Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The attempt to establish ‘Marxism’ as a coherent body of thought began, shortly before Marx's death, with the publication of Friedrich Engels’ Anti-Dühring in 1878 and it was continued in the socialist parties of the Second International. The largest and most influential of these parties was in Germany, and it is there that the first significant Marxist orthodoxy was established. Almost from the beginning, Marxist orthodoxy was disputed by revisionists, who insisted that an approach to the study of history and social change that claimed to be scientific should also be open to revision. Eduard Bernstein's Evolutionary Socialism ([1899] 1961) is the best-known early example. Competing orthodoxies emerged, the most influential being communism, under the leadership (later disputed by communist parties elsewhere) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the many varieties of Trotskyism. V. I. Lenin once described Marx's doctrine as continuing the work of ‘the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism’ ( Lenin [1913] 1964 , p. 23), and said that judgement would not be disputed by representatives of other orthodoxies or by revisionists. The various Marxisms have invariably regarded themselves as being political and highly theoretical, and most of them have claimed to be scientific. They have also hoped to be severely practical. Where communist ... log in or subscribe to read full text