ABSTRACT
The triumph of Stalinism spelled the death of Marxism. The worst features of the original theory dominated the only “successful” revolution, while in Europe and the US communist radicals coalesced into servile and dogmatic cliques. A positivist model simply reproduces the passivity which flows from the social phenomenon of “reification.” If Marxist theory is disconnected from a politically developing proletariat, that class becomes another “object” of knowledge to be manipulated in the same way the natural sciences enable us to manipulate nature. The objective and impersonal character of technological rationality bestows upon bureaucratic groups the universal dignity of reason. Western Marxists saw clearly that historical change is more dependent on the beliefs, attitudes, and personality structure of working class than Karl Marx had supposed. Marxists had always seen the necessity for the working class to overcome bourgeois ideology. In the half century that has passed since Reich, Western Marxists have deepened and expanded his position, but its general parameters remain a key.
