Well, from my own experience
I'd say there are as many varieties of "neo-Marxism" out there as there are
different writers on the topic. The left has fractured off in so many divergent
directions owing to the complexity of the task at hand that it would be almost
counter-productive and misleading to attempt to shoe it's multiple radial (and
often contradictory) strands into a single straightjacket.
There are just too many important separate "issues" out there which require the single-minded application of individual thinkers/activists for it all to congeal happily into one burgeoning "movement"- it's actually impossible on a practical level when you think of how unevenly and differentially developed various parts of the globe are. Hence Hardt & Negri's positing of an ever-shifting and amorphous "leaderless" 'movement of movements' - itself a subtle extension of Deleuze and Gauttari's aptly named "Capitalism and Schizophrenia";the smashing of 'hierarchical' thinking being an end in itself requiring ever vigilant and self-regulating "grass-roots" monitoring.
When I think of organised "neo-Marxism" these days (i.e. activist as opposed to its academic variants) I think of the "anti-globalisation" demonstrations (Seattle, Doha), the World Social Forums, Tariq Ali & co. at the New Left Review; the "Bolivarian Revolution" in Latin America; economists like Sam Moyo, Ha Joon Chang (Kicking away the ladder), even Stiglitz, formerly of the World Bank, Naomi Klein & Lori Wallach, the trade lawyer whose focus is on the WTO.
What all of these "actors" share is a common vocabulary of critique focused on the evils of unfettered corporatism and deregulated markets - the 'common ground' sought is distinctively more Polanyi than Marx; the enemy "neo-liberalism"; and like all antitheses it's a reified and simplified one.
If that language doesn't sound 'working class' I make no apologies for it as when you're talking about "globalisation" and "social justice" in a multi-state, multi-polar world dominated (to a great extent) by the free market with due deference to our at times shaky international institutions (permanently divided Security Council) things tend to get complicated pretty quickly
So generally, can neo-Marxism today be said to be a reaction against neo-liberal globalisation, through a 'post-modern' philosophy?
Very much so & especially the post-modern bit, except that was it's condition latterly; up to c. 1989-94. The Hardt & Negri 'compact' (i.e. the idea of the "multitude") evolved from 'left-wing' Freudian post-structuralism itself rooted in the more esoteric outpourings of the Frankfurt School; Frederic Jameson being probably the most 'unreadable' by-product of all this (mainly) French inspired theorising. The Freudian (and more latterly) Lacanian dimension was soldered on to address multiple variants of Marx's idea of "false consciousness" - the most productive pasture to seek solutions to which evidently lay in a coherent theoretical model of the psyche.
In, by now, late capitalism the beast had clearly rendered catatonic the radical ('questioning' or 'critical') impulse and the task was to construct a model of this newly disempowered psyche via an excavation of the 'political unconscious'. Basically, a substantial proportion of "neo-Marxists" disappeared up their own arseholes (Harvey, Jameson), fittingly enough, just as the Soviet Union was collapsing.
I exaggerate of course, the intent was serious enough (and commendable all the same on multiple levels) - man in his environment; specific late capitalist division of labour generates alterior modes of subjectivity which eventually colludes in further disempowerment as the "subject" drifts further and further away from more "authentic" working relations (post-Washington Consensus collapse of trade unionism & bargaining power replaced by worker "mobility", i.e. a euphemism for whipping away the safety nets). The (part) ownership over the means of production (for that's all trade unionism represented), control over it's distribution and exchange was the "rock" which fastened the "subject" to his more 'genuine' self - Marx was always very Lockean about this I find.
Anyway, this type of "neo-Marxism" (using complex neo-Freudian models of the psyche, usually Lacanian) though it is still practised (see Slavoj Zizek) has simply evolved, via Hardt & Negri (mid-90's) who cleansed the discourse of it's complexifying psyche-related material, into the standard "anti-neoliberal" literature which is ubiquitous today. The (real?) left have taken a step backwards in effect, abandoned their ambitious project of realising a coherent critique of "ideology" and have instead focused on pragmatically joining hands with NGO's, activists and single-issue campaigners conveying their message in a language which is clear, concise and instantly appealing (though somewhat derivative) e.g. we are all now "shareholders" in the "global commons".
In abandoning (for the moment??) the classical Marxist critique (and in most cases it's "off-putting" vocabulary - proletariat, working class, bourgeoise - these newly revamped "neo-Marxists" (who are paradoxically loathe to refer to themselves as such) are nevertheless playing the exact same game. The blanket, free market environment which the post Cold War world has ushered in (Fukuyama's End of History) has merely necessitated a shift in focus - they are no longer now in partial dialogue with the decaying communist behemoths and their satellites - but, having being wholly consumed by Capital must instead refocus their firepower on it's outlying tentacles; corporate FDI, privitisation, "re-trenchment", deregulation, resource monopolisation etc. etc. - all those activities as such which are shrinking the "public sphere" and "the commons";the treasured loci of authenticity and reflexive axis of 'genuine' Marxism.
There are just too many important separate "issues" out there which require the single-minded application of individual thinkers/activists for it all to congeal happily into one burgeoning "movement"- it's actually impossible on a practical level when you think of how unevenly and differentially developed various parts of the globe are. Hence Hardt & Negri's positing of an ever-shifting and amorphous "leaderless" 'movement of movements' - itself a subtle extension of Deleuze and Gauttari's aptly named "Capitalism and Schizophrenia";the smashing of 'hierarchical' thinking being an end in itself requiring ever vigilant and self-regulating "grass-roots" monitoring.
When I think of organised "neo-Marxism" these days (i.e. activist as opposed to its academic variants) I think of the "anti-globalisation" demonstrations (Seattle, Doha), the World Social Forums, Tariq Ali & co. at the New Left Review; the "Bolivarian Revolution" in Latin America; economists like Sam Moyo, Ha Joon Chang (Kicking away the ladder), even Stiglitz, formerly of the World Bank, Naomi Klein & Lori Wallach, the trade lawyer whose focus is on the WTO.
What all of these "actors" share is a common vocabulary of critique focused on the evils of unfettered corporatism and deregulated markets - the 'common ground' sought is distinctively more Polanyi than Marx; the enemy "neo-liberalism"; and like all antitheses it's a reified and simplified one.
If that language doesn't sound 'working class' I make no apologies for it as when you're talking about "globalisation" and "social justice" in a multi-state, multi-polar world dominated (to a great extent) by the free market with due deference to our at times shaky international institutions (permanently divided Security Council) things tend to get complicated pretty quickly
So generally, can neo-Marxism today be said to be a reaction against neo-liberal globalisation, through a 'post-modern' philosophy?
Very much so & especially the post-modern bit, except that was it's condition latterly; up to c. 1989-94. The Hardt & Negri 'compact' (i.e. the idea of the "multitude") evolved from 'left-wing' Freudian post-structuralism itself rooted in the more esoteric outpourings of the Frankfurt School; Frederic Jameson being probably the most 'unreadable' by-product of all this (mainly) French inspired theorising. The Freudian (and more latterly) Lacanian dimension was soldered on to address multiple variants of Marx's idea of "false consciousness" - the most productive pasture to seek solutions to which evidently lay in a coherent theoretical model of the psyche.
In, by now, late capitalism the beast had clearly rendered catatonic the radical ('questioning' or 'critical') impulse and the task was to construct a model of this newly disempowered psyche via an excavation of the 'political unconscious'. Basically, a substantial proportion of "neo-Marxists" disappeared up their own arseholes (Harvey, Jameson), fittingly enough, just as the Soviet Union was collapsing.
I exaggerate of course, the intent was serious enough (and commendable all the same on multiple levels) - man in his environment; specific late capitalist division of labour generates alterior modes of subjectivity which eventually colludes in further disempowerment as the "subject" drifts further and further away from more "authentic" working relations (post-Washington Consensus collapse of trade unionism & bargaining power replaced by worker "mobility", i.e. a euphemism for whipping away the safety nets). The (part) ownership over the means of production (for that's all trade unionism represented), control over it's distribution and exchange was the "rock" which fastened the "subject" to his more 'genuine' self - Marx was always very Lockean about this I find.
Anyway, this type of "neo-Marxism" (using complex neo-Freudian models of the psyche, usually Lacanian) though it is still practised (see Slavoj Zizek) has simply evolved, via Hardt & Negri (mid-90's) who cleansed the discourse of it's complexifying psyche-related material, into the standard "anti-neoliberal" literature which is ubiquitous today. The (real?) left have taken a step backwards in effect, abandoned their ambitious project of realising a coherent critique of "ideology" and have instead focused on pragmatically joining hands with NGO's, activists and single-issue campaigners conveying their message in a language which is clear, concise and instantly appealing (though somewhat derivative) e.g. we are all now "shareholders" in the "global commons".
In abandoning (for the moment??) the classical Marxist critique (and in most cases it's "off-putting" vocabulary - proletariat, working class, bourgeoise - these newly revamped "neo-Marxists" (who are paradoxically loathe to refer to themselves as such) are nevertheless playing the exact same game. The blanket, free market environment which the post Cold War world has ushered in (Fukuyama's End of History) has merely necessitated a shift in focus - they are no longer now in partial dialogue with the decaying communist behemoths and their satellites - but, having being wholly consumed by Capital must instead refocus their firepower on it's outlying tentacles; corporate FDI, privitisation, "re-trenchment", deregulation, resource monopolisation etc. etc. - all those activities as such which are shrinking the "public sphere" and "the commons";the treasured loci of authenticity and reflexive axis of 'genuine' Marxism.
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