Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Marxists of various sorts within and outside geography are adept in deploying Marxian conceptual tools to understand particular realities in a capitalist society. However, this trend in only understanding capital’s logics around the world and in different super-structural/historical contexts runs the risk of making Marxism and the work of Marxists passé—especially in our current times when progressives are finally talking about socialism and alternatives to capitalism on a popular level again. In this opinion piece, I argue that Marx’s historical materialism not only provides the means to understand the complex world; more importantly, it provides the theoretical foundation for thinking about how revolutionary change beyond capitalism can occur. Marx provides the grounds for revolutionary optimism that capitalism can be overthrown and replaced with socialism. Marxist geographers must begin to embrace revolutionary optimism if we do not want to be left behind in the real political struggles currently taking place.

Keywords

historical materialism Marxism optimism revolution social change socialism

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Allen

Mitchell

(2003) Power. In: Agnew

Mitchell

Toal

(eds) A Companion to Political Geography. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 93–108.

Althusser

(2014) On the Reproduction of Capitalism. New York: Verso.

Anderson

(2010) Marx at the Margins. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Bettelheim

(1975) Economic Calculation and Forms of Property: An Essay on the Transition Between Capitalism and Socialism. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Burawoy

(2012) The roots of domination: beyond Bourdieu and Gramsci. Sociology 46(2): 187–206.

Cohen

(2000) Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defense. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Dean

(2016) Crowds and Party. New York: Verso.

Glassman

(2003) Rethinking overdetermination, structural power, and social change: a critique of Gibson-Graham, Resnick, and Wolff. Antipode 35(4): 678–698.

Lenin

(1987 [1929]) What is to be done? In: Christian

HM.

(ed.), Essential Works Of Lenin. New York: Dover Publications, 53–175.

10.

Lenin

(1987 [1932]) State and revolution. In: Christian

HM.

(ed.), Essential Works of Lenin. New York: Dover Publications, 271–364.

11.

Malott

CS.

Ford

(2015) Marx, Capital, and Education: Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Becoming. New York: Peter Lang.

12.

Marx

(1881) Marx-Zasulich correspondence. In Marx on social relations in Russsia. Marxists.org . Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/zasulich/index.htm

13.

Marx

(1970) A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

14.

Marx

(1979) Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. New York: International Publishers.

15.

Marx

(1990) Capital Volume I. New York: Penguin Books.

16.

Marx

Engels

(1970) German Ideology, Part 1 and Selections from Parts 2 and 3. 1st edn. New York: International Publishers.

17.

Marx

Engels

(1978) Tucker

(ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd edn. New York: Norton & Company.

18.

Ollman

(1993) Dialectical Investigations. New York: Routledge.

19.

Phillips

Rozworski

(2019) The People’s Republic of Walmart. New York: Verso.

20.

Shanin

(1983) Late Marx and the Russain Road: Marx and the Peripheries of Capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press.

21.

Wood

(2017) The Origin of Capitalism. New York: Verso.

Historical materialism,social change,and the necessity of revolutionary optimism

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References