Abstract
Marxist humanism has been the relatively disadvantaged younger sibling to Leninist, Trotskyist, Internationalist and Maoist forms of philosophical praxis. Deriving its lineage from Marx’s early writing, and sidelined by their lack of impact until the late 1940s and 1950s, Marxist humanism only began to attract attention with the unpalatable truths of Stalinist communism, political fractures from the Party and the resultant plurality of approaches to radical thinking inspired by Marx. Since then, Marxist humanism has been read in cultural critiques from Gramsci through to the British Marxist historians, politically from Dunayevskaya to Marcuse in US circles, and philosophically from reading back into Lukács and Benjamin to moving forward through Fromm and the later Sartre to Berman, Kolakowski and Kosik. It has influenced the Frankfurt School of critical theory as it moved from Germany to the US, the Praxis movement in Tito’s Yugoslavia and Che Guevara’s revolutionary politics across the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa. Its influence has spread alongside Marxism into other intersections, such as postcolonial critical studies, whether C. L. R. James or Friere, Fanon or Hall. The willingness of Marxist humanists to engage with other intersections, before it became a given of radical and revolutionary politics, often saw the tradition called more broadly ‘socialist humanism’. On the web, its principal sources are the News and Letters Committee (https://newsandletters.org/) and the Marxist Humanist Initiative (https://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/), both US based. The single text most representative of the richness of these different strands of radicalism was the international symposium edited by Eric Fromm in 1965 and published by Doubleday in New York – Socialist Humanism. Until now.
For Humanism is an extraordinary achievement. Comprising four essays by leading voices in their fields – Barbara Epstein, Kevin Anderson, Robert Spencer and David Alderson – with an introduction by Timothy Brennan and a conclusion by the authors, it manages both to capture and critically explore the sophistication of the range of scholarship it condenses and deliver a highly readable introduction for the next generation. Brennan’s discursive introduction ranges across the theoretical and historical terrain, contrasting the genealogy of humanist concerns with their contestations in anti-humanism and post-humanism and giving a flavour of the scope and limits to humanist critique from both within and without its broad terrain. He makes a persuasive case for the value of mining socialist humanist critiques and their philosophical antecedents in the face of the contemporary popularity of alternate positions.
Barbara Epstein’s essay on the rise, decline and possible revival of socialist humanism will be required reading for any course or directed study on the subject. Scholarly, careful and magisterial in its scope, she manages to provide a picture of the contours of socialist humanism as a political and philosophical project. Rather more a disciplined survey of the terrain than a critical argument, she sets up debate for the possibilities of a return to prominence for humanist critiques. In one essay, not every tradition can be represented. For example, as a lover of E. P. Thompson and particularly Raymond Williams (if Williams had been French or Italian, ‘Williou’ or ‘Williamsci’, he would be required reading for all radicals), I would have liked to see their cultural contributions more prominent. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable essay that provides the basis for understanding the terms of debates for socialist humanists.
Kevin Anderson then gives an authoritative voice to the decline of Marxist humanism before Althusserian and post-structuralist critiques, and the rejuvenation of Marxist humanism with a re-reading and retrieval of Marxist humanist scholarship, particularly Dunayevskaya, Fromm and Kosik, combining a philosophical and political critique that reclaims a Marxism centred in subjectivity, alienation and the mobilisation of class struggle and the practice of radical thought, illustrated in its political articulation in Fanon’s radicalism. Anderson sets an ambitious but essential agenda for a Marxist humanist twenty-first century politics – focusing on the concrete as well as the abstraction of what it is to be a human and engage subjectively with a materialist politics, whilst refining and developing humanist critiques against the better anti-humanist alternatives, such as Foucault.
Robert Spencer pursues that concern with a particular focus on the deficiencies of a radical humanism that takes humanity as an abstraction, preferring instead to develop a libertarian or democratic humanism based on the inclusive subject, bearing rights and recognition of their subjectivity. He does this through the critique of colonialism and post-colonial studies. Cleverly weaving western Marxist thinking – Sartre and Bloch – with Fanon and Said, Spencer shows how a central feature of the postcolonial project – the bringing of the subject, by their own volition and with revolutionary practice, into being in their spaces – owes much to Marxist humanist antecedents. Yet at the same time, that tradition fails to adequately represent the subject in all of its diversity. Similarly, critiques can be mounted across a range of identity intersections. Spencer’s focus on post-colonialism allows the development of a humanism that is conditioned by the stain of imperial and colonial histories and sees the subject in implacably anti-racist terms. In arguing against the divisive notion of a specific post-colonial project and, instead, arguing for post-colonial humanism as an inclusive politics, Spencer avoids some of the divisive criticism of identity politics, though there is still a considerable challenge to balancing a libertarian humanism with the class and collectivist philosophical practice of a Marxist humanism, which suggests there is more to be done.
Finally, David Alderson provides an elegant, eloquent and erudite examination of anti-humanism within queer critiques, especially in Judith Butler, by questioning the power of identity politics and subjectification in contemporary political critiques – seeking to move further in understanding how the politics of recognition radicalise rather than transform prevailing market liberalism and its authoritarian impulses beneath the surface. In a complex weaving of issues of gender(queer), sexuality and ethnicity, Alderson draws from Marcuse but also a rereading of queer scholars like Sedgwick to advance the possibilities of a radical humanism that is neither subjectified nor identity constrained, yet equally not ideologically doctrinaire nor organisationally constrained. This is a politics of humanism, rather than a politics underpinned by humanist impulses, based on generosity and diversity and a common commitment to human values as the inspiration and means, in practice, of building a radicalism. As Spencer and Alderson conclude, ‘. . . the left’s distinctive aim should not be to “resist” the faltering regime of capital . . . but to do those things more purposefully. . .for overturning it in the name of a different kind of future’.
There are criticisms that can be made. The range of literature covered means that the survey and analysis in Epstein and Anderson far outweigh less developed arguments and conclusions of their own. Spencer and Alderson might be asked to frame their intersecting but distinctive libertarian and radical humanist variants against collectivist and materialist concern. The tension between an inclusive and diverse embrace to the human subject has been in conflict with strategic political imperatives and theoretical agreements as to strategic responses to oppressions and exploitations outside of specific political struggles. Occupy, for example, shows both the scope and the limits of an inclusive subject-centred politics, even with its focus on property and dispossession. Outside of Brennan’s introduction, all the authors work more within the humanist tradition than in questioning the construction of the humanist–anti-humanist dialectic (though there are signs in Spencer and Alderson in particular of seeing fertile grounds for such an engagement). Nevertheless, this is an extraordinary contribution to the literature and an essential read and addition to any serious philosophico-political bookshelf.