Hall’s Marxism was always heterodox, never economically reductionist.

Evidence

Now, there are two things about it. One is, there is therefore initiated from then onwards a conversation in my head between my interest in culture and orthodox Marxism. Even though the two don’t fit? So even though I am extremely interested and go through many variations of an intimate inside conversation with Marxism, I was never an economic reductionist. Never. I was never an orthodox Marxist. I was always a heterodox Marxist. Sometimes I was closer [than others to Marxism]. In the time of Althusser in the ’70s, I am very Marxist. But why? Because Althusser’s problematic is a counterreductionist Marxism. So of course I’m an Althusserian. And I am a Gramscian because … You see, so I go to these bits of Marxism that are not a straight system of reading everything from the logic of capital. That has never been my relation to Marxism. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 959

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the distinction between orthodox/reductionist Marxism and heterodox/counterreductionist Marxist currents (Althusser, Gramsci) as the lineage Hall draws on.
• XREF: Directly relevant to the Foundations Module 2 task: this is the theoretical genealogy the Islamophobia field inherits — a Marxism that reads culture as semi-autonomous rather than derivative of the logic of capital.