Typologies of the Drift Rightward Part 1: Outline of Typologies of Marxists, Part 1

I have been reflecting on typologies of rightward shifts among leftists, and so I am writing a few types of rightward shifts from the Marxian left. I am also planning to do the left-liberal and anarchist left shifts right:

  • “Anti-Revisionist who becomes a NGO Democrat”
  1. “Maoist who becomes an elitists trust fund liberal,” example: Bill Ayers 
  2. “Maoist who becomes scared of the enthusiasm of the cultural revolution and becomes a neo-liberal,” example: Most of the French Maoists of the 1970s. 
  • Ex-Trotskyist Neo-liberal
  1. “Trotskyists who get frustrated with ideological purity and start to move either to neo-conservatism,’ examples: Max Shachtman, James Burnham, David Horowitz
  2. “Trotskyists who get frustrated with reactionary leftism and start moving towards more and more neo-liberal positions”  examples: Christopher Hitchens, Brendan O’Neill of Spiked! magazine
  • Western Marxist who gives in to Despair
  1. “Critical Theorists and Western Marxists who cave to the Liberal Ideology,” example: Max Horkheimer 
  2. “Avante-garde cultural Marxists who gives up on the possibility of revolution,” example: Guy Debord, Herbert Marcuse   
  • Marxists who start to engage in believe in rigid typologies and not in the dialectical method
  1. Marxists who drop the method and become teleological “revisionists.” example: Bernstein, Kautsky
  2. Marxists who drop dialectical thinking and move rightward, example: Gregor Lukacs 
  3. Structuralists Marxists who move towards popular right politicians, example: Luccio Colletti 
  • Marxist Social Democrats Who Become Neo-Liberals 
  1. Latin Variety: Daniel Ortega
  2. European Variety: François Mitterrand
  3. American Anti-Communist “Socialists”:  Sidney Hook

About skepoet

Skepoet is a poet, editor, and University Lecturer living in South Korea, originally from the deep South of the United States. When he started his blog, he was in his late 20s, he was a politically moderate teacher. Now in his early thirties–expatriated, philosophically more literate and and politically more radical, Skepoet wants to stop talking about himself in third person.

Posted on January 7, 2012, in Left-turn, Marxism. Bookmark the permalink. 1 Comment.

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