Writings on marxist theory of politics and sociology in an imperialist context

Abstract

The review presents the edited volume Writings on Marxist Theory of Politics and Sociology in an Imperialist Context, organized by Gonzalo Adrián Rojas and Janaina Freire dos Santos, as a theoretically situated intervention grounded in a diagnosis of crisis, wars, and reactionary recomposition, arguing for class independence and a critique of neo-reformist, conciliatory exits. It emphasizes that the book recenters class struggle as a transversal category for understanding governance, labor, regimes of truth, and political imaginaries. Summarizing the chapters, it highlights: a critical reading of Chinese geopolitics in the context of the war in Ukraine, rejecting simplistic binaries; the continued relevance of Marx’s method (historicity, mediations, totality, contradiction) and the risk of reducing it to empty vocabulary; a rebuttal of Popper’s critique and the centrality of historicity; the Paris Commune as a laboratory for thinking about organization and the state form; public debt during the pandemic as a mechanism for rentier reproduction; lawfare as a legal-media strategy; the feminization and precarization of labor; a critique of postmodern approaches to regional oppressions; transformism as a key to reading political realignments; Chile’s political trajectory (1973–2023) under neoliberalism; and revolutionary parliamentarism as a tactic tied to extra-parliamentary struggle. It concludes that, although uneven, the collection is coherent in offering Marxist tools to interpret the present.