Introduction to Non-Marxism reviewed at NDPR

Ian James reviews Laruelle’s Introduction to Non-Marxism. Here’s something of the summary paragraph:

One might wonder, once again, where the ambition of Marxism to change the world finds its place within the operation of non-Marxist unilateral dualization. The syntax of unilateral duality places everything back into an identity with the indeterminate Real but does so at the expense of any and all logic of representation, mediation or relation by which concrete interventions in the world might be pursued and the effective transformation of capitalism achieved. For many with commitments on the political left such an outcome may be met with expressions of exasperation, if not of derision. Yet Laruelle is very clear, the purpose of non-Marxism is not to do away with struggle but to transform the terms upon which struggle occurs when it is determined by the immanent Real rather than by way of Marxism’s philosophical transcendence and the legacy of failure it bears. The struggle of non-Marxism is a struggle that is carried out immanently against the World and against the World-form or, as Laruelle puts it, it is: ‘an immanent struggle with the capital-world, and not a struggle by way of transcendence interspersed with the capital-world’ (127).