How do we recognize Marxism?

The title of the study is a paraphrase of Gilles Deleuze’s inspiring work How Do We Recognize Structuralism? (1974). The explanation proceeds in three steps. First, the author – following Wolfgang Iser’s conception – defines the relevant differences between ‘discourse’ and ‘theory’ (W. Iser). Second, he presents Marxism as a discursive ideal type (Max Weber’s Idealtyp) that characterizes several (seven) distinctive features: (i) totality, (ii) dialectics, (iii) base and superstructure, (iv) materialism and historization, (v) subjective and objective, (vi) true and inevitable, (vii) revolutionary practice. In the third chapter of his study, the author briefly formulates a wider sociological context; inspired by the concepts of Shmuel Eisendtadt and Cornelius Castoriadis, he defines Marxism as one of the discourses articulating the cultural project of modernity and as part of a permanent process of ‘social self-production’