier Marxists, the Western Marxism Marxists concentrate on the problems of superstructures, as their attention centres on culture, philosophy, and art.

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Western Marxism often emphasises the importance of the study of culture, class consciousness and subjectivity for an adequate Marxist understanding of society.

Western Marxism Marxists have thus tended to heavily use Marx's theories of commodity fetishism, ideology and alienation and have expanded on these with new concepts such as reification and cultural hegemony.

Many Western Marxism Marxists have drawn from psychoanalysis to explain the effect of culture on individual consciousness.

Many Western Marxists believe the philosophical key to Marxism is found in the works of the Young Marx, where his encounters with Hegel, the Young Hegelians and Ludwig Feuerbach reveal what they see as the humanist core of Marxist theory.

Nicos Poulantzas, a later Western Marxism Marxist, was an advocate for Eurocommunism.