Karl Korsch

Letter written in 1926 Naples, on 28th October 1926 about Karl Korsch's platform

Ten Theses on Marxism Today (1950)

by Karl Korsch

1. It no longer makes sense to ask to what extent the teaching of Marx and Engels is, today, theoretically acceptable and practically applicable.

2. Today, all attempts to re-establish the Marxist doctrine as a whole in its original function as a theory of the working classes social revolution are reactionary utopias.

Leading Principles of Marxism: A Restatement

Marxism versus Sociology

by Karl Korsch

WHAT is the relationship between Marxism and modern sociological teaching? If we think of the sociology originated by Comte, and first named by him, as a special section in the system of constituted sciences, we shall and find no link between it and Marxism.

A Non-Dogmatic Approach to Marxism

by Karl Korsch

(This text is an answer to the criticism Korsch recieved from "orthodox" "Marxists" both of the Leninist variety,and the "western" variety who believed they had "broken" with "soviet Marxism",on the publication of Marxism and Philosophy.)

Until very recently, neither bourgeois nor Marxist thinkers had much appreciation of the fact that the relation between Marxism and philosophy might pose a very important theoretical and practical problem. For professors of philosophy, Marxism was at best a rather minor sub-section within the history of nineteenth-century philosophy, dismissed as 'The Decay of Hegelianism'.

Marx's book on capital, like Plato's book on the state, like Machiavelli's Prince and Rousseau's Social Contract: owes its tremendous and enduring impact to the fact that it grasps and articulates, at a turning point of history, the full implications of the new force breaking in upon the old forms of life.

Instead of discussing Marxism in general I propose to deal at once with some of the most effective points of Marxist theory and practice. Only such an approach conforms with th: principle of Marxian thought. For the Marxist, there is no such thing as 'Marxism' in general any more than there is a 'democracy' in general, a 'dictatorship' in general or a estate' in general.