Post-Marxist Theory: An Introduction (review)

In After Theory (2003) Terry Eagleton says of Western Marxist theory and criticism in the late twentieth century:

It was sometimes hard to say whether these theorists were repudiating Marxism or renewing it. To do so, you would need to have a fairly exact idea of what Marxism was in the first place. But had this not been precisely part of the trouble? Was this not one reason why Marxism had won itself such a bad name?

(36)

The same could be said of the theories celebrated under the heading Post-Marxism in Philip Goldstein's Post-Marxist Theory: An Introduction. To an imprecision and presumptuousness regarding Marxism, one could also add an unclear definition of terms like "science" and "economy" and an assumed transparency of many terms of philosophical and theoretical shorthand like "Humanism," "Nietzscheism," and "Althusserian." These speak, in part, to the book's challenge as an introduction for anyone other than those already fairly well versed with these theories and the Western philosophical traditions they draw upon; often they also betray its underlying polemical intentions and its failure to follow its own advice about the indeterminacy of language. That most of these terms stand as the evil Other to the post-structuralist theories Goldstein argues are more sophisticated borders on ironic.

Most of this isn't entirely Goldstein's fault. He is, after all, trying to summarize (in around 100 pages) these theories and the debates around them while positing an underlying unity among them—or in more fitting terms, articulating a unified bloc of theories antagonistic to some reified notions of Marxism, economism, Humanism, etc. In so far as it succeeds in providing an overview of these positions and an interesting attempt at weaving them together, Goldstein's book is valuable. As a review or specialized introduction to several key theorists of the past 40 years and their relationship to a general Marxist tradition, the book is a place to start. This is especially true of his attempt to include economists Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolfe (of Rethinking Marxism) and literary critic Pierre Macherey.

Goldstein's summaries of Foucault, Judith Butler, Laclau and Mouffe are the best executed, and his detailed account of the more significant debates around them displays a deep knowledge of these philosophical struggles. Often his accounts could be elaborated to unpack the significant understandings he has developed of this paradigm of thought and its usefulness. One specific example comes in the second to last paragraph in the chapter on Foucault where he says, with little explanation beforehand and no further elaboration, "Since racism stems from this nineteenth-century union of pure blood and bourgeois sexuality, Foucault's account of sexuality ultimately explains the Holocaust"(50). The argument itself isn't inconceivable, and I am sure that Goldstein has made it for himself, I am just one of those fuddy-duddies who find showing your work important.

This also points to a more general resistance to self reflection and serious engagement with the critical weaknesses of theories he defends. Also in the section on Foucault, he mentions Frederic Jameson's criticism of Althusser, which is that "the emergence of the new systems remains as mythic and unaccountable, as uncaused and unprecedented, as in the case of Foucault's epistemes"(44).¹ Goldstein's response is basically that Jameson is theoretically aligned with the ideas which inevitably produce Stalinism and his (and all "traditional Marxists'") failure to account for this makes him an unworthy critic. That Goldstein finds Jameson's explanation of what drives new systems unpalatable or untenable shouldn't preclude his addressing the important question at the heart of this criticism. Instead, as is often the case, he only offers arguments that hold in the sutured meta-narratives of poststructuralist criticism—namely that what Goldstein sees as Jameson's Hegelian faith in progress or the "End of History" has been deconstructed and, thus, the question of what drives it is irrelevant.

It would be clichéd to point out that the followers of Marx (and...