Since the onset of the Global Financial Crisis the ideas of Karl Marx have once again become prominent in social and political thought. This book turns to Marx’s theory of revolutionary subjectivity as a means of assessing the work of three contemporary global theorists: Ernesto Laclau, Antonio Negri, and Alain Badiou, considered here together for the first time.
The book’s central argument is that although each of these thinkers is indeed ‘beyond’ Marx, the extent to which they abandon Marx’s theory is problematised through the continued inspiration they draw from a particular Marxist thinker: Laclau in relation to Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, Negri in relation to Lenin’s notion of organisational form; Badiou in relation to Mao’s notion of the ‘inquiry’ and the primacy of political praxis.
While providing a critical examination of the theory of revolutionary subjectivity in Laclau, Negri and Badiou, due to the fact such aspects were already present in Marx’s own theory, this book also offers insights into the nature of post-Marxism itself. Whilst accepting their respective differences, the conclusion offers a synthesis of all three theoretical approaches as a means of understanding the constitution of revolutionary subjectivity today.
