I wanted to do a brief, bold, and highly incomplete survey of what Marxism has done already in
the way of shaping modern culture, influencing modern ways of thought. It’s a much more
pervasive and deeply ingrained way of thinking than many people recognize, and to that end
I want to do this brief survey. Some of the names I'm going to mention to you are known
very well, others are almost unknown. It's the breadth, the depth, the range of people
whose work is influenced by Marxism that I want to underscore. And I'm going do this
by geography and by history.
One of the first places that took up Marx's work with great excitement—and that might
be understandable since Marx was originally a German—was in Austria—a German-speaking
part of the world—in Vienna. And there were interesting people. Rudolf Hilferding, one
of the great theorists of finance; the first one to systematically subject finance capitalism
to a thoroughgoing analysis. His work has been influential in the last hundred years
after he wrote it. Rudolf Hilferding, he worked together with others. The Adler brothers,
who developed the whole strain of Marxist thinking called Austro-Marxism, and they did
it at the turn of the 19th century in Vienna where there was a very close collection of
intellectuals who picked up this Marxian thinking. They didn't agree with all of it, but they
were shaped by it. And I might mention just one, so you get a sense of how Marxism has
percolated through our system. Sigmund Freud was active in Vienna at that time and these
intellectual circles overlapped with him as they did with Rudolf Carnap, with a whole
new school of philosophy.
In Russia, it's a little bit better known. Marxists were very important, got real excited
about Marx's work within 10-15 years after Marx died. Here's four names just I could
pick out of many. Two you know real well: Lenin—the first leader of the Marxist revolution
in Russia—Trotsky—his close ally and friend. The two of them, Lenin and Trotsky, being
giants in their own writings, taking Marxism further but also being practitioners of the
revolution to carry a system of capitalism into a new and different system—at least
to make the effort. But here are two other Russians who were deeply influenced by Marxism:
Maxim Gorky, perhaps the greatest novelist of the revolutionary time in Russia who produced
a kind of working people's novel that has had influence across the world. And here's
another named Sergei Eisenstein, the developer of the modern movie, the modern film, the
modern cinema. His influence on all movies and cinema since is of the profoundest sort.
He too, heavily influenced by Marxism.
Back in Germany—the generation that comes after Marx—Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg.
Let me say a word about Rosa Luxemburg. She became the greatest woman Marxist of her time.
She brought questions of Marxism to the condition of women, but she also brought them to some
of the most profound analyses of capitalist economics that we have to this day. You will
find her statues and her name on many of the squares in the middle of Berlin to this day
as the Germans honor the extraordinary contribution she made before she was assassinated by right-wing
military in 1919. Here's another name: Berthold Brecht, the greatest dramatist, arguably,
of the 20th century; a Marxist who developed new styles of theater, how to write plays,
how to present them, how to make them grab an audience. Likewise, in Germany, a group—the
Frankfurt School—Marxists associated with the University of Frankfurt in that big city
in Germany. Here's three names: Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse who eventually came to the
United States, and Theodor Adorno, also affected by Marxism in Germany growing up. A natural
scientist who came to America and became quite famous, Albert Einstein, who, in 1949, wrote
a very famous article called “The Need for Socialism”—an idea he got from his influence
from Marxism. Then in Hungary, Georg Lukács and the critique of modern consciousness—how
a capitalist economy shapes the way people think about themselves and their close friends
and their intimate relationships.
In Italy, a spectacular Marxist achievement in the work of Antonio Gramsci, a leader of
the Italian Communist Party—the great enemy of the fascists who took over in Italy. He
developed a critique of culture in his prison notebooks—because he was imprisoned by the
fascists—that has shaped modern culture ever since.
In France, we have an enormous influence on Marxism. The entire surrealist tradition—Andre
Breton, Rene Magritte—all the great names of surrealism one way or another directly
or indirectly shaped by Marxism which they were students of. Names that you do know:
Jean-Paul Sartre, perhaps the greatest philosopher of mid-century French thinking, the developer
of existentialism and many other strains of modern thought. Louis Althusser, Jacque Derrida,
Levi Strauss—for those of you who follow the social sciences, these Marxists have been
giants in shaping most of them one way or another.
In England, there were great economists who were Marxists. Probably the most important—no,
I'll take that back, not “probably”—the most important woman economist of the 20th
century, a professor of economics at Cambridge University in Britain, Joan Robinson. She
was one who taught my generation of young students of economics how there could be a
Marxist approach. And her colleague at Cambridge Maurice Dobb wrote books that have trained
an entire generation of Marxist economists to help understand what's going on in capitalism.
And of course, Europe is not the only place since Marxism spread all over the world. Here
in the United States, we had important Marxist Paul Sweezy coming out of Harvard where he
learned from Joseph Schumpeter, his teacher, what the importance of the Marxist tradition
was. And he taught again a generation of young economists how to appreciate the insights
of Karl Marx. Or a famous labor organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn who took the work of
Marx and made herself one of the great leaders of the labor movement in twentieth-century
United States. Frederick Jameson, still teaching at Duke University in the American South bringing
a Marxist criticism to literature. Richard Lewontin, biology professor at Harvard who
tried to bring the Marxist insights into the natural sciences. W. E B. Du Bois, the leading
intellectual of African-American culture in the 20th century and a close student of Marxism.
Cornel West, who might well be considered the next the inheritor of the Du Bois or the
W. E. B. Du Bois tradition—mixing together his philosophic interests, his theological
interests, and his critique of racism. Our friend Chris Hedges who frequently appears
on this program and is a major spokesman for Marxist-influenced thinking.
And of course, in China where the tradition of Mao—you know, all of its permutations—is
also a testimony to how the Marxian tradition extends beyond the Europe where it was born.
In Asia, the Dutt family in India; Nâzim Hikmet, one of the great poets in Turkey;
Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. Just to pick a few of the people whose lives and work and massive
influence on their countries and the world are also in part debts to the Marxian tradition.
Africa too, from Frantz Fanon in the north analyzing capitalist imperialism and how it
impacts the mentality—the literal brain work—of the people subjected to it; all
the way down to the southern tip, the African National Congress in the South, in South Africa
where Marxists were leaders in that movement and throughout the struggles against apartheid;
and finally to the middle of Africa where people as different as Kwame Nkrumah the leader
of independent Ghana and Amilcar Cabral, a Marxist intellectual in the center of Africa
made their contributions.
And onto South America where Walter Rodney and Eric Williams produced the greatest analyses
of slavery and the slave trade that we still have. Eugene Genovese picked up on that here
in the United States and developed his signature analyses of American slavery. In Cuba and
elsewhere in Latin America, the influence of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, of the Zapatistas
in Mexico, politically not only their thinking but also their practice. Marxism is a mixture
of theory and practice. And let me end with a couple of artists, groups of artists. In
Chile, Pablo Neruda, one of the great poets of an attempt to understand people's suffering
through the lens of a Marxist mentality which he freely and openly acknowledged. And perhaps
the greatest painters that Mexico ever produced—its muralists—the incredible collection of Diego
Rivera or Roscoe Siqueiros and the better-known Frida Kahlo who together produced murals and
paintings that have put Mexico in a remarkable position as stimulating and inspiring a whole
tradition of art.
Look, folks, as capitalism encounters ever greater criticism and opposition, the search
for alternatives and for a better world will open minds to socialism and from there to
Marxism. From the socialism that wants to improve, overcome the suffering of people
under capitalism to a Marxism that argues that system change is the necessary solution.
Marxism has been there for a hundred and fifty years. It's not going away. It has its ups
and downs, but like Mark Twain said when he read an obituary of him in the newspaper,
“Predictions of my death have been quite exaggerated” and so it has been with Marxism.
It’s a tradition that has moved some of the greatest minds of the last hundred and
fifty years. It has shaped our history far more than those who don't know it are willing
to acknowledge or admit.