Orthodox Marxism is the body of

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

thought which emerged after the deaths of Karl Marx and

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.Karl Kautsky. Kautsky's views of Marxism dominated the European Marxist movement for two decades, and orthodox Marxism was the official philosophy of the majority of the socialist movement as represented in the Second International until the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

in 1914, whose outbreak caused Kautsky's influence to wane and brought to prominence the

orthodoxy Orthodoxy () is adherence to a purported "correct" or otherwise mainstream- or classically-accepted creed, especially in religion. Orthodoxy within Christianity refers to acceptance of the doctrines defined by various creeds and ecumenical co ...

of Vladimir Lenin. Orthodox Marxism aimed to simplify, codify and systematize Marxist method and theory by clarifying perceived ambiguities and contradictions in classical Marxism. It overlaps significantly with instrumental Marxism. Orthodox Marxism maintained that Marx's

historical materialism Historical materialism is Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx located historical change in the rise of Class society, class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. Karl Marx stated that Productive forces, techno ...

was a science which revealed the laws of history and proved that the collapse of capitalism and its replacement by

socialism Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

were inevitable. The implications of this deterministic view were that history could not be "hurried" and that politically workers and workers' parties must wait for the material economic conditions to be met before the revolutionary transformation of society could take place. For example, this idea saw the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) adopt a gradualist approach, taking advantage of

bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and Aristocracy (class), aristocracy. They are tradition ...

parliamentary democracy to improve the lives of workers until capitalism was brought down by its objective internal contradictions. The use of "orthodox" to refer to Kautsky's line is primarily to distinguish it from the reformism of

Eduard Bernstein Eduard Bernstein (; 6 January 1850 – 18 December 1932) was a German Marxist theorist and politician. A prominent member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), he has been both condemned and praised as a "Revisionism (Marxism), revisi ...

. Such " revisionists" were reviled by the orthodox Marxists for breaking with Marx's thought.

Theory

The emergence of orthodox Marxism is associated with the latter works of

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.Dialectics of Nature'' and '' Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'', which were efforts to popularise the work of Karl Marx, render it systematic and apply it to the fundamental questions of philosophy. Daniel De Leon, an early American socialist leader, contributed much to the thought during the final years of the 19th century and the early 20th century. Orthodox Marxism was further developed during the Second International by thinkers such as Georgi Plekhanov and Karl Kautsky in Erfurt Program and The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program). The characteristics of orthodox Marxism are: * A strong version of the theory that the economic base (material conditions) determines the cultural and political superstructure of society. In its most extensive form, this view is called economic determinism, economism and vulgar materialism. A related variation is that of technological determinism. * The view that capitalism cannot be reformed through policy and that any attempt to do so would only exacerbate its contradictions or distort the efficiency of the market economy (in contrast to reformism). Orthodox Marxism holds that the only viable and lasting solution to the contradictions of capitalism is for the establishment of a post-capitalist socialist economy. * The centrality of class as a process and the view that existing policymakers and government is largely and structurally beholden to the interests of the

ruling class In sociology, the ruling class of a society is the social class who set and decide the political and economic agenda of society. In Marxist philosophy, the ruling class are the class who own the means of production in a given society and apply ...

. This view is called instrumental Marxism. * The claim that Marxist methodology is a science. * The attempt to make Marxism a total system, adapting it to changes within the realm of current events and knowledge. * An understanding of

ideology An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Form ...

in terms of false consciousness. * That every open class struggle is a political struggle. * A pre-crisis emphasis on organizing an independent, mass workers' movement (in the form of welfare, recreational, educational and cultural organizations) and especially its political party, combining reform struggles and mass strikes without overreliance on either. * The socialist revolution is necessarily the act of the majority (contrasted with Marxism–Leninism's view of the vanguard party and democratic centralism). Orthodox Marxism is contrasted with revisionist Marxism. Some writers also contrast it with Marxism–Leninism as it developed in the Soviet Union, while others describe the latter as firmly within orthodoxy:

Orthodox Marxism rested on and grew out of the European working class movement that emerged in the final quarter of the 19th century and continued in that form until the middle years of the twentieth century. Its two institutional expressions were the 2nd and 3rd Internationals, which despite the great schism in 1919, were marked by a shared conception of capital and labour. Their fortunes therefore rose and fell together.
Trotskyism Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...
and
Left communism Left communism, or the communist left, is a position held by the left wing of communism, which criticises the political ideas and practices held by Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninists and social democrats. Left communists assert positions ...
were equally orthodox in their thinking and approach, and therefore must be considered left-variants of this tradition.

Two variants of orthodox Marxism are

impossibilism Impossibilism is a Marxist theory that stresses the limited value of political, economic, and social reforms under capitalism. As a doctrine, impossibilism views the pursuit of such reforms as counterproductive to the goal of achieving socialism a ...

and anti-revisionism. Impossibilism is a form of orthodox Marxism that both rejects the reformism of revisionist Marxism and opposes the Leninist theories of imperialism, vanguardism and democratic centralism (which argue that socialism can be constructed in underdeveloped, quasi-feudal countries through revolutionary action as opposed to being an emergent result of advances in material development). An extreme form of this position is held by the

Socialist Party of Great Britain The Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) is a small socialist political party in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1904 as a split from the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), it advocates using the ballot box for revolutionary purposes and ...

. In contrast, the anti-revisionist tradition criticised official Communist parties from the opposite perspective as having abandoned the orthodox Marxism of the founders.

Variants

A number of theoretical perspectives and political movements emerged that were firmly rooted in orthodox Marxist analysis, as contrasted with later interpretations and alternative developments in Marxist theory and practice such as Marxism–Leninism, revisionism and reformism.

Impossibilism

Impossibilism stresses the limited value of economic, social, cultural and political reforms under capitalism and posits that socialists and Marxists should solely focus on efforts to propagate and establish socialism, disregarding any other cause that has no connection to the goal of the realization of socialism. Impossibilism posits that reforms to capitalism are counterproductive because they strengthen support for capitalism by the working class by making its conditions more tolerable while creating further contradictions of their own, while removing the socialist character of the parties championing and implementing said reforms. Because reforms cannot solve the systemic contradictions of capitalism, impossibilism opposes reformism, revisionism and ethical socialism. Impossibilism also opposes the idea of a vanguard-led revolution and the centralization of political power in any elite group of people as espoused by Leninism and Marxism–Leninism. This perspective is maintained by the World Socialist Movement, De Leonism, and to some extent followers of Karl Kautsky and pre-reformist social democracy.

Leninism

Kautsky and to a lesser extent Plekhanov were in turn major influences on Vladimir Lenin, whose version of Marxism was known as Leninism by its contemporaries. The official thought of the Third International was based in orthodox Marxism combined with Leninist views on revolutionary organization initially. The terms dialectical materialism and

are associated with this phase of orthodox Marxism. Orthodox Marxism is contrasted with later variations of Marxism, notably revisionism and Stalinism. In contrast to Stalin's idea of the socialism in a single backward country, orthodox Marxists said that Imperial Russia was too backwards for the development of socialism and would first have to undergo a capitalist (bourgeois) phase of development even if a Marxist party would head its government. Lenin urged a socialist revolution in Russia to inspire a socialist revolution in Germany and in the majority of the developed countries. His and Bukharin's New Economic Policy was to develop capitalism in Russia initially.

Luxemburgism

Luxemburgism is an informal designation for a current of Marxist thought and practice that originates from the ideas and work of Rosa Luxemburg. In particular, it stresses the importance for spontaneous revolution which can only emerge in response to mounting contradictions between the productive forces and social relations of society and therefore rejects Leninism and Bolshevism for its insistence on a "hands-on" approach to revolution. Luxemburgism is also highly critical of the reformist Marxism that emerged from the work of

's informal faction of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. According to Rosa Luxemburg, under reformism " apitalismis not overthrown, but is on the contrary strengthened by the development of social reforms".

Trotskyism

The tradition founded by Leon Trotsky purports that the USSR was a " degenerated workers' state" on the basis that, although maintaining that it held onto some aspects of a revolutionary workers' state (such as state control of foreign trade or the expropriation of the bourgeoisie), it lacked key aspects it used to have, namely soviet democracy and freedom of organization for workers, which only benefitted a bureaucracy led by

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

. In his book '' The Revolution Betrayed'', Trotsky supports a multi-party democratic model of revolutionary organizations and proposes a solution for the USSR's bureaucratic caste, that of a political revolution that reinstates those aspects the bureaucrats erased. Trotskyists maintain that the countries of the Eastern bloc,

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...

Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...

Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...

and others were " deformed workers' states" which needed political revolutions while critically defending these countries from imperialist aggressions.

Anti-revisionism

Anti-revisionists (which includes radical Marxist–Leninist factions, Hoxhaists and Maoists) criticize the rule of the communist states by claiming that they were state capitalist states ruled by revisionists. Though the periods and countries defined as state capitalist or revisionist varies among different ideologies and parties, all of them accept that the Soviet Union was socialist during Stalin's time. Maoists view the Soviet Union and most of its satellites as "state capitalist" as a result of de-Stalinization; some of them also view modern China in this light, believing that the People's Republic of China became state capitalist after Mao's death. Hoxhaists believe that the People's Republic of China was always state capitalist and uphold Socialist Albania as the only socialist state after the Soviet Union under Stalin.

Anti-Stalinist left

Menshevism

Menshevism refers to the political positions taken by the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party prior to the October Revolution of 1917. The Mensheviks believed that socialism could not be realized in Russia due to its backwards economic conditions and that Russia would first have to experience a bourgeois revolution and go through a capitalist stage of development before socialism became technically possible and before the working class could develop the class consciousness for a socialist revolution. The Mensheviks were thus opposed to the Bolshevik idea of a vanguard party and their pursuit of socialist revolution in semi-feudal Russia.

Kautskyism

Karl Kautsky is recognized as the most authoritative promulgator of orthodox Marxism following the death of

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.August Bebel, leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) until Bebel's death in 1913 and as editor of '' Die Neue Zeit'' from 1883 till 1917, he was known as the "Pope of Marxism". He was removed as editor by the leadership of the SPD when the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) split away from the SPD. Kautskyism, based on his interpretations of Marxism, became a significant ideological current within socialist thought. Kautsky was an outspoken critic of Bolshevism and Leninism, seeing the Bolsheviks (or Communists as they had renamed themselves after 1917) as an organization that had gained power by a coup and initiated revolutionary changes for which there was no economic rationale in Russia. Kautsky was also opposed to Eduard Bernstein's reformist politics in the period 1896–1901.

Instrumental Marxism

Instrumental Marxism is a theory derived from classical Marxism which reasons that policy makers in government and positions of power tend to "share a common business or class background, and that their decisions will reflect their business or class interests".

Criticism

There have been a number of criticisms of orthodox Marxism from within the socialist movement. From the 1890s during the Second International,

and others developed a position known as revisionism, which sought to revise Marx's views based on the idea that the progressive development of capitalism and the extension of democracy meant that gradual, parliamentary reform could achieve socialism. But Bernstein himself was a revolutionary and joined the Independent Social Democratic Party in Germany which advocated for a socialist republic in 1918. This view was contested by orthodox Marxists such as Kautsky as well as by the young György Lukács, who in 1919 clarified the definition of orthodox Marxism as thus:

thodoxy refers exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is the road to truth and that its methods can be developed, expanded and deepened only along the lines laid down by its founders. It is the conviction, moreover, that all attempts to surpass or 'improve' it have led and must lead to over-simplification, triviality and eclecticism.

Western Marxism, the intellectual Marxism which developed in Western Europe from the 1920s onwards, sought to make Marxism more "sophisticated", open and flexible by examining issues like culture that were outside the field of orthodox Marxism. Western Marxists, such as György Lukács, Karl Korsch, Antonio Gramsci and the

Frankfurt School The Frankfurt School is a school of thought in sociology and critical theory. It is associated with the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, Institute for Social Research founded in 1923 at the University of Frankfurt am Main ...

, have tended to be open to influences orthodox Marxists consider

, such as

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious mind, unconscious processes and their influence on conscious mind, conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on The Inte ...

and the

sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...

Max Weber Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German Sociology, sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economy, political economist who was one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sc ...

. Marco Torres illustrates the shift away from orthodox Marxism in the Frankfurt School:

In the early 1920s, the original members of the Frankfurt Institute—half forgotten names such as Carl Grünberg, Henryk Grossman and Karl August Wittfogel, were social scientists of an orthodox Marxist conviction. They understood their task as an advancement of the sciences that would prove useful in solving the problems of a Europe-wide transition into socialism, which they saw, if not as inevitable, at least as highly likely. But as fascism reared its head in Germany and throughout Europe, the younger members of the Institute saw the necessity for a different kind of Marxist Scholarship. Beyond accumulating knowledge relevant to an orthodox Marxist line, they felt the need to take the more critical and negative approach that is required for the maintenance of an integral and penetrating understanding of society during a moment of reaction. This could be described as the politically necessary transition from Marxist positive science to Critical Theory.

In parallel to this, Cedric Robinson has identified a Black Marxist tradition, including people like C.L.R. James, Walter Rodney and W. E. B. Du Bois, who have opened Marxism to the study of race. In the postwar period, the New Left and new social movements gave rise to intellectual and political currents which again challenged orthodox Marxism. These include Italian autonomism, French Situationism, the Yugoslavian Praxis School, British cultural studies, Marxist feminism, Marxist humanism, analytical Marxism and critical realism.

References

External links

Lukács ''What is Orthodox Marxism''
(1919) {{Marxist and communist phraseology Economic ideologies Eponymous political ideologies Marxist schools of thought * Sociological theories Types of socialism