No 11, Issue 2       

Fighting Liberalism with Liberalism: The Failure of Anglophone Marxist Intellectuals in the Post-Soviet World

Jacob A. ZUMOFF

Pages: 5-17

Abstract.

The restoration of capitalism in East Europe and the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s revitalised capitalism, setting the stage for the resurgent hegemony of United States imperialism. This was accompanied by its economic reflection, globalisation, and its ideological justification, liberalism. Most Marxists in the Anglophone imperialist world, capitulated to this dominant liberalism (that is, to US imperialist hegemony), converting Marxism into left-wing critiques of liberalism, not a revolutionary tool to overthrow capitalism. This paper in particular examines Alex Callinicos and his treatment of the antiglobalisation movement of the early 2000s. We are now seeing the breakdown of the post-Soviet hegemony of United States imperialism, which is making the world much more unstable. Again, Marxists in the Anglophone imperialist world, instead of using Marxism as a tool to fight against capitalism, are turning it into a liberal tool, in this case by asserting that the current world situation is somehow objectively leading towards socialism. This essay concludes by examining Radhika Desai as an example.

Keywords.

Marxism, liberalism, post-Soviet, Alex Callinicos, Radhika Desai, multipolarity, geopolitics, imperialism

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