The marxist tradition against the grain

The author develops the concept of plural temporality as a tool for revising the Marxist tradition. This concept was not explicitly formulated by Marx, but the author maintains that it takes a latent form in those of his works which expose the inadequacy of understanding historical development through a linear model or as unfolding in stages. The author finds traces of plural temporality in the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right where Marx contrasts the modernity of German philosophy with the anachronistic nature of the German state. The article outlines the con-cept’s growing influence over a series of works from the Manifesto of the Communist Party to The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. However, it is most distinct in two later texts by Marx devoted to the Russian rural commune (obshchina). Marx notes its unprecedented historical character as a product of pre-capitalist social relations that is nevertheless contemporary with capitalism. Therefore, it is not so a hin-drance to the development of capitalism in Russia, but more a model of the type of collective labor and collective property that are an alternative to capitalism. Marx thought that the future revolution, if it happens at the “appropriate time,” would nec-essarily establish the free development of the rural community and the superiority of Russian society over those countries in which capitalism dominates. The author analyzes the works of Marx’s followers who already consciously use the concept and metaphors of plural temporality in their works such as Ernest Bloch, Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser. In conclusion, the concept of plural temporality is not meant to completely refute the idea of ​a continuous course for history, but instead to elucidate its complex and contingent nature.