ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the manner in which, in the years since the Second World War, issues of ontology have been progressively moved into the background in the philosophical interpretation of Karl Marx. The moral rescue party for Marx is simultaneously propelled by what are widely perceived to be the dwindling prospects for Marxism as a ‘Grand Narrative’. Conceived in this way Marxism is thought to be reeling from postmodernist attacks on the quest for ultimate foundations for theory construction. Since the collapse of the regimes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, themselves the soi disant concretisation of something called Marxism-Leninism, it has become clear that commentators on Marx in the West have seen the goal of rescuing the ethically acceptable strands of Marx’s writing as increasingly important. Analytical Marxism has arisen as a consequence of the inroads made by individualist methodologies and atomist ontologies into social theory.
