ABSTRACT
The lack of a theory of rhetoric and political judgment led to considerable confusion among later Marxists about how to relate subjective agencies and objective structures. The more humane forms of Marxism themselves possess contradictions that are connected to the problematic of rhetoric. The reformism of Bernstein possesses a motivational deficit in direct proportion to its humane, universalizing rhetoric. Virtually the only place where Marxism possesses unquestioned prestige is in the literature departments of universities in the Western democracies. Even classical Marxism was far less deterministic than is usually depicted by its opponents. It will be the enduring legacy of Western Marxism to have opened up discussions of freedom and culture within the Marxist tradition. Finally, the persuasiveness of Marxism rises or falls with a commitment to the centrality of class as a factor in history.
