03/2023 – Genesi e sviluppo del neo-marxismo europeo/1

Abstracts

Andrea Cavazzini, György Lukács and the Origins of (neo)”Marxism” in the Western

The article deals with György Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness (1923) and its influence on radical (Neo)Marxist thought after 1945. In his work, Lukács develops a Marxist criticism of modern capitalist society that prompts him to re-elaborate his earlier metaphysical and meta-ethical positions. Lukács’ refusal of capitalist social forms that mutilate subjectivity and spirituality results in a sort of inner thrust of radical movements in post-war “advanced capitalism”.

Keywords: György Lukács, Marxism, Capitalism, Revolution

 

Salvatore Tinè, Dialectics and Revolution in the Thought of Karl Korsch

The paper aims to highlight the importance – and problematic nature – of the relationship between materialism and dialectics within the theoretical-political reinterpretation of Marxism proposed by Karl Korsch in the early 1920s. According to Korsch, from the standpoint of a genuine “materialist dialectic” should follow a thorough critique of the theoretical and philosophical foundations of what could be called “the orthodox Marxism” of the Second International. As both critical and revolutionary, the dialectic represents the core of Marx’s theory and thus the starting point of a science able to achieve an understanding of the “totality” of bourgeois society, pursuing at the same time its practical overthrow. However, Korsch’s theorisation of an “immediate” link between the theory of Marxist dialectic and the reality of proletarian revolution hinders in fact a coherent analysis of the objective conditions of the latter and, as a consequence, a suitable theory of transition from capitalism to socialism in the age of imperialism.

Keywords: Karl Korsch, Imperialism, Marxism, Capitalism, Second International

 

Sami Kathib, Walter Benjamin’s neo-Marxism

The article discusses Walter Benjamin’s reception and adaptation of both Marx’s writings and contemporary Marxist discourse, arguing that the “Marxist Benjamin” cannot be understood as just a fellow-traveller of early Frankfurt School. Departing on the one hand from György Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness (1923) as well as closely working, on the other, both with Theodor W. Adorno and Bertolt Brecht, Benjamin’s original take on Marx and historical materialism traverses and transcends the discourse of Neo-Marxism, pointing to (post)surrealist as well as psychoanalytical discourses. The first section of the article introduces the development, posthumous reception and context of Benjamin’s Marxism. The second section focuses on Benjamin’s political emphasis on class struggle and a new historical materialist concept of (counter) history. The third one presents Benjamin’s theory of revolution and its anti-progressivist thrust. The last section examines Benjamin’s reception of Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism and his intervention into the discourse of Neo-Marxist ideology critique. Finally, the last part raises the question of Benjamin’s symptomatic (mis)understanding of Marx’s critique of political economy and concept of “capital”.

Keywords: Walter Benjamin, Karl Marx, Marxism, Capitalism, Revolution, Bertolt Brecht, Working Class

 

Vincent Chanson – Frédéric Monferrand, The neo-Marxism of the “Frankfurt School”

The article aims to grasp the specificity of the Critical Theory developed by the Frankfurt School within the horizon of European Neo-Marxism. And this according to the main hypothesis that the former operates, as a paradigm, from a double perspective: on the one hand, as a critique of political economy; on the other, as a critique of modernity as such. Thus, three moments shall structure our proposal: 1) The discussion of the hypotheses elaborated by Friedrich Pollock; 2) The interpretation of The Dialectic of Reason as a text operating a crucial synthesis between the two perspectives (i.e. critique of political economy and critique of modernity); 3) The way in which the paradigm of Critical Theory is indeed actualised through a theory of social domination. These three axes shall allow us to outline a conceptual paradigm elaorated since the middle of the 1930s by Max Horkheimer in his seminal essay Traditional Theory and Critical Theory.

Keywords: Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Frankfurt School, Dialectic, Friedrich Pollock, Neo-Marxism, Capitalism

 

Federico Di Blasio, Galvano Della Volpe and the Formation of another Marxism in Italy

The article aims to explore Galvano Della Volpe’s thought and to assess the role it played in the construction of an alternative standpoint to Italian hegemonic Marxism. In particular, I shall try to sum up the main theoretical coordinates of his thought as well as to investigate the category of “determined abstraction”, perhaps one of the most productive for a thorough understanding of the historical and theoretical formation of Italian Neo-Marxism. In fact, intellectuals such as Lucio Colletti, Raniero Panzieri and Mario Tronti made full use of it, in order to both analyse and transform social reality. After dealing with the relationship between Della Volpe and his so-called disciples, I shall try to show in which sense the “long ’68” depends, in part, on the reception of his thought and, specifically, of the concept of “determined abstraction”.

Keywords: Galvano Della Volpe, Historicism, Communism, Antonio Gramsci, Italian Marxism

 

Gianluca Pozzoni, Scientific Method and Revolutionary Democracy. Lucio Colletti in the Italian Marxist Debate

Heavily influenced by Galvano Della Volpe’s original interpretation of Marx’s analysis of capitalism as an extension of Galileo’s scientific revolution to the social realm, throughout the 1950s and 1960s Lucio Colletti defended a scientific approach to Marxism as opposed to the “Historicism” prevalent in Italian Marxism at the time. Unlike Della Volpe, however, Colletti considered scientific Marxism to be incompatible with “the Italian road to socialism” promoted by the Italian communist party. Scientific method, Colletti argued, demands all capitalist economies to be understood by referring to the “general” form of capitalism, irrespective of the alleged “backwardness” of Italian capitalism. Accordingly, the transition to socialism implies the revolutionary socialisation of the means of production in “backward” and “advanced” countries alike. Towards the end of the 1960s, Colletti reinforced this view by showing that Marx’s labour theory of value had to be interpreted as a theory of exploitation. However, the crisis of global communism and of Marxism in the 1970s led Colletti to conclude that Marx’s labour theory of value is in fact non-scientific, and that Marxism as a whole violates rather than fully instantiating the principles of scientific rationality.

Keywords: Lucio Colletti, Capitalism, Science, Communism, Historicism, Italian Marxism, Galvano Della Volpe

 

Sebastiano Taccola, The Reality of Forms. The Anti-historicist Marxism of Cesare Luporini

The paper focuses on the Italian Marxist Cesare Luporini (1909-1993). In particular, it shall consider Luporini’s “Marxism of the forms” as a significant theoretical outcome, capable of promoting an anti-historicist and innovative reading of the Marxian critique of political economy. Within the framework of a critique of Historicism (indeed hegemonic among Italian Marxists during the 1960s), Luporini developed an original philosophical research, essentially articulated around the following topics:

1. a) An interpretation of dialectics considered both as the form of scientific representation and a logical synchronic structure (irreducible to historical chronology and empiricism);
2. b) The relationship between critique of political economy and historical materialism;
3. c) The formulation of a critical theory able to keep together – from a non-reductionist perspective – both the structural analysis of productive relations and the understanding of social as well as political transformations.

In highlighting the milestones and turning points of Luporini’s philosophical research, this paper attempts to analyse the development of Luporini’s “Marxism of the forms” between 1962 and 1984.

Keywords: Cesare Luporini, Idealism, Historicism, Italian Marxism, Revolution, Historical Materialism

 

Giulio De Ligio, Realism and the Fundamental Alternatives of Political Life

In every era, under every regime or social authority, political realism provides insightful teachings or warnings on human illusions and the contradictions of historical enterprises. Some of its best tenants, in particular within the tradition of Italian political theory, perform such an intellectual task by highlighting what they call the “regularities of politics”. However, from this perspective, and to the extent that it remains faithful to its method, realism does not necessarily shape the most fitting attitude when the thinker, like the agent, has to explain and judge the “fundamental alternatives” which define the motives of politics and the wellspring of history. Its outlook risks then abolishing the practical meaning of human phenomenon. It risks seeing all historical events as a “system of ashes” (Péguy) or to lose sight of the “whole reality” (Aron), including its human meaning. Such a risk does not necessarily depend, so to speak, on the realist’s personal and political beliefs. It could be at work in some of the realist’s primary presuppositions on human action: his method tends to beg the primary questions which unify human history, the effective experiences he has every day under his eyes. On the basis of those presuppositions, in any case, the realist risks finding in his “questionable” premises the “conclusions” of his research: it tends to find the explanation of what is “regular” in human life in what denies the properly human, sometimes in the beast, almost never in God.

Keywords: Political Realism, Authority, Charles Péguy, Raymond Aron

 

Sandro Ciurlia, Bureaucracy, Economy and Forms of Political Representation in the Weberian «General Theory of Power»

The essay aims to define the role and functions that bureaucracy, economics and political representation assume in Weber’s project to delineate a «general theory of power». If the first two, even though all their ambivalences, contribute to create the social ties on which is based the communitas, the theme of representation is more complex, because it defines the forms of legitimate power through which to administer the Respublica. Here, Weber’s reflections on democracy and parliamentarianism become stringent and suggestive, opening a complex and equivocal attention on that charismatische Herrschaft, which, if appropriately declined, would give new life to political liberalism, bringing it to a higher level of awareness.

Keywords: Max Weber, Forms of Power, Charismatic Power, Political Liberalism, Weimar Constitution