On a Way to Material Marxism: On or Over Post-Marxism

초록

This paper delineates how, with advent of (post) structural Marxism, ontic Marxism almost perishes but sustains its life through compromise with post-Marxism. To investigate this, the paper analyzes Louis Althusser's structural Marxism and Fredrick Jameson's understanding of Althusser's theories to reveal both theories' attempt to reexamine and criticize ontic Marxists' ideas of subject, totality, and history utilizing (post) structural linguistics and relevant theories. Yet, their efforts turns out to be partially successful because of inevitable paradoxes and contradictions in their own projects. Though Althusser tries to re-read and find a true Marxism getting over vulgar one and Jameson tries to reinterpret Althusser's structural Marxism to suggest a compromised model of post-post-Marxism, it is still questionable if their projects turn out to be successful. Delving into these contentions, this paper pries into the polemics of language, subject, and history, such notions for which structural Marxists have been frequently criticized. In response to the critiques, post-Marxists have defended their positions condescendingly reiterating the recounts of how obsolete subject's language and discourse in structuralism and structural Marxism become. The next examinations target the idea of history, the most problematic concept both for structural Marxists and their critics because historicity and materialism may not be reconciled in contemporary Marxist's theory in spite of Fredrick Jameson's eclectic efforts. This contradiction also suggests that Marxism may not be ontic anymore if we do not accept the ambiguity of history and real praxis. Lastly, this paper explores Merleau-Ponty's theories to find an ontological Marxist theoretical position which might be a possible answer to my question.

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