Marxist Humanism

DEFINING MARXIST Humanism is more than a linguistic task. It is a highly politicized task with important political implications. Marxist Humanism does not represent a single school of thought within Marxist scholarship nor does it enjoy a historical lineage that is either obvious or linear. A variety of philosophers have employed the term Marxist Humanism, or Socialist Humanism, to delineate a type of engagement with Marxist philosophy and post-Marxist theorists. These scholars have been as wide-ranging as Leszek Kolakowski, to Eric Fromm, Raya Dunayevskaya, the Yugoslav Praxis Group, and Chinese philosopher Wang Ruoshui—to name just a few.

The emergence of Marxist Humanism most directly corresponds to the appearance of a reinvigorated left in the 1960s across Western and Eastern Europe and North America. It does, however, also draw on the earlier works of a variety of post-Marx thinkers, such as Antonia Gramsci, Georg Lukács, Vladimir Lenin in his Philosophic Notebooks, and Herbert Marcuse on the first English translations of Marx's 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. Importantly, those espousing a Marxist Humanist understanding of Marx's works also assert that a thorough understanding of Marx's use of the Hegelian dialectic, particularly in Capital, is key to recognizing the humanist content and revolutionary goal of Marx's critique of capitalism.

Although the philosophic and textual debates among those who draw upon the label “Marxist Humanism” is substantial, we can discern some common elements among the variety of approaches. First is the assertion that post-Marx Marxism, largely influenced by Stalinism, has become overly deterministic and reductionist. These so-called Orthodox Marxists draw heavily on Marx's economic theory but do not engage in either Hegelian dialectics or the notion that human subjectivity is itself the key to realizing revolutionary change. Second, Marxist Humanists dispute the notion that Marx's works can be divided as “early” Marxism, that is, Hegelian-influenced, and “late,” that is, scientific or economic Marxism.

Instead, they assert that Marx's later works are strongly influenced by the Hegelian dialectic and, in Marx's own terms, advocate a “New Humanism.” Finally, Marxist Humanists often reject vanguardism explicitly and instead focus on other subjectivities (for example, women's movements, youth movements, national liberation movements) as being important forces for realizing human emancipation.

Today, Marxist Humanism as both philosophic label and organization is most closely associated with the works of Raya Dunayevskaya. Drawing on Hegel's Logic, Lenin's Notebooks, and the 1844 Manuscripts, Dunayevskaya asserted a humanist understanding of Marx's works in the early 1950s. In 1955, Dunayevskaya founded the News and Letters organization, which continues to publish a monthly newspaper and critically engages both world events and the international left from a perspective rooted in Dunayevskaya's writings on Marxist Humanism.