Post–World War II Marxist theory has been decisively shaped by historical changes: the growing irrelevance of orthodox Marxist political movements and the moral and economic decline (and eventual collapse) of the Soviet empire; the emergence of politically radical social movements based in nationalism, gender, and race rather than economic class; changes in the world capitalist economy including the emergence of globalization; and increasing environmental degradation. These developments are reflected in divergent formulations of historical materialism; the adaptation and transformation of Marxism by the new social movements and by seemingly culturally radical postmodern theories; neo-Marxist theories of contemporary capitalism; the cross-fertilization of religion and Marxism in Liberation Theology and its variants; and "eco-Marxism."

Western Marxists such as Herbert Marcuse, the early Jürgen Habermas, and Jean-Paul Sartre resisted the dogmatic and positivist versions of historical materialism found in Marx and in the Second and...