Critical Dictionary of Marxism
The Critical Dictionary of Marxism (French: Dictionnaire Critique du Marxisme ) (KWM / DCM) is a conceptual historical dictionary. In the - eight-volume - German edition and in the - one-volume - second French edition, it deals with 470 terms that are of important importance for Marxism. The German edition was published in eight volumes by Argument-Verlag from 1983-89 .
The French original was by Georges Labica and Gérard Bensussan; the German translation also edited by Wolfgang Fritz Haug . Over 60 authors were involved in the French version of the dictionary and almost 40 in the German translation.
Its title alludes to the historical-critical dictionary by Pierre Bayle . According to the understanding of its editors, it is “not only a work on Marxism, but also a Marxist work”. It does not want to present Marxism as a “unified, closed system of doctrines”, but with its “incoherences and conflict”.
The KWM was created in France with the participation of philosophers, historians, economists and other scientists. The first edition appeared in France in 1982, and in 1983 the first volume was published in German translation. The other volumes in German followed the second French edition, published in 1984, which was enlarged by approx. 70 keywords (to 470) compared to the first.
The starting point for the keywords were the classic texts by Karl Marx , Friedrich Engels and Lenin . The work of Antonio Gramsci was also used on a larger scale. The attempt was made to work out different applications of individual terms. For individual terms, the history of development was followed up to the present day - with a strong focus on developments in Western European countries.
The current state of the discussion was dealt with primarily on the basis of French literature. Wolfgang Fritz Haug initially planned to supplement the French accent of the work with German aspects in the form of supplement volumes. However, the scope of the work went beyond the originally planned framework, which ultimately prompted Haug to publish the more international HKWM , which has been published since 1994.
Years of publication of the volumes
- Volume 1: Dependency - Confederation (1983)
- Volume 2: Caesarism to Functionary (1984)
- Volume 3: Genre to Jewish question (1985)
- Volume 4: Cadets - Lysecism (1986)
- Volume 5: Machism to Owenism (1986)
- Volume 6: Paris Commune to Romanticism (1987)
- Volume 7: Purge to Trotskyism (1988)
- Volume 8: Superstructure to collapse theory; Supplements and Register (1989)
Web links
- Overview in the German National Library
- Reviews by Horst Handke in the yearbook for economic history , 1988/1 (PDF; 1.0 MB) and 1991/3 (PDF; 2.4 MB)
- All volumes are provided as PDF by the Berlin Institute for Critical Theory