Is ‘back to Vygotsky’ enough? Vygotsky’s psychology has its roots in Marx’s writings. Thus, Marxism is indispensable to the study of Vygotsky’s theory. That is why, we assert in this paper that, back to Vygotsky is back to Marx and Marxism. Furthermore any attempt to modify Vygotsky’s uses of Marxism with some extraneous element is not only objectively anti-Vygotsky but also distortion of his theory. Vygotsky brought into prominence the dialectic movement of social totalities, within which a complex interaction takes place between forces of production, social relations of production, means of production, mode production, consciousness, alienation, and activity. In these complex interactions that human mental life is formed and shaped. Aware of these pitfalls, Vygotsky did not try to build a Marxist psychology that lies on the side of the economic determinism theory. Vygotsky’s efforts were directed, instead, to locating psychological aspects in Marx’s writings and making one of these aspects a new point of departure for examining the same totality with which Marx was concerned.
Vygotsky; Marxist Psychology; Dialectical Method