On Changing the World: Essays in Political Philosophy, from Karl Marx to Walter Benjamin by Michael Löwy [Book Review]

Abstract

Michael Löwy is part of a lineage of social theorists concerned with restoring the non-orthodox, anti-diamat spirit of Marxist thought, forming an attempt to resist the modernisers and advocates of the Third Way, and affirm instead the ‘hidden romantic moment’ (xii) which lies within the dark and much maligned history of socialist thought. According to Löwy, such modernisers have tended to throw out the ‘baby’ of non-capitalist forms of social organisation with the ‘(extremely) dirty water’ (xi) of Soviet-style communism. As such, the iron laws of history, the reification of labour and technology, and the tendency towards centralised and authoritarian government may have been denigrated as a dangerous ideology, but so too have the hopes for a radically different future. Löwy has therefore consistently and emphatically argued that the totalising and totalitarian projects that defined the Soviet Union were and are antithetical to the true spirit of Marxism; a profound betrayal of its revolutionary-romantic and utopian origins which materialist historiography must restore.