Beyond the Labyrinth: Marxist Trajectories

The ‘century of marxism’ is over, most commentators agree. Yet, Jacques Derrida, a champion of the postmodern, post-marxist era, has recently declared that: ‘There will be no future without this. Not without Marx no future without Marx, without the memory and the inheritance of Marx’ (Derrida, 1994: 13). It is not a simple question of ‘Marxism is dead, long live Marx!’. Yet there is now – a decade or so since the collapse of communism – a more sober reappraisal of the marxist heritage than was previously possible. This chapter traces some of the high (and low) points of the complex marxist trajectories from its origins in Marx, through the social democratic and communist traditions, to marxism’s difficult engagement with postmodernism in recent times. I have inevitably simplified the complex labyrinth of the marxist discourse and the socialist communist movements. Sometimes, though, it would seem that the labyrinth – with its walls, dead-ends and Borgesian logic – is one that some marxists/socialists/communists have created for themselves or, more often, their followers.