Is Analytic Philosophy a Dead End for the Left?

That's the claim made by Neil Vallelly in a shockingly poorly-informed article for Jacobin (reviewing Christopher Schuringa's book "A Social History of Analytical Philosophy"). Jacobin editor Nick French defended analytic philosophy in a counterpoint review of the same book ("Is Analytic Philosophy a Class Ideology?") published the same day. In this episode, Ben Burgis argues in this episode that French is correct but that the whole exchange suffers from ignoring the overlap between analytic philosophy and Marxism. Jacobin readers should be hearing about the (considerable!) contributions of analytical Marxist thinkers.

Read the Vallelly article:

https://jacobin.com/2025/09/analytic-philosophy-history-hume-rawls

Read the French article:

https://jacobin.com/2025/09/analytic-philosophy-history-hume-rawls

Read Matt McManus's review of the same book on Ben's Substack:

https://benburgis.substack.com/p/thoughts-on-christoph-schuringas

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