A stinging critique of Western Marxism, counterposing its complicity with imperialist logic against a resurgent anti-imperialism Western How It Was Born, How It Died, How It Can Be Reborn is a paradigm-shifting book that provides a trenchant critique of the Western left intelligentsia. It reveals how its dominant ideological orientation―characterized by defeatism, utopianism, and anti-communism―is rooted in the political economy of imperialism. Internationally acclaimed theorist Domenico Losurdo thus provides a fresh and challenging perspective on purportedly radical thinkers who have been widely promoted in the imperial core, including those affiliated with the Frankfurt School, French Theory, and operaismo, as well as Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, Michael Hardt, and Slavoj Žižek, among others. His critique also has wide-reaching implications for trend-setting discourses inspired by this coterie of intellectuals, from postcolonial and decolonial theory to subaltern studies and beyond. Far from being a negative undertaking, however, this book is grounded in the positive project of reigniting anti-imperialist Marxism. As a complement to the Italian edition of Western Marxism, this first-ever English translation also features the unprecedented publication of a major lecture that demystifies “Western Marxism” and its role in imperialists’ efforts to denigrate the achievements of actually existing socialism. Raising the stakes of what it means to produce critical theory, Western Marxism will surely provoke wide debate and a reevaluation of hallowed canons.
Author
Domenico Losurdo (14 November 1941 – 28 June 2018) was an Italian Marxist philosopher and historian better known for his critique of anti-communism, colonialism, imperialism, the European tradition of liberalism and the concept of totalitarianism. He was director of the Institute of Philosophical and Pedagogical Sciences at the University of Urbino, where he taught history of philosophy as Dean at the Faculty of Educational Sciences. Since 1988, Losurdo was president of the Hegelian International Association Hegel-Marx for Dialectical Thought. He was also a member of the Leibniz Society of Sciences in Berlin (an association in the tradition of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's Prussian Academy of Sciences) as well as director of the Marx XXI political-cultural association. From communist militancy to the condemnation of American imperialism and the study of the African-American and Native American question, Losurdo was also a participant in national and international politics.
