Editorial introduction

Thinking with Spinoza: A path within the Marxist tradition

Abstract

This editorial introduction traces the main Marxist interpretations of Spinoza throughout the 20th century: the “mechanistic” reading in the Soviet Union of the 1920s as found in authors such as Plekhanov and Axelrod; Althusser's dialectical-materialist interpretation, which renewed Marxist dialectics and the materialist conception of theoretical practice through Spinoza’s theory of knowledge and immanent causality; Negri’s operaismo, which reconceptualized the revolutionary subject through Spinoza’s ontology of productive desire and the power of the multitude; and, finally, the relational interpretation, which has shaped the French debate over the past two decades and in which concepts such as “the finite,” “limit,” and “determination” have been ascribed new, positive significance. At various points and in different contexts within the history of Marxism, resorting to Spinoza has served as a powerful tool for theoretical innovation as well as for ideological and political struggle.