Introduction

Abstract

As recently as 1978 Leszek Kolakowski orchestrated his ambitious, three volume survey of Marxist theory around the claim that it was possible to ‘schematise with precision’ what Marxism’s ‘main currents’ had been (Kolakowski 1978, 1:6–7). However, Kolakowski’s claim was belied by his signal failure to achieve it. What he uncovered, despite himself, was the very pluralism and heterogeneity in Marxism that Erik Olin Wright stresses in the present volume (below, pp. 11–14). Kolakowski’s claim was also vitiated by his failure to perceive what was already on the horizon — another attempt to ‘schematise with precision’.