Manas Ray The possibilities of inscribing revolutionary ideas, advanced at the level of critique, into material conditions are today debated with unprecedented urgency. Tb talk of the ever-renewed agility of contemporary capitalism does not mean that as a determinate, historical specification of tendencies of forces, capitalism no more acts as a ceaseless mechanism of expropriation. Indeed, it refers to its powerful 'ideological semiotic' through which it explains its hierarchical and corporatist power structure in the mystificatory terms of meritocracy and expansion, and retains its hegemony over competing radical projects. In contrast, as the results of the experiments of eastern communism are becoming known, the Leninist response of smashing the state apparatus stands today as an unquestioned negative Utopia. Together, they bring to bear in a cruel way the important fact that there exists neither a linear process of social integration nor a simultaneous contradiction between the growth of consciousness in political organisations on the left and the development of capitalism. This paper questions the tradition of critique in Marxism and focuses on its manifold dilemmas. Towards this aim, it examines a variety of contemporary readings on Marxism and post-Marxism and attempts to trace the controversies surrounding Marxism's enlightenment ideal of offering critique from the standpoint of higher rationality.
