List of Marxist theorists

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The purpose of this list of Marxist theorists is to classify and summarize people who have dealt intensively with Marxism and developed it further through the publication of important writings , according to their main areas of interest and currents . This allocation is based on research and is partly controversial.

founder

  • Karl Marx (1818–1883), philosopher, economist and journalist; Critic of civil society and political economy
  • Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), German politician, entrepreneur, philosopher and historian; influential writings on scientific socialism

Early Marxists

Social democracy

Left Social Democrats, Austromarxism and the Marxist Center

Right social democrats, revisionism and ethical socialism

Mensheviks and Russian revisionists / reformists

  • Pawel Axelrod (1850–1928), small business owner, publicist and co-founder of Russian social democracy; Co-editor of Iskra ; War opponents and theorists of the left within the Mensheviks
  • Nikolai Berdjajew (1874–1948), religious and political philosopher; Supporter of “Legal Marxism”, a specific form of revisionism in Russia; later turning away from Marxism and turning to Neo-Kantianism; finally attempt to unite Marxism and Russian Orthodox Christianity; Co-founder of Christian existentialism
  • Sergei Bulgakow (1871–1944), Russian economist, philosopher (Neo-Kantianism) and Orthodox theologian; important contributions to the debate on the development possibilities of capitalism in Russia between the Legal Marxists, the Narodniki and Lenin; turned away from Marxism at the turn of the century and devoted himself to idealism and religion
  • Nikolai Kondratjew (1892–1938), Russian revolutionary, economist and professor; Student of Tugan-Baranowski; as founder of the economic institute, participation in the first five-year plan and advocate of the NEP ; former proponent of the cyclical business cycle theory ( Kondratjew waves ) as well as critic of the theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall ; was murdered in the course of the Stalin purges
  • Julius Martow (1873–1923), Russian revolutionary and publicist; Spokesman for the Mensheviks
  • Peter Struve (1870–1944), economist and philosopher; Main exponent of legal Marxism; 1898 author of the RSDLP program ; Advocate of stage theory ; later supporter of the White Army
  • Michail Tugan-Baranowski (1865–1919), economist and historian; Theorist of legal Marxism and supporter of Bernstein and marginal utility theory ; Minister of Finance of the People's Republic of Ukraine at the end of 1917 ; Work on Marx's reproduction schemes and on crisis theory (disproportionality)
  • Vera Sassulitsch (1849–1919), Russian revolutionary (initially Narodniki, later Marxist) as well as co-founder of Russian social democracy and Marxist author; corresponded with Marx and Engels special meaning for the Marxist debate is the so-called Sassulitsch letters to

Anti-revisionist left

Clara Zetkin (left) with Rosa Luxemburg in 1910

communism

Soviet Marxism

Trotskyism

Maoism

  • Bob Avakian (* 1943), American communist politician and important theoretician of Maoism
  • Charles Bettelheim (1913–2006), Marxist economist and sociologist, leading theorist on the paradigm of " auto-centered development "
  • Enver Hoxha (1908–1985), Albanian politician and 1944–1985 head of state of Albania ; 1978 break with the PRC and Maoism
  • Mao Zedong (1893–1976), Chinese politician and revolutionary, 1949–76 head of state of the PR China ; combined Marxism-Leninism with Chinese practice

Titoism

Council communism

Neo-Marxism and the New Left

  • Rudolf Bahro (1935–1997), German philosopher and politician, well-known dissident of the GDR, criticized the system with his work "The Alternative"
  • Ernst Bloch (1885–1977), German philosopher, combined socialism with Christianity, the best known work is The Principle of Hope
  • Rudi Dutschke (1940–1979), German sociologist, spokesman for the student movement in the 1960s, an important member of the SDS
  • Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), Italian philosopher and politician, is considered to be one of the innovators of Marxism. With his reflections on the subject of hegemony, he decisively developed Marxist theory. The main work is the prison notebooks
  • Pietro Ingrao (1915-2015), Italian journalist and politician (KPI)
  • Christof Kievenheim (1946–1978), German sociologist and theoretician of Eurocommunism
  • Leszek Kołakowski (1927–2009), Polish philosopher, historian and publicist; Founder of the Polish school of " Humanistic Marxism "; Works on Spinoza, the young Marx as well as Christianity and atheism
  • Karl Korsch (1886–1961), German philosopher and Marxist theorist, one of the decisive innovators of Marxism in the first half of the 20th century
  • Hans-Jürgen Krahl (1943–1970), German philosopher and activist of the 1968 movement
  • Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991), French sociologist and philosopher
  • Georg Lukács (1885–1971), Hungarian philosopher and literary scholar, is considered to be a innovator of Marxist philosophy
  • Karin Priester (1941–2020), German historian and political scientist
  • Rossana Rossanda (* 1924), Italian intellectual and writer
  • Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), French writer and philosopher
  • Adam Schaff (1913–2006), Polish philosopher and politician (KP); after turning away from Marxism-Leninism, he was first a representative of “Humanist Marxism” around Kołakowski, later a representative of “ Ecumenical Humanism”; tried to reconcile Sartre's existentialism with Marxism
  • Fritz Sternberg (1895–1963), German economist, Marxist theorist and socialist politician, analyzes of imperialism, capitalism and fascism, critic of Stalinism
  • Bruno Trentin (1926–2007), Italian trade unionist and politician

Frankfurt School

Theodor W. Adorno (front right) with Max Horkheimer (left) and Jürgen Habermas (back right) in Heidelberg, 1965
Axel Honneth at the German Sociology Congress 2008

Operaism

Post-Marxism

World system theory

Marxist feminism

According to disciplines

Marxism and the question of women

  • August Bebel (1840–1913), leader of the German labor movement and co-founder of the SPD ; Opponents of the mass strike ; Work: Woman and Socialism (1879)
  • Karen Horney (1885-1952), was a German-American psychoanalyst, studied in 1906 as one of the first women in Germany Medicine and distanced himself later in her work feminist of Sigmund Freud from
  • Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai (1872–1952) was a Russian revolutionary who found herself at odds with Lenin, especially when it came to questions about the importance of women and sexuality
  • Rosa Luxemburg , see above
  • Adelheid Popp (1869–1939), Austrian women's rights activist and socialist politician, founder of the proletarian women's movement in Austria
  • Clara Zetkin , see above

historian

Manfred Weißbecker 2007
Edward P. Thompson 1980
Ellen Meiksins Wood 2012

Archaeologists and ancient historians

  • Vere Gordon Childe (1892–1957), Australian-British archaeologist and archaeological theorist, he coined the term Neolithic Revolution
  • Arthur Rosenberg (1889–1943), German ancient historian who was ostracized because of his party affiliation, taught Ancient History and published on the German Empire and the emergence of the Weimar Republic
  • Geoffrey de Ste Croix (1910–2000), British ancient historian, did research in particular on Greek history

Sociologists and economists

Geographers

Psychology and psychiatry

Freudo Marxism

Marxist oriented psychoanalysts

Ethnopsychoanalysis

Frankfurt School

Cultural-historical school

Critical psychology

Schizoanalysis

Other psychologists and authors of psychological literature oriented towards Marxism

psychiatry

pedagogues

Legal theory

  • Wolfgang Abendroth (1906–1985), German resistance fighter against NS, political scientist and legal scholar
  • Eugen Paschukanis (1891–1937), Russian lawyer and legal philosopher

philosophy

  • Hans Heinz Holz (1927–2011), German philosopher, university professor and communist activist
  • Herbert Hörz (* 1933), German philosopher and science historian
  • Domenico Losurdo (1941–2018), Italian philosopher, historian with a focus on historical revisionism and communist activist
  • Robert Steigerwald (1925–2016), German philosopher and communist activist

Agronomy

  • Theodor Bergmann (1916–2017), German agricultural scientist who worked on agricultural policy and the history of the international labor movement

See also