Schmitt for leftists: notes on Marxism and politics

Abstract

This paper proposes a brief tour of the ways in which Marxist readings of the late 1970s appropriated the figure of Carl Schmitt in order to enrich Marxist political theory (which was considered weak) with Schmitt’s strong conception of the political. The paper revisits two paradigmatic cases of complementarity between Schmitt and Marx: the Italian Mario Tronti and Argentine Jose Maria Aricó. The paper puts forward the hypothesis that the exercises of Tronti and Aricó are attempts to supplement Marx with contributions from Schmitt, which is why they remain problematic within Marxism. Finally, we suggest that from the 1980s onward, and with greater emphasis since the 1990s, readings of Schmitt made from the left are outside (and perhaps in contradiction with) Marxism, to the extent that they are considered unable to produce a complex theory of the political. The paper ends by discussing the present-day scope of these various critiques.

Recebido: 11/04/2016
Aceito: 02/03/2018