The Invention of Marxism

Madoc Cairns, Times Literary Supplement Morinas pen-portraits - fine-grained, deftly interlinked - are superb. Forgotten figures, such as Adler and Struve, are coaxed back into the sunlight, famous ones - Lenin, Kautsky, Luxemburg - reimagined

Madoc Cairns, Editor at Plough Quarterly , TLS Morina's pen-portraits - fine-grained, deftly interlinked are superb.

Choice The Invention of Marxism provides rich biographical portraits of the first generation of Marx's most ardent followers.

Christina Morina is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Bielefeld. Her research focuses on major themes in nineteenth and twentieth century German and European history, especially World War II, the Holocaust and bystander history, political and memory cultures in Germany since 1945, the history of Marxism, and the history of historiography. In 2017, she published her second monograph Die Erfindung des Marxismus: Wie eine Idee die Welt eroberte. She is also co-author of Zur rechten Zeit: Wider die Ruckkehr das Nationalismus (with Norbert Frei, Franka Maubach und Maik Tandler, 2019) and co-editor of Das 20. Jahrhundert erzahlen: Zeiterfahrung und Zeiterforschung im geteilten Deutschland (with Franka Maubach, 2016) as well as Probing the Limits of Categorization: The Bystander in Holocaust History (with Krijn Thijs, 2018).

PROLOGUE: Marxism as a Generational Project I SOCIALIZATION Born in the Nineteenth Century: Family Influences Adolescence and Its Discontents: Emerging Worldviews Beating the Drum: Literary Influences II POLITICIZATION Paths to Marxism I: London, Paris, Zurich, Vienna (1878-1888) Translating Marxism: Guesde and Jaures Star Students: Bernstein and Kautsky Theory and Practice: Adler's Belated Marxism Paths to Marxism II: Geneva, Warsaw, St. Petersburg (1885-1903) The Social Question as a Political Question: Plekhanov's Turn toward Marx The Social Question as a Question of Power: Struve and Lenin Engagement as Science: Luxemburg III ENGAGEMENT On Misery, or the First Commandment: The Radical Study of Reality Miserable Living: Depicting Proletarians and Peasants Miserable Labor: The Proletarian World of Work On Revolution, or the Second Commandment: Philosophy as Practice Revolutionary Expectations Revolution at Last? Dress Rehearsal in St. Petersburg, 1905/06 CONCLUSION: From Marx to Marxism: Fieldworkers, Bookworms, and Adventurers