Saturday, January 16, 2016

The Retreat From Class


Ellen Meiksins Wood
April 12th, 1942 – January 14th 2016

"The intention of Marxism is to provide a theoretical foundation for interpreting the world in order to change it. This is not an empty slogan. It has—or ought to have—a very precise meaning. It means that Marxism seeks a particular kind of knowledge, one which is uniquely capable of illuminating the principles of historical movement and, at least implicitly, the points at which political action can most effectively intervene. This is not to say that the object of Marxist theory is to discover a ‘scientific’ programme or technique of political action. Rather, the purpose is to provide a mode of analysis especially well equipped to explore the terrain on which political action must take place."

Text excerpted from The Separation Of the Economic And The Political in Capitalism (New Left Review, 1981).

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