ABSTRACT
The previous chapter sketched out the Marxist contexts from which Jameson’s own writings have emerged. But, as has been noted, Jameson’s engagements with Marxism are more complex than can be simply represented in a general introduction to ‘Marxism’. Nor do the conventional accounts of Jameson’s Marxism usually do him justice. That is to say, it is not enough to put Jameson in a box marked ‘Hegelian Marxist’ and oppose him to the more post-structuralist Marxisms that can be broadly characterised as ‘Althusserian’. America is a country without the prominent tradition of social democratic or labour parties of many European cultures. At times in its history, particularly when Jameson was a young man, the USA has been extremely hostile to ‘Marxism’, and this has given Jameson a slightly different perspective on Marx than might have been the case with a critic growing up in a European country for which ‘socialism’ has been less marginal. Quite apart from anything else, it gave Jameson a reputation as the first to introduce American readers to the work of such powerful Marxist theorists as Georg Lukacs and Theodor Adorno.
