Links between Marxism and Other Theories and Critiques
The three major historical and thematic/systematic categories we have employed to describe "theory and debate following Marx" fail to do justice to certain debates.
This is true of those debates that have involved criticism of the "blind spots" of Marx and Marxism (gender relations, nature and ecology, colonialism and slavery, everyday culture and civil society, culture and language, religion and ideology). It is also true of those cases in which Marxism has opened itself up to other, not explicitly Marxist currents of social critique. In both cases, certain couplings have emerged: Marxism's many flirts with art, literature and aesthetics, its marriage of convenience with psychoanalysis, its thorny liaison with existentialism, difficult relationship with feminism, its falling out with anarchism, alliance with national liberation and secret love with Christianity – to mention only the most well-known. Such couplings are discussed in this fourth section.