Marxism and existentialism govern wholly different, non-intersecting realities

Evidence

No doubt this paradox is partly the result of the ambiguity of the verb to be—as though it meant something to say that someone “is” a Marxist or an existentialist or whatever. The more basic explanation is, however, that Marxism takes as its object something utterly distinct from the object of the more academic philosophical systems; that there can be no contradiction (even where the exact relationship of the two remains to be worked out) because two wholly different types of reality, which each mode of thought properly governs, miss each other in midair, as it were, fail to intersect at any point. “We were convinced,” says Sartre of his generation, “at one and the same time that historical materialism furnished the only valid interpretation of history, and that existentialism remained the only concrete approach to reality.” Marxism is a way of understanding the objective dimension of history from the outside; existentialism a way of understanding subjective, individual experience. The “search for a method” therefore does not take the form of a reconciliation of contraries, but rather of a kind of unified field theory in which two wholly different ontological phenomena can share a common set of equations and be expressed in a single linguistic or terminological system. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 423

Categorization

• XREF: Jameson’s ‘unified field theory’ for Marxism/existentialism parallels his two-codes reading of Marxism (economic vs. class-struggle) developed later in this same chapter. — connects to: The concept of alienation functions as criticism without requiring a Utopian counterpart — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 343; Marxism itself varies by the socio-economic system it reflects — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 27; Revisionism neutralizes a theory by deleting its praxis-demanding content (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Hegelian, Marxist, and existentialist thought diverge on whether alienation is eliminable #qualifies (0.82) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 479
• Wright moved beyond classical and Leninist Marxism toward European existential thought #complicates (0.75) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1333