Discussions on the “Revival of Marxism”: A Literature Review on Post-2008 Marxist Film Studies

Abstract

In recent years, it seems that the calls for rereading Marx have increased (Musto 2020; Zi zek and Douzinas 2010; Hobsbawm 2011; Jeffries 2012; Fuchs and Mosco 2012; Christophers 2014; Menand 2016; Eagleton 2018; Tooze 2018). In some places, the revival of interest in Marxism has even been called the “Das Capital Renaissance” (Jeffries 2012). During this period, striking views have been seen that “the Marx of the twenty-first century will almost certainly be very different from the Marx of the twentieth” (Hobsbawm 2011). One of the dimensions of this difference may refer to the shift of the identity-based politics within the framework of cultural Marxism in the 1970s and 1980s toward a class-based analysis in today’s conditions. Because, “the political, social, ideological conditions of “the crisis” served to consolidate the dominance of capital over labor, converting a crisis of capital into a crisis for labor” (Petras and Veltmeyer 2012, 200). It is said that the burden of the crisis falls disproportionately on the labor in general and the low-income segments of the society in particular, not only post-2008 but also post-1980s (Dufour and Orhangazi 2014, 461). It is noted the most important consequences of the 2008 crisis such as the radical deterioration of living conditions for most of the world’s population, the increasing income/wealth inequality and social insecurity, and the shrinking of the minimum livelihood required for survival (Cingano 2014; UN News 2020). Post-crisis income inequality has increased not only because the upper class is taking over more wealth, but also because the little wealth, middle and lower-middle classes have, is being destroyed (Fligstein and RucksAhidiana 2015). The limitation of the way out of the global crash to the