The Limitations of Structural Marxism

Desmond McNeill ()
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Desmond McNeill: University of Oslo

Chapter 9 in Fetishism and the Theory of Value, 2021, pp 141-170 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract In this chapter I discuss the work of three social scientists who have written about Marx and have drawn on linguistics—or more broadly structuralist analysis—in studying social phenomena: Louis Althusser, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Maurice Godelier. While recognising the originality of their work, and the contributions that they made, I identify some major shortcomings in both Althusser and Lévi-Strauss, concluding rather that it is Godelier who comes closest to successfully combining the merits of Marxist and structuralist methods. But I also conclude that none of the three makes appropriate use of the analogy with language for understanding the complexity of value.

Keywords: Marx; Structural Marxism; Social phenomena; Anthropology; Althusser; Lévi-Strauss; Godelier; Synchrony/diachrony; Signifier/signified (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:pshchp:978-3-030-56123-9_9

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-56123-9_9

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