Open Marxism

Open Marxism (OM) is a variant of Marxist theory, which argues that Marx’s critique of political economy should be understood as a subversive critique of the economic categories of bourgeois society, its philosophical concepts, moral values, and political institutions. Contrary to structural Marxism, which conceptualizes social forms as a kind of false appearance overlaid upon material reality, OM conceptualizes them as specific manifestations of how labor is mediated in and against capital at a particular time. The state is central to OM analyses as it is the political form of capitalist social relations. Class struggle is an intrinsic aspect of the analysis of the state, not something external to it, while the last iterations of OM point to critical affirmations as prefigurative struggles for alternative forms of social reproduction.