ABSTRACT
Jean-Paul Sartre’s deep and long-term “ideological investment” in Marxism first appeared in his newspaper articles at the time of his visit to the United States in 1945. Always an existentialist, Sartre continued to deepen his Marxist approach to the questions of the day, as in his lecture on “Colonialism Is a System” at the first mass meeting against the war in Algeria in January 1956. Sartre’s ideas became essential for future efforts to develop non-Communist Marxisms, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. A remarkable contemporary interview with Herbert Marcuse suggests the enormous difference between Sartre’s humble new role and that of the “classical intellectual” like Marcuse, who is still thinking about “the problems which pose themselves in a revolutionary society”. Thus Sartre’s project of existentialist Marxism grinds to a halt for number of reasons: old age and failing health; blindness; the fate of the Critique; the deviation of the Bolshevik Revolution; the events of 1968 and 1969; and Maoist anti-Marxism.
