Is Post-Marxism Real? A Critique of the Opposition between Marxism and Postmodernism in the Žižek–Peterson Debate

The Debate. AI art. Photorealism

Introduction

The debate between Slavoj Žižek and Jordan Peterson, held on April 19, 2019, at the Sony Centre in Toronto before more than 3,000 people (and millions of online viewers), was presented as a confrontation between capitalism and Marxism. However, one of the most contentious points was the supposed existence of a movement called postmodern neo-Marxism. Peterson argues that this trend represents a narrative continuation of Marxism within identity discourse; Žižek, on the other hand, denies any real connection to "pure" Marxism. This apparent dichotomy—Marxism versus postmodernism—reflects a reductive reading that overlooks their shared history.

Thesis: Although often portrayed as irreconcilable opposites, Marxism and postmodern currents share a common genealogy. Many thinkers labeled as postmodernists emerged from the Marxist tradition and developed their critiques from within it. To deny this continuity, as Žižek does, is to reproduce a simplistic dichotomy that ignores the historical complexity of critical theory. In this sense, Peterson's interpretation, despite its own limitations, rightly identifies persistent traces of Marxist narrative structures in contemporary discourses on power and identity.

Peterson’s Thesis: Narrative Continuity as Marxist Persistence

Peterson characterizes postmodern neo-Marxism as an ideological sleight of hand in which class struggle is replaced by identity conflict:

“I see the connection between the postmodernist types and the Marxists as a sleight of hand that replaced the notion of the oppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie with the oppression by one identity group by another.”
— Jordan Peterson, Žižek vs. Peterson Debate, 2019

In his view, the basic moral narrative remains unchanged: the world is still structured as a conflict between oppressors and oppressed. Although categories like “class” or “mode of production” disappear, the structural logic of Marxism persists. This is not, for Peterson, a superficial resemblance but a profound continuity. The revolutionary narrative survives in new forms: Marxism has mutated into cultural terms, but it has not vanished.

Žižek’s Response: Rejection of “Moral Marxism” and Demand for Names

Žižek challenges Peterson to back up his claim with concrete examples:

“Where did you find that? I don’t know them. I would ask you: give me some names. Who are the Marxists here?”
“What you describe as postmodern neo-Marxism… Where is the Marxist element in it?”
— Slavoj Žižek, Žižek vs. Peterson Debate, 2019

In Žižek’s view, those who adopt a logic of identity-based victimhood are not committed to the Marxist tradition. What he calls hyper-moralization is, rather, a symptom of political impotence:

“I think it’s a hyper-moralization which is a silent admission of defeat.”

Genuine Marxism, he argues, is articulated around transformative material praxis. Identity discourses lack that horizon. His position is that of a critical Marxism, resistant to ethical or cultural subjectivism divorced from structural analysis.

Between Worlds: The Postmodern as an Internal Form of Marxism

Between these two positions, a third possibility emerges. In Of Grammatology, Derrida writes:

“The outside maintains a relationship with the inside that, as always, is anything but a simple exteriority. The meaning of the outside has always already been caught in the inside, imprisoned outside the outside, and vice versa.”
— Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak)

With this statement, Derrida questions the binary logic on which much of Western thought is built. The opposition between interior (voice, thought, presence) and exterior (writing, sign, representation) is not one of strict separation. The “outside,” traditionally conceived as marginal or secondary, is in fact constitutive of the “inside.” Writing is not a supplementary addition to voice but its structural condition.

This framework can be extended to any binary pair. Often, the excluded term turns out to be the condition of possibility for the privileged one. In this light, Derrida's analysis proves particularly useful in addressing the question: Is post-Marxism real?

Critical Hybridities and the Genealogy of Emancipatory Thought

The history of critical theory is not composed of sealed blocks but of networks and displacements. To frame postmodernism as a betrayal of Marxism is as reductive as denying any connection at all.

The opposition between the two schools is often presented as absolute: one associated with scientific thinking, historical commitment, and truth; the other with relativism, fragmentation, and post-metaphysical suspicion. Yet this dichotomy is more problematic than it seems. In fact, the relationship between Marxism and postmodernism exemplifies Derrida’s insight: the supposed “outside” of Marxism—postmodernism—has never been entirely external to it, and vice versa.

Many thinkers commonly classified as postmodernists or poststructuralists—terms that often overlap, though they are not identical—were trained within Marxist traditions, including its most orthodox forms: Stalinism, Maoism, or Marxism-Leninism. Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze, and even Jacques Lacan all passed, to varying degrees, through a Marxist phase before critiquing or reworking the tradition.

Foucault, for example, questioned the economism and historical determinism of classical Marxism but retained a central concern with power relations, domination, and ideological apparatuses—deeply Marxist themes. Derrida, in Specters of Marx (1994), acknowledges that one cannot think justice or the present without Marx’s legacy, though he critiques its ontological assumptions, historical teleology, and metaphysical grounding in presence.

These critiques do not necessarily imply a definitive rupture. Rather, many function as internal rereadings or strategic displacements that preserve core concerns: critique of ideology, denunciation of oppression, and transformative impulse—albeit no longer expressed in classical terms.

A thinker can be, and indeed has been, both Marxist and postmodernist. Derrida openly recognized his debt to Marx even in his most deconstructive writings. Foucault maintained ties with the French Communist Party, and although he abandoned terms like “class” or “mode of production,” his analysis of power retained structural affinities with Marxist critique. Lacan, influenced by Marxism in his formation, was later reread in Marxist terms by Althusser and Žižek. In all these cases, there was a shift in signifiers, but not necessarily in signifieds.

To claim that Marxism and postmodernism are inherently incompatible presumes a rigid, essentialist view of both traditions. It assumes that each constitutes a closed system, free of ambiguity or internal transformation. Yet the history of critical thought is one of hybridities, tensions, and productive reappropriations. Rather than viewing them as antagonistic blocks, we should recognize their zones of intersection and the critical continuities that emerge from their friction.

As Derrida suggests, the “outside” has never been simply external to the “inside”; it inhabits it as its condition, its symptom, or its ghost:

“Le dehors entretient avec le dedans un rapport qui, comme toujours, n’est rien moins que de simple extériorité. Le sens du dehors a toujours été dans le dedans prisonnier hors du dehors, et réciproquement.”
— Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie

Conclusion

Both Peterson and Žižek, from different vantage points, operate within a dichotomous logic: one sees continuity without distinction; the other, absolute rupture. Yet a genealogical reading reveals this opposition to be illusory. There is neither a continuous, unbroken inheritance nor a total rupture without trace.

To deny all continuity between Marxism and postmodernism is to postulate an ideological purity that never existed; to affirm it uncritically is to reduce critical thought to a fixed narrative. What is fruitful is to recognize the tension: postmodernism is at once a legacy, a critique, and a displacement of Marxism.

Rather than choosing between them, it is more productive to think of their conflicted entanglement as part of a shared critical history—a history that, though fragmented, continues to seek ways to name domination and imagine emancipation.

References

• Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
• Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. Translated by Peggy Kamuf, Routledge, 1994.
• Žižek, Slavoj. The Plague of Fantasies. Verso, 1997.
• Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith, Pantheon Books, 1972.
• Peterson, Jordan B. Debate with Slavoj Žižek, April 19, 2019, Toronto.
• Hicks, Stephen R. Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. Scholargy Publishing, 2004.
•  Marxism: Zizek/Peterson: Official Video

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsWndfzuOc4