Although Classical Marxist “socioeconomic” theory is still taught—mostly as an introductory or minor component in some undergraduate courses—it is no longer taken seriously by apparatchiks as the bedrock upon which the edifice of Marxism rests. Leftist ideology, for the want of a better phrase, has shifted its ideological foundations since the demise of the Soviet Union and the rise of China, away from the Classical Marxist metanarrative of dialectical materialism and its concomitant “class struggle”.
For those who have little idea what Classical Marxism is and how far its devotees have strayed from the path, a little clarification may be helpful. Classical Marxists claim that ideology and theory, in short, human value judgments, were the products of a linear socioeconomic historical development based on “dialectical materialism”, a pseudo-science concocted by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which emphasises the importance of real-world conditions and relationships, in terms of human labour, to which the fate of the individual was locked in and determined by their class. In other words, individuals were not free agents, but part of an unfolding historical metanarrative.
h/t Marvin
