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Marxism-Leninism
By the late 1920s, Stalin, who had been general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s (CPSU) Central Committee since 1922, was finally able to assert his authority against his party rivals.
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The Third International (Comintern)
In 1919, on Lenin’s initiative, the Third International was founded in Moscow as a revolutionary alternative to the “opportunism” of the Second International.
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From the October Revolution to the Second World War
The first key point in the history of the parties and movements following Marx took place in 1917 with the October Revolution; it was followed, in 1919, by the founding of the Third (explicitly Communist) International in Moscow. These two events manifested the split between left-wing forces at the international level and resulted in the development of two main competing currents.
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De Leonism
Daniel De Leon joined the Socialist Labor Party of America in 1890. During the period that followed, he increasingly defined its political course and this resulted in a decisive shift to the left.
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The Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the Word (IWW) was founded in 1905 in Chicago as a union uniting Marxist, syndicalist and anarchist elements.
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Guesdism
Guesdism refers to a politically significant current within the Section Française de l’International Ouvrière.
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Impossibilism (late 19th and early 20th century)
In the late 19th century, the Western European workers’ movement was characterised by a contrast between reform-oriented forces on the one hand, and socialists who continued to hold on to their revolutionary programme on the other.
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Poale Zion
After the GJLB came out against Zionism in 1901, Zionist circles of socialist workers and intellectuals not only established themselves in Russia, but also in many other countries including the US, the UK and Austria-Hungary.
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General Jewish Labour Bund (GJLB)
In the Russian Empire, a Jewish workers’ movement took shape quite early because the parts of the “rayon” in which the Jewish population lived was also one of the first regions to undergo industrialisation.
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The Mensheviks versus the Bolsheviks (from 1903)
The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) was founded in 1898, but the party divided into two wings at the 1903 Congress in London. The Bolshevik (“majority”) wing associated with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin pushed the party towards a cadre organisation of professional revolutionaries.
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Legal Marxism
Although Legal Marxism was more of a theoretical current than a political one, in the Russian debate about Marx, its theories had political implications.
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Emancipation of Labour (founded in 1883)
In 1883, representatives of the Narodnik movement founded Emancipation of Labour whilst in exile in Switzerland.
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The Narodniks (late 19th century)
The Narodniks (“populists” – “or to the people”) were a revolutionary movement formed by the Russian intelligentsia in the late 19th century; the group looked to the peasantry for its support.
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Austro-Marxism (from the 1900s onwards)
Austro-Marxism refers to a bundle of theoretical approaches that were linked both in terms of people and politically to Austrian social democracy.
Austro-Marxism attempted to develop several aspects of Marxism and adapt it to the contemporary situation. For example, Rudolf Hilferding’s Finance Capital (1910) analysed contemporary processes of capitalist accumulation that went beyond those put forward in Marx’s Capital. See also the entry on Austro-Marxism in Theories and debates following Marx.
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Left-wing positions (from the 1890s)
Rosa Luxemburg also distinguished herself as a critic of Bernstein. Her stance during the 1900s, and not least in the wake of the mass strike debate, gained increasing political independence, including with regard to the “orthodox centre”.
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Revisionist currents (from the 1890s)
In the late 1880s, the theorist Eduard Bernstein, who had been a friend of Engels, attempted to develop a critique of the supposed certainty and “laws” of economic development (progressive class polarisation, “impoverishment” and “collapse”).
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The orthodox centre (from the 1890s)
The coexistence of a fundamentally revolutionary manifesto and reform-minded realpolitik had already influenced the 1891 Erfurt Program.
Karl Kautsky was the leading protagonist within the SPD’s “orthodox centre” and largely shaped the socialist understanding of Marxism at the time with its determinist and “objectivist” traits.
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“The Young” (early 1890s)
The Young refers to the second most significant left-wing oppositional current within German social democracy during this period. The group formed in the wake of Johann Most being expelled from the SPD (a left-wing opposition also formed from within Danish social democracy).
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The Social Democratic Party of Germany (from 1875)
Although the leading figures of the “Eisenach” tendency in German social democracy had already been influenced by Marx and Engels, during its initial developmental phase (from Anti-Dühring in 1877—1878 to the
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From Marx’s death until the October Revolution
The first Marxist parties and movements formed during Karl Marx’s lifetime in a period that extends from the publication of Anti-Dühring by Friedrich Engels (1877) until German social democracy drew up its Erfurt Program (1891).
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