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43-564: The Godesberg Program eliminated the party's remaining orthodox Marxist policies and the SPD redefined its ideology as freiheitlicher Sozialismus ( liberal socialism ). With the adoption of the Godesberg Program, it renounced orthodox Marxist class conflict and economic determinism . The SPD replaced it with an ethical socialism based on humanism and emphasized that it was democratic, pragmatic and reformist. The most controversial decision of

86-897: 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 . 1961 West German federal election Third Adenauer cabinet CDU/CSU Fourth Adenauer cabinet CDU/CSU – FDP Federal elections were held in West Germany on 17 September 1961 to elect

129-507: 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. Karl Kautsky is recognized as the most authoritative promulgator of orthodox Marxism following

172-768: A bureaucracy led by Joseph Stalin . 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 , North Korea , Vietnam , Cuba and others were " deformed workers' states " which needed political revolutions while critically defending these countries from imperialist aggressions. Anti-revisionists (which includes radical Marxist–Leninist factions, Hoxhaists and Maoists ) criticize

215-574: A coalition between the CDU/CSU-FDP. In 1962 he had to announce a fifth cabinet: The FDP had temporarily left the coalition after the secretary of defense, Franz Josef Strauß (CSU), had ordered the arrest of five journalists for publishing a memo detailing alleged weaknesses in the German armed forces (known as the Spiegel scandal ). In 1963 Adenauer finally retired; Ludwig Erhard took over his position as head of

258-502: A common business or class background, and that their decisions will reflect their business or class interests". There have been a number of criticisms of orthodox Marxism from within the socialist movement. From the 1890s during the Second International, Eduard Bernstein 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

301-426: A degree of economic planning . Some argue that this was an abandonment of the classical conception of socialism as involving the replacement of the capitalist economic system. It declared that the SPD "no longer considered nationalization the major principle of a socialist economy but only one of several (and then only the last) means of controlling economic concentration of power of key industries" while also committing

344-558: 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 historical materialism are associated with this phase of orthodox Marxism. Rosa Luxemburg , Hal Draper and Rudolf Hilferding are prominent thinkers in

387-472: A political ideology grounded in ethical appeals. Nonetheless, they adhered to the Marxist analysis put forward by social democrats such as Bernstein that socialism would arise as a result of the evolution of capitalism. In this sense, the Godesberg Program has been seen as involving the final victory of the reformist agenda of Bernstein over the orthodox Marxist agenda of Karl Kautsky . Labor unions had abandoned

430-445: A shared conception of capital and labour . Their fortunes therefore rose and fell together. Trotskyism and Left communism 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 and anti-revisionism . Impossibilism is a form of orthodox Marxism that both rejects the reformism of revisionist Marxism and opposes

473-606: 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 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

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516-486: Is on the contrary strengthened by the development of social reforms". 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

559-481: 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

602-469: The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) adopt a gradualist approach, taking advantage of bourgeois 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 . Such " revisionists " were reviled by

645-557: The absolute majority of CDU and CSU, but, considering his age and his long term as chancellor, there were big doubts if he should lead the country in a fourth term. The absolute majority was lost by the conservative union due to the gains of the liberal FDP under Erich Mende . From 1961 on, the Union, SPD and FDP established an electoral "triopoly" in the Bundestag that would last until 1983 . Konrad Adenauer remained Chancellor , building

688-504: The working class and abandoning remaining Marxist policies aimed at destroying capitalism and replacing them with policies aimed at reforming capitalism. The Godesberg Program divorced its conception of socialism from Marxism, declaring that democratic socialism in Europe was "rooted in Christian ethics, humanism , and classical philosophy ". The Godesberg Program was a major revision of

731-488: 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 , have tended to be open to influences orthodox Marxists consider bourgeois , such as psychoanalysis and the sociology of Max Weber . Marco Torres illustrates

774-797: 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 in 1914, whose outbreak caused Kautsky's influence to wane and brought to prominence the orthodoxy 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

817-463: The Godesberg Program was its declaration stating that private ownership of the means of production "can claim protection by society as long as it does not hinder the establishment of social justice". By accepting free-market principles, the SPD argued that a truly free market would in fact have to be a regulated market to not degenerate into oligarchy . This policy also meant the endorsement of Keynesian economic management, social welfare and

860-554: 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 . In contrast, the anti-revisionist tradition criticised official Communist parties from

903-877: 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. 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

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946-424: The SPD to an economic stance which promotes "as much competition as possible, as much planning as necessary". The decision to abandon the traditional anti-capitalist policy angered many in the SPD who had supported it. After those changes, the SPD enacted the two major pillars of what would become the modern social-democratic program, namely making the party a people's party rather than a party solely representing

989-612: The SPD's policies and gained attention from beyond Germany. At the time of its adoption, the stance on the Godesberg Program in neighbouring France was not uniform. While the French Section of the Workers' International was divided on the Godesberg Program, the Unified Socialist Party denounced the Godesberg Program as a renunciation of socialism and an opportunistic reaction to the SPD's electoral defeats. The Godesberg program

1032-467: 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

1075-651: The context of the Berlin Crisis and the erection of the Berlin Wall. For the first time, the SPD announced a Chancellor candidate who was not chairman of the party: Willy Brandt , the Governing Mayor of West Berlin . After the building of the Berlin Wall , he gained more and more sympathy, while chancellor Konrad Adenauer was criticised for not showing enough support for the people of West Berlin. Adenauer had to save

1118-545: The death of Friedrich Engels in 1895. As an advisor to 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. Kautsky

1161-461: 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: [O]rthodoxy refers exclusively to method. It

1204-402: 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

1247-631: The members of the fourth Bundestag . The CDU/CSU remained the largest faction, winning 242 of the 499 seats. However, the loss of its majority and the All-German Party losing all its seats led to the CDU having to negotiate a coalition with the long-term junior coalition partner, the Free Democratic Party , leading to a demand for long-term chancellor Konrad Adenauer to leave office in 1963, halfway through his term. The election campaign occurred in

1290-521: The old demands for nationalization and instead cooperated increasingly with industry, achieving labor representation on corporate boards and increases in wages and benefits. After losing federal elections in 1953 and 1957, the SPD moved toward an American-style image-driven electoral strategy that stressed personalities, specifically Berlin mayor Willy Brandt . As it prepared for the 1961 federal election , it proved necessary as well to drop opposition to rearmament and to accept NATO . The Godesberg Program

1333-637: The opposite perspective as having abandoned the orthodox Marxism of the founders. 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 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

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1376-450: The orthodox Marxist tradition. 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

1419-491: The orthodox Marxists for breaking with Marx's thought. The emergence of orthodox Marxism is associated with the latter works of Friedrich Engels , such as the 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

1462-416: 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 Eduard Bernstein 's informal faction of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. According to Rosa Luxemburg, under reformism "[capitalism] is not overthrown, but

1505-494: 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

1548-697: 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,

1591-544: 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. Kautsky and to

1634-577: 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: Orthodox Marxism is contrasted with revisionist Marxism as developed in post-First World War Social Democratic parties . Some writers also contrast it with Marxism–Leninism as it developed in

1677-580: 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

1720-433: Was a science which revealed the laws of history and proved that the collapse of capitalism and its replacement by socialism was 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

1763-417: Was also notable because the party abandoned and rejected Marxist theories of class conflict and revolution. This was consistent with Eduard Bernstein 's Marxist revisionism . In adopting the Godesberg Program, the SPD dropped its hostility to capitalism which had long been the core of party ideology and sought to move beyond its old working class base to embrace the full spectrum of potential voters, adopting

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1806-566: 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 is a theory derived from classical Marxism which reasons that policy makers in government and positions of power tend to "share

1849-570: Was superseded in 1989 by the Berlin Program, resolved at the party congress held on 20 December 1989 in Berlin . This German history article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Orthodox Marxist Orthodox Marxism is the body of Marxist thought which emerged after the deaths of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the late 19th century, expressed in its primary form by Karl Kautsky . Kautsky's views of Marxism dominated

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