Reki ANDO (安藤歴) – The Anti-Marxist Moment in the 1980s Japanese Left
Channel: European Network of Japanese Philosophy
Date: 2023-05-09

Reki ANDO (安藤歴) – The Anti-Marxist Moment in the 1980s Japanese Left

Marxism was a major reference point both for social and political movements as well as intellectuals in the postwar Japanese left. Its privileged position, however, collapsed throughout the 1970s. Consequently, leftist activists and intellectuals began to internally critique Marxist thought. This paper aims to trace aspects of this intellectual shift from the latter half of the 1970s through the early 1980s. The critique of Marxism was of course not limited to Japan: it was a common problematic seen in many developed capitalist countries during the period. The strongest influence on Japanese intellectuals at the time came from trends in French thought, particularly critiques of Marxism made by André Glucksmann, Alexandre-Solzenitin, and Michel Foucault. These intellectuals’ texts were translated into Japanese during the late 1970s and early 1980s and inspired leftist intellectuals in Japan as examples of “anti-Marxist thought”. In order to reconstruct the process of this intellectual importation, this paper takes up the thinker Toda Tōru (1943-1984) and examines his interpretation of and reaction to the above-mentioned French intellectuals. I will argue that he embarked on the project of “anti-Marxist thought” in direct response to their ideas. Toda’s project represents a critical reflection on the devolution of the emancipatory project into brutal violence, and a search for alternative possibilities to bring about the revolutionary event. 

Reki ANDO (安藤歴) is a PhD student majoring in political theory and history at the Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University. His research fields include emancipatory theories and political philosophy, with special interests in the actuality of theory in relation to social movements. His current project analyzes the changing concept of the political in French thought during the late 1970s and early 1980s. He is also working on a study of the decline of Japanese Marxist thought in the same time period. 

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