The collapse of Stalinism and the future of Marxism

This paper argues that the changing fortunes of the marxist tradition within the social sciences since 1968 involve much more than simply the internal progress or degeneration of this tradition conceptualized as a distinctive research programme; they are closely related to changes in the external social, economic and political environment. Hence any assessment of the problems and prospects of the marxist tradition within the social sciences must refer not simply to the internal intellectual histories of the major social scientific disciplines, but also to the wider historical context within which these disciplines are situated.