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Is Marx still relevant to the study of leisure?

This paper is an attempt to reaffirm the relevance of Marxism for Leisure Studies. It is motivated by the view that the influence of Marxism on the field was late and short lived (primarily through Clarke and Critcher’s book The Devil Makes Work (1985)). Marxism in Leisure Studies was rapidly eclipsed by the revival of neo-liberal approaches and the ascent of post-structuralism which privileged ‘discourse’, ‘coding’ and ‘representation’ over economics and class. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the so-called ‘velvet revolution’ in Eastern Europe seemed to expose Marxism as passé and wrong headed. The serious Western economic crisis following the banking collapse (2008) and its effects on employment, work prospects, public investment in welfare, education, health and leisure, together with the persistence of the development gap between the economically advanced countries and the emerging/developing world, and the threat to the environment and society of competitive industrial production, combine (with many other features) to put Marxism back on the agenda. This paper aims to examine the impact of Marxism upon Leisure Studies. It offers a rationale for why this influence was short lived. It moves on to evaluate some aspects of Marxism that are indispensable in the analysis of leisure today. The point is not to claim that Marxism was right all along. More modestly, the purpose of this article is to suggest that flight from Marxism in the field was premature and that, while by no means having all of the answers, Marx and his followers still have much to teach students of leisure.