Marxism: An Evaluation of Criticism and Discourse in the Face of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Abstract

Considering that Marxism by itself constitutes an intellectual and sociopolitical history that presents multiple variants, among which there have been countless debates, opponents and detractors, displaying the considerable complexity of thought derived from Marx’s critique of political economy, this paper outlines a few demarcation lines for the study of Marxist thought before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The crux of this blueprint is based on considering the centrality of the trajectory of the forms of discourse that renovated the critical core of Marx in frank opposition to the dogmatic and mechanicist Marxism of Soviet socialism, and which, thirty years after the collapse of Soviet socialism, have most persistently allowed for insisting on the validity of its critique, its ability to explain the modern world and the need to think of a non-capitalist modernity once again.