Usually sentences like this that are held up as bad examples actually are saying something, albeit badly, but this one really does border on nonsense. I believe

Usually sentences like this that are held up as bad examples actually are saying something, albeit badly, but this one really does border on nonsense. I believe it's saying that older readings of Marx (presumably by Althusser) saw capitalism as directly influencing society in a relatively uniform, unidirectional and universal way, whereas whatever new "insights" the author is writing about portray the influence of capitalism on society as being less uniform and more influenced by specific factors. So maybe that Marxist thought is less universally applicable than what was once thought? I often feel like jargon-y academic writing is given an unfair treatment when taken out of context but it truly seems like the author of this is intentionally avoiding meaning. Edit: turns out this is by Judith Butler. I just read the piece it's from and it makes at least a little bit more sense in context. Basically she seems to be saying that older ("structuralist") Marxists saw their theories as timeless whereas more recent ones have focused on how state power and the influence of capital is dependent on historical specificities. It seems given the timing (1997) that this is pretty clearly a response to the fall of the USSR and Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" stuff. But yes, it's an absolutely terrible sentence.