Bet you assumed this was dead in the water, huh? Soviet communism may be yesterday's bogy man, but Marxist theory is a different beast. Firstly, most of the theorists mentioned here are from Western Europe and (gasp) the USA. Secondly, although Marxist theory evolved from key concepts first articulated by Marx, like any other theoretical tradition, it evolves and changes. Folk understandings of Marxist theory are often more cartoonish than informed. Or they look back to an earlier, implausible, period of materialist determinism as an excuse to ignore more recent work. But these are paper communists. We all struggle with material issues: credit ratings, the cost of SOU, how to avoid "selling out." If you agree with Virigina Woolf that having "a room of one's own" makes a difference for artists and writers, or you're troubled by how quickly the big machine domesticates, packages, and markets the (formerly) subversive, then you may have more in common with materialist thinkers than you'd guess. -- Hedges