Critical psychology and revolutionary Marxism

ABSTRACT. This paper addresses the intersection between Marxism and psy-chology, focusing on ‘critical ’ approaches that have emerged in the discipline in the last 15 years. The paper traces the way that elements of Marxism that are diametrically opposed, and in some cases dialectically opposed, to main-stream psychology are evaded, misrepresented or systematically distorted by ostensibly ‘critical ’ psychologies in the English-speaking world. Elements of Marxist analysis—the human being as an ensemble of social relations, the materiality of the family, private property and the state, surplus value and cul-tural capital, alienation and exploitation and ideological mystification—are contrasted with the standard disciplinary notions of the psychological sub-ject, society, utilitarian transparency, unhealthy experience and false beliefs. Specifications of the position of the researcher in Marxism—standpoint, reflexive location, class consciousness, institutional space and social revolu-tion—are set against the dominant notions in mainstream psychology of neu-trality, rationalism, individual enlightenment, scientific knowledge an