Western Marxism

Western Marxism is a term coined by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and used to describe a wide variety of thinkers in Western Europe who made contributions to Marxist Theory after the rise of Communism in Russia. Georg Lukács's History and Class Consciousness and Karl Korsch's Marxism and Philosophy, first published in 1922 and 1923 respectively, are often seen as the works which inaugurated this current. It's proponents have mostly (though not exclusively) been professional academics. Western Marxists have tended to see Marx as a philosopher before all else and have stressed the Hegelian and humanist elements of his thought (although the term has been applied to the anti-humanist Louis Althusser as well). In lieu of economic analysis, Western Marxism emphasises cultural issues by reference to the theories of ideology and superstructure, which are only thinly sketched in the writings of Marx and Engels themselves. The relation of Western Marxism to 'official' Soviet Communism has varied: some thinkers have been heavily critical while others have defended it.