Marxist theory itself is a product of historical contradictions and will disappear with them

Evidence

But even the philosophy of praxis is an expression of historical contradictions, and indeed their most complete, because most conscious, expression; this means that it too is tied to “necessity” and not to a “freedom” which does not exist and, historically, cannot yet exist. If, therefore, it is demonstrated that contradictions will disappear, it is also demonstrated implicitly that the philosophy of praxis too will disappear, or be superseded. In the reign of “freedom” thought and ideas can no longer be born on the terrain of contradictions and the necessity of struggle. At the present time the philosopher—the philosopher of praxis—can only make this generic affirmation and can go no further; he cannot escape from the present field of contradictions, he cannot affirm, other than generically, a world without contradictions, without immediately creating a Utopia. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1439

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the historicist self-reflexivity of the philosophy of praxis — it cannot escape the field of contradictions it analyzes.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s toolkit building in Module 2 — this is Gramsci’s historicist self-limitation, relevant to how theory inherited by Islamophobia critique positions itself. — connects to: Habermas overstates late capitalism’s success in overcoming Marxian contradictions — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 444; Grünberg’s historical materialism forbade predicting socialism’s detailed future structure — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 94; Marx’s predicted universalizing class never arrived to resolve global contradictions. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 434