Jarryd Louw

Analytical Marxism can be used to rethink socialist electoral strategy, yet its lack of a robust account of power undermines its ability to provide useful analyses of social, political, and economic conditions that this would require. I argue that by adding a suitable account of power Analytical Marxism can not only provide more substantive analyses of prevailing material conditions but can also be used to pragmatically rethink electoral socialist strategy in such a way that it overcomes many of its present shortcomings and from this can be used to provide a positive account of social and economic reform. In doing so, I set out a four-fold approach to power that bridges the agency-structure divide and then apply this approach to power to Analytical Marxism's analyses of class, class formation, class struggle, exploitation, and domination. Through this, I aim to show that Analytical Marxism allows us to engage in analyses of prevailing material conditions that are capable of shedding light on and serving as a basis from which to think about and overcome the strategic failures of electoral socialist strategy throughout the 20th century. To do so, I analyse contemporary phenomena such as the activity of corporations like Amazon, the emergence of financialization, and the continued development of advanced capitalism to show that prevailing material conditions have rendered traditional socialist strategy ineffective in advancing the interests of workers. Subsequently, I use this updated account of Analytical Marxism to rethink electoral socialist strategy regarding the role of workers' movements, the role of collective action, the role of political parties, the methods of aggregation of actors' interests, and provide a substantive account of social and economic reform that becomes possible. Here, I argue that an Analytical Marxist approach to social and economic reform must be constituted by the establishment of state capitalism with the eventual goal of shifting towards a state-regulated market socialism, both of which would be presided over by a paternalistic party and that this is justifiable based on considerations of distributive justice and equality.

This paper argues that the proper, or authentic, expression of historical Dasein in Marcuse’s early Heideggerian Marxism can only be achieved under the higher phase of socialism, and thus full communism, and not under either a transitionary worker’s state constituted by the dictatorship of the proletariat or under the lower phase of socialism/communism. In doing so, this paper explores and clarifies the relationship between historical Dasein and revolution in the context of Marcuse’s early Heideggerian Marxism. In his early work, Marcuse identifies the industrial proletariat as constituting an expression of historical Dasein. Here, the eventual proletarian revolution not only brings about the liberation of the proletariat from the effects of capitalism but also allows for the authentic expression of historical Dasein. While Marcuse holds that the authentic expression of Dasein will take place through revolutionary means leading to a post-capitalist society, he does not clarify the relationship between historical Dasein and revolution itself beyond pointing to the relationship between the proletariat and revolution as already expressed in the early 20th century Marxism. Because of this, Marcuse’s early work overlooks the possibility that there is a distinction between just liberation through the revolutionary action of the proletariat and the authentic expression of historical Dasein within and through political arrangements arising after the revolution. This paper is therefore concerned with the question of when the proper, or authentic, Dasein of the workers is expressed and when it is not. Within the context of Heideggerian Marxism, this paper helps to outline the conditions under which workers as a community would be able to fully express an authentic existence where they have true mastery over their relation to the world.

Granting the idea that certain theoretical conceptualisations of Marxism broadly represent a political religion, this paper seeks to explore how one can come to understand the function of individual theoretical concepts within the wider theory of Stalinism. In so doing, this approach to political religion will be explored within the confines of Stalin’s concept of the Intensification of Class Struggle under Socialism. Assuming that individual theoretical concepts of an ideology that has been labelled a political religion serve the same function as doctrines within traditional religion, this paper argues that the Intensification of Class Struggle under Socialism can be interpreted as having an apocalyptic quality. By doing so, this paper seeks to extend the boundaries of both the study of political religion and the theoretical exploration of Marxism as it relates to the question and role of religion within the social and political sphere. While doing so, this paper also seeks to provide an illustration of what the exploration of political religion in relation to Marxism looks like at the level of specific theoretical elements as opposed to a mere overarching characterisation of the entire theoretical enterprise.