Western Marxism and the New Left

In the shadow of the ideological wreck that was Stalinism in the 1960s, the New Left attempted to rescue the humanist and revolutionary core of Marxism. Breathing life into the Hegelian Marxists of the post-world war one period and engaging with contemporary figures ranging from Sartre to Althusser, they grappled with issues such as contradictory consciousness, the capacity of the working class to secure hegemony in advanced capitalist countries, the nature of working class agency and subjectivity and the role of intellectuals in the workers’ movement – in short - the relevance of Marxism as the theory of the self-emancipation of the working class in the 21st century. Since then, the New Left’s version of Marxism, what has for better or worse become known as ‘Western Marxism’, has gained significant influence in many academic Marxist milieus. In this session we discuss the nature and implications of the New Left’s interpretation of Marxism and how the problems they confronted are relevant today.