Bourgeois academic 'Neo-Marxist' theory was not a problem confined to the French intellectuals. Following WW2, academics in every capitalist country on Earth increasingly tended to disregard the most fundamental features of Marxist theory while continuing to call themselves Marxist.Just look at people like Adorno for fuck's sake.
This was partially due to institutional pressures forcing orthodox Marxists out of academia and partially due to academia itself being so out of touch with the working class, but, in any case, virtually all of these thinkers were fucking cancer. Althusser was one of the least terrible ones and even he had major problems like rejecting the dialectical method.
Adrian Barnes
Why did academics stop taking the working class seriously?
Alexander Walker
Did they ever? It seems like, with some obvious exceptions, intellectuals in general have always had a certain disdain for the working masses.
Brayden Sanders
I would see this, alone, as reason enough for admonishment and insult; however, you've made note on Althusser and the relation of aleatory materialism to dialectical materialism which would explain exactly why you'd take issue with both these thinkers. The point being that it seems you take issue with theorists who think dialectical processes are non-deterministic or non-mechanistic in nature. There is no enduring theoretical relation of theory and practice, they exist in a transient form based on the prevailing conditions of their epoch.
Logan Powell
Fucking anarkiddies
Lucas Mitchell
Bu-Bu-Bingo, brainlets BTFO
Jaxson Perez
Although persona non grata, I almost wish AW was still around as he seemed to piss off left-philosophers on the board enough that there seemed to be a general atmosphere of interest in theory
Nicholas Ramirez
…No? I take issues with thinkers who try to twist dialectical logic into some kind of idealist or metaphorical thing or otherwise disregard it (and materialism) entirely in favor of psycho-babble.
Materialist dialectics are the most crucial and fundamental element of Marxism. I'm not out of line in saying that any thinker who rejects one or both parts of Marx's fundamental form of logic is not a Marxist.
When you make the claim that 'the working class in first world countries are not capable of revolution because of the mass media', you are objectively being an idealist and completely at odds with basic Marxist thought.
Jonathan King
I apologize for my hasty assumptions, then. I concede that I am not all too sure what you have against Adorno and Althusser in light of these affirmations, as neither one of these theorists rejects the dialectical process. A number of critical theorists and structural thinkers can be reproached for their relatively lackadaisical nature, but to suppose that they fall back within the orbit of capitalist teleology seems a step too far. Without more concrete discussion on the specific improprieties and works with which you take issue, I can't make any pointed counterarguments, but I will say that the work done by Althusser and Adorno in relating the extant social relations of capitalism into the symbolic form (that of an enduring essentialist philosophy) is an excellent means of negating the reactionary ideologies - where, as we both know, contradictions and antinomies abound.
