Politics, Government and the State 83
processes that conventional theory ignores. Politically, it has attacked
exploitation and oppression, and had a particularly strong appeal to
disadvantaged groups and peoples. However, Marxism’s star has dimmed
markedly since the late twentieth century. To some extent, this occurred as
the tyrannical and dictatorial features of communist regimes themselves were
traced back to Marx’s ideas and assumptions. Marxist theories were, for
instances, seen as implicitly monistic in that rival belief systems are dismissed
as ideological. The crisis of Marxism, however, intensified as a result of the
collapse of communism in the revolutions of 1989–91. This suggested that if
the social and political forms which Marxism had inspired (however
unfaithful they may have been to Marx’s original ideas) no longer exist,
Marxism as a world-historical force is effectively dead. Although so-called
‘post-Marxists’ have attempted to salvage certain key Marxist insights by
trying to reconcile Marxism with aspects of postmodernism (see p. 7), in
renouncing historical materialism and class analysis they have, arguably,
abandoned the very ideas that made Marxist theory distinctive.