Outlook: The End of Western European Euro-Marxism (1989-1991)
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991), Western European Marxism ended as a mass movement. The PCF shrank (today under 5%), the PCI dissolved (becoming the “Democratic Party of the Left”), the DKP became insignificant.
Philosophically, there were three reactions:
1. Abandoning Marxism: many former Marxists (like Colletti) became liberal or conservative. They said: Marxism has failed – theoretically and practically. Dialectic was sophistry, revolution an illusion.
2. Transforming Marxism: others transformed Marxist insights into non-Marxist theories. Habermas had already taken this path in the 1970s; after 1989 many followed. They kept the motifs (critique of capitalism, emancipation) but not the method (class struggle, revolution). The theory of recognition (Honneth), discourse ethics (Apel, Habermas), deliberative democracy – these are legacies of Marxism in non-Marxist dress.
3. Continuing Marxism: a minority continued Marxism. Losurdo remained a Marxist and Communist until his death (2018). His historical-political interpretation of Hegel was carried forward by Vieweg (without a Marxist commitment). The question of the relation between Hegel and Marx remains open.
Our position
Western European Euro-Marxism has left behind important insights:
- Critique of capitalism as a system, not merely as a grievance
- Emphasis on labor as constitutive of human identity
- Analysis of ideology and hegemony
- The question of material justice
But it has also shown limits:
- Neglect of individual freedom in favor of collective emancipation
- Misjudgment of the complexity of modern societies
- Overestimation of historical necessity
- Political attachment to authoritarian movements
Hegel can help overcome these limits – not as a “return to Hegel,” but as integration: Marx’s materialism and Hegel’s philosophy of freedom, Marx’s class analysis and Hegel’s theory of recognition, Marx’s critique and Hegel’s systematics.
The East-Central European experience – which we treat in the following chapter – shows another side of the same story: what happens when philosophers not only reflect on Marxism but have to live and suffer under it.
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Transition to Chapter 11a:
Western European Marxists philosophized in freedom about unfreedom. The East-Central European philosophers – in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia – philosophized under pressure, with existential stakes. Their experience is different, their insights are different, their lessons are different.
What happens when dialectic is not merely theory but lived reality – when “contradiction” is not merely a logical category but prison, exile, death? That is the question of the following chapter.