West-European Marxism Today

Abstract

In our day, Marxism is not only the political doctrine of communist and socialist parties but is, at the same time, an influential and manifold intellectual current in Western Europe. One could even say somewhat paradoxically that it became a more influential and interesting intellectual current (and undercurrent) precisely when communist and socialist parties abandoned at least some of their (traditional) elements by adapting themselves to the patterns of parliamentary democracy and inter-party peaceful competition. The two subjects of my paper are certainly linked and therefore it will not be possible to deal with them separately; the connections and contradictions, however, may not always be evident.