The literature on Marxism threatens to drown both the theory and its students. To the cynical it confirms the obsolescence of Marxism: It has fled the streets and factories for the halls and offices of the university. The struggle to publish replaces the class struggle. Academics jet to conferences to hawk competing brands of Marxism. A consumer's guide is required to stay abreast of the offerings and the recalls: structural Marxism, semiotic Marxism, feminist Marxism, hermeneutical Marxism, phenomenological Marxism, critical Marxism, and so on.

This is not surprising. Marxism is not immunized against its object. After a century of contact the critique of the commodity succumbs to the commodity. Marx quipped that the criminal augments the market by producing the professor of criminology, who produces the commodity, the textbook on criminal law. Today the revolutionary joins the criminal. The briefly popular slogan “The revolution will not be televised” was optimistic. The revolution will be televised. Nonetheless, to recognize that Marxism has been made a commodity is no reason to write it off. It proves that Marxism does not escape the social conditions that it has always denounced as determinant.

Nor does “commodification” exhaust the vulnerability of Marxism to its own historical situation. Everywhere Marxism has assumed characteristics of its specific environments. A single, homogeneous Marxism belongs to the past. Marxism takes on the color, and sometimes the content, of its conditions. Marxism devolves into Marxisms. This diversity is not benign. The world map of Marxism includes academics and political parties, entire states and cemeteries. There are Marxist revolutionaries and poets; there are also Marxist careerists, premiers, and executioners. A common vocabulary, reality, and loyalty cease to exist.