4 The book is a collection of essays published over 30 years and occasionally suffers from the repetition and omissions that one might expect from such a publication. However, it is also a defence of classical Marxism from the “crudely deterministic models of Marxism of the Second International”, the philosophical positivism admired by many in the Stalinist tradition, and the attempt to fillet Marxism of dialectical thought by thinkers including Althusser, Lucio Colletti and the school of Analytical Marxism. Thus, it is hardly surprising that the need for this method emerges at a time of political and social crisis.Īnderson’s project is in part a rejection of those who see Marxism as unable to deal with social phenomena not one-dimensionally related to class-specifically gender, race and colonialism. This is a revolutionary understanding of a world in constant motion, replete with internal contradictions and shaken by sudden shifts. With me the reverse is true the ideal is nothing but the material world reflected in the mind of man and translated into forms of thought… Dialectical thought includes in its positive understanding of what exists a simultaneous recognition of its negation, its inevitable destruction because it regards every historically developed form as being in a fluid state, in motion, and therefore grasps its transient aspect as well. Marx himself described his dialectical method as follows:įor Hegel…the real world is only the external appearance of the idea. 2 It remained central to his thinking throughout his life. 1 Instead, Anderson argues, although “Marx attacked the conservative side of Hegel’s social and political philosophy”, he “at the same time took over the dialectic”. His starting point in Dialectics of Revolution is that Karl Marx did not, as French Marxist Louis Althusser argued, use the philosopher G W F Hegel’s dialectical method merely as a stepping stone to then be abandoned as he moved philosophically past it. Marxist theorist Kevin Anderson has had an abiding interest in reasserting the centrality of dialectics to Marxist thought. A review of Dialectics of Revolution: Hegel, Marxism and its Critics through a Lens of Race, Class, Gender and Colonialism, Kevin B Anderson (Daraja Press, 2020), £20
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