Introduction

Wittgenstein's philosophy is, more often than not, simply ignored by Marxist philosophers. However, on the rare occasions that Marxist philosophers have tried to give an account of Wittgenstein's philosophy they have often, mistakenly, supposed that Wittgenstein's philosophy stands in opposition to Marxist philosophy. Marx tried to give a scientific account of human society and culture, whereas Wittgenstein was notoriously opposed to theorizing in philosophy. Marx famously said that ‘the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it’, while Wittgenstein was concerned with conceptual considerations and had very little to say about workers’ struggles. Early, critical, responses to Wittgenstein from figures on the left proved to be influential, including Ernest Gellner's Words and Things and Herbert Marcuse's One- Dimensional Man. However, more recent accounts of Wittgenstein's thought from Marxists in both the continental and analytic traditions have been more sympathetic and have overcome the weaknesses of some of the earlier analyses.

My argument in this chapter will be that the apparent differences between Marxist and Wittgensteinian thought dissolve once one understands the different ways in which Marx and Wittgenstein thought about the nature of philosophy. I will start by looking at some of the mistakes made by Perry Anderson in his attempts to get to grips with Wittgenstein. I will then go on to see how those mistakes have been compounded by Alex Callinicos before finally saying something about what Marxists stand to gain from a better understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophy.

The reasons for focusing on the work of Anderson and Callinicos are, first, that in both cases they have audiences that go beyond academia: Anderson was, for a long time, editor of the New Left Review and regularly writes for other publications, including the London Review of Books. Alex Callinicos is an active socialist, editor of the International Socialism Journal, and he regularly writes for Socialist Worker.