Repudiating Marxism reframed global power as a West-non-West relation of nations rather than classes

Evidence

An obvious consequence of repudiating Marxism was that one now sought to make sense of the world of colonies and empires much less in terms of classes, much more in terms of nations and countries and races, and thought of imperialism itself not as a hierarchically structured system of global capitalism but as a relation, of governance and occupation, between richer and poorer countries, West and non-West. And whether one said so or not, one inevitably believed that ideas – culture’ was the collective term in most mystifications, or discourse’, but it mainly meant books and films – and not the material conditions of life which include the instance of culture itself, determine the fate of peoples and nations. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 70

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing work on communication-as-culture (Carey) and how framing as cultural discourse erases material determination. — connects to: Marxist categories still explain contemporary multinational and media capitalism — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 48; Postwar global economic integration was framed as requiring Western moral transformation; Third World elites weaponized Western ideals of sovereignty and equality against the West — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1777 (+3 more)

Related

• Rejecting Marxism reframed colonial conflict as nations and culture, not classes and capital (similarity 0.90)
• Discourse-first theory redefines imperialism as a wealth relation rather than class structure (similarity 0.84)
• Marxist categories still explain contemporary multinational and media capitalism (similarity 0.82)
• Third World literary theory’s rise marked retreat from activist anti-imperialism (similarity 0.81)
• Third-worldist nationalism regresses from the Marxist critique it displaces (similarity 0.80)
• Postcolonial subdisciplines emerged by distancing themselves from anti-imperialist activist politics and economics (similarity 0.79)
• Global postmodernism presupposes far greater modernization worldwide than modernism did (similarity 0.79)
• Western Marxism shifted Marxist theory away from political economy toward aesthetics and philosophy. (similarity 0.79)
• Third World literary theory effaces Marxism-rooted radical cultural heritage (similarity 0.79)
• Post-1968 Western radicalism abandoned belief in domestic socialist revolution (similarity 0.79)
• Frame choices that collapse politics into nationalism versus postmodernism erase socialist alternatives. (similarity 0.78)
• Marxism itself varies by the socio-economic system it reflects (similarity 0.78)
• Rejecting Marxism foreclosed self-critique, so poststructuralism replaced rather than corrected nationalism (similarity 0.78)