Marxism and Democracy

Abstract

Those not well disposed to the Marxist enterprise may see little use, after the collapse of ‘communism’, in exploring the potential of Marxism as a source of democratic theory. Yet there are at least two plausible reasons why radicals and democrats might continue to seek a place for Marxist ideas in democratic thought, and for democratic thought in Marxism, even after the events of 1989–91. Radicals may judge that Marxism remains a useful source of concepts and methods for explaining social phenomena and bolstering the struggle for needed social changes; that being so, there is a need to show that it can accommodate, better still foster, so important and widely valued a good as democracy. A democrat, on the other hand, may conclude that democratic theory, considered independently of Marxism, exhibits important deficits which Marxist insights can help to remedy. This author holds, if not without certain doubts, both of these convictions. They supply a rationale for exploring, in what follows, the evolution of debates about democracy amongst Marxists, and for offering, towards the end, some arguments of my own about the relationship between Marxism and democratic theory.