ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Marxism as Counter/Science

• In Event: Science and Activism: A Long History

English Abstract

After the failure of the proletarian revolution in Western Europe, Marxism changed its terrain in the early 1920s. Instead of informing political praxis and providing the labor movement with a theory of revolution, Marxism became the subject of newly established “Institutes for Social Research,” e.g. in Frankfurt, where such an institute became the intellectual epicenter of the “Frankfurt School.” Alongside the old claim to represent “scientific socialism,” inherited from the 19th century, Marxism was thus incorporated into the existing system of sciences and humanities. At the same time, Marxism’s assertion that it can formulate a radical critique of “bourgeois science” was strengthened. For example, Georg Lukács warned that scientific establishment also entails the danger of dogmatic closure, against which he sets—of all things—his concept of “orthodox Marxism.” The contribution traces the twists and turns of Marxism in the 20th century between science and counter-science, between “scientistic self-misunderstanding” (to quote Habermas’ quip against psychoanalysis) and critical orthodoxy, and between activist milieus and academia.

Author

• Patrick Eiden-Offe, Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) Berlin