Western Marxism, from Totalitarianism to Biopower: On the Agonies of the Beautiful Eurocentric Soul

In Western Marxism, Domenico Losurdo identifies the antithetical and sometimes hostile positions expressed on anti-colonial struggles as the salient feature of the “Western Marxist” tradition of radical European theory. As Losurdo shows, the formation of such positions, which dispense with an essential component of the Marxist theory of class struggles, is a result of a prevalence of theoretical concepts and tendencies within the Western Marxist canon, absent in leading spokespeople from countries in which Marxist governments held power after October 1917. As the article develops in part 1, the positions at issue include messianism, anti-statism, utopianism, anti-scientism, anti-technologism, anti-modernism, anti-labourism, antinomianism, romanticism, and idealism. In part 2, responding to critics who have challenged the value of Losurdo’s characterisation of a “Western Marxism” spanning into post-structuralist thinkers, the article shows how discerning Losurdo’s analysis is by focusing on popular “radical” Italian theorist, Giorgio Agamben. In the conclusion, the article is situated within the critical responses to Western Marxism, and calls attention to a perceived tension in Losurdo’s treatment of Ernst Bloch, and more widely, in the Marxian stance towards bourgeois rights and liberties.