marx200

Operaism (also Workerism) emerged from the theoretical efforts of political intellectuals in Italy during the early 1960s. These intellectuals hailed from Italy's socialist and communist parties, as well as from social science. Important forums of debate included the journals Quaderni Rossi and Classe operaia.

This branch of the "re-engagement with Marx" has emerged, in Germany, from a period known as the "reconstruction of the critique of political economy," which began in the mid-1960s. This period of reconstruction is a general characteristic of the "re-engagement with Marx" in the Federal Republic of Germany and, to some extent, in the GDR.

The "re-engagements of Marx" that occurred after the Second World War, mainly (though not only) in the West, are associated with the societal decampment and rupture of the late  1960s – student movements, civil rights struggles, the "New Left." "1968" was followed by the "red decade" of the 1970s, which ended, at least in the history of the German Federal Republic, with the "German Autumn." Since the rupture associated with the signum of 1968, there has not been a comparable sea change within post-Marx theory and debate.

Like Germany, Japan already saw vigorous intra-Marxist debate, as well as debate between Marxists and bourgeois economists, as early as the 1920s. For example, early debates on the theory of value were already conducted in Japan during the 1920s. In Japan as elsewhere, these discussions were radically disrupted by fascism and war, and their protagonists were persecuted. Following the Second World War, they were able to re-gain a foothold, obtaining university positions in far greater numbers than their German counterparts.

Like "Western Marxism," the heterodox discussion on Marx in the USA developed in opposition to dogmatic "Marxism-Leninism," proposing as an alternative to it a reading of Marx's texts that is philosophical and humanist in the broadest sense.

The origin of the current within the debate on Marx that would later be known as "Western Marxism" can be traced back as far as the period during which World War One and the Russian Revolution were being worked through theoretically. In part, Western Marxism was a critical response to the beginnings of Marxism's "nationalisation," as well as to Marxism-Leninism, in the Soviet Union.

Trotskyism was initiated by the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who contributed to the development of Marxist debates by distancing himself from Stalin, on the basis of a critique of the development of bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, while continuing to endorse Lenin. Trotskyism – the term has sometimes been used polemically, to denounce positions that deviated from Moscow's positions – is committed to the international and "permanent" character of revolution.

Austro-Marxism emerged within the context of Austrian social democracy following the First World War. Politically, it was geared towards democratic/parliamentary activities; theoretically, it pursued questions of socialist transformation. In the Historico-Critical Dictionary of Marxism, Austro-Marxism is associated with the period between about 1900 and 1934.

This current originated in the 1980s and 1990s. It was strengthened by an analysis of Italian operaism, the new German reading of Marx and Critical Theory, but also Zapatismo. It combines a form-theoretical reading of Marx' critique with emancipational-theoretical reference to social struggles.