The Dismal Science of Post-Marxist Political Theory: Is There a Future in Postindustrial Socialism?

The fusion of postindustrial social theory with a new left political critique of classical Marxism resulted in a distinctly Post-Marxist political theory. This distinct political theory emerged during the 1980s, although it was quickly pushed aside by globalization studies in the 1990s. This paper argues that Post-Marxism is conceptually distinct from post-modernism, post-structuralism, and other variants of the New Left with most fundamental distinction being the idea that Marxian concepts are still necessary, if not sufficient for understanding postindustrial and global capitalism. More specifically, theorists such as André Gorz, Jürgen Habermas, Antonio Negri, and Claus Offe, among others, have articulated the foundations of this uniquely Post-Marxist political theory by anchoring their economic analysis of postindustrial capitalism in Marx’s Grundrisse rather than Capital. This conceptual shift has enabled Post-Marxists to construct a theoretically powerful analysis of postindustrial capitalism, the new movements, and socialist policy that was remarkably prescient, although none of the Post-Marxists has successfully solved the problem of a contemporary historical subject and political agency.