Phenomenological Marxism

In: Telos, Band 9, S. 3-31

Abstract

The official outlook of Soviet Marxism is that "orthodox" Marxism needs no qualifications or eclectic revisions, but this dogmatism only emphasizes the theoretical degeneration of a rigid, nondialectical abstract formalism. For several decades, efforts at a synthesis of Marxism & phenomenology have been attempted, but the 2 incompatible perspectives cannot be mechanically joined. A nondogmatic Marxism & a relevant phenomenology can be attained simultaneously if Marxism is treated as the outcome of phenomenology & phenomenology is taken as an inextricable moment of Marxism. Marxism is the historically valid mediation that concretely articulates & directs social reality, while phenomenology is the tracing back of all mediations to the human operations that constituted them. The crisis in irrelevant Marxism necessitates a phenomenological reconstitution, in which new content is expressed in novel forms (phenomenological Marxism) dialectically related to previous forms (classical Marxism). Similarly, phenomenological analysis unavoidably penetrates Marxism as the class-analysis that explains consciousness in terms of class position & labor. Phenomenological Marxism is an approach that constantly reduces all theoretical constructs--including Marxism--to their living context in order to guarantee the adequacy of the concept to the object it apprehends & the goal it seeks. Its point of departure from orthodox Marxism occurs with its rejection of the theory of reflection. A new, critical Marxism adequate for contemporary issues must reformulate the notion of class to embrace the new sectors of the Wc; the concept of the economy to incorporate the formerly separate spheres of leisure, education, etc; & the idea of revolution to involve all the activities of everyday life. Phenomenological Marxism can serve the New Left as the basis for a theoretical critique of the Old Left. A. Karmen.