The Invention of Marxism

Christina Morina is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Bielefeld. Her research focuses on major themes in nineteenth and twentieth century German and European history, especially World War II, the Holocaust and bystander history, political and memory cultures in Germany since 1945, the history of Marxism, and the history of historiography. In 2017, she published her second monograph Die Erfindung des Marxismus: Wie eine Idee die Welt eroberte. She is also co-author of Zur rechten Zeit: Wider die Rückkehr das Nationalismus (with Norbert Frei, Franka Maubach und Maik Tändler, 2019) and co-editor of Das 20. Jahrhundert erzählen: Zeiterfahrung und Zeiterforschung im geteilten Deutschland (with Franka Maubach, 2016) as well as Probing the Limits of Categorization: The Bystander in Holocaust History (with Krijn Thijs, 2018).

• PROLOGUE: Marxism as a Generational ProjectI SOCIALIZATIONBorn in the Nineteenth Century: Family InfluencesAdolescence and Its Discontents: Emerging WorldviewsBeating the Drum: Literary InfluencesII POLITICIZATIONPaths to Marxism I: London, Paris, Zurich, Vienna (1878-1888) Translating Marxism: Guesde and JaurèsStar Students: Bernstein and KautskyTheory and Practice: Adler's Belated MarxismPaths to Marxism II: Geneva, Warsaw, St. Petersburg (1885-1903) The Social Question as a Political Question: Plekhanov's Turn toward MarxThe Social Question as a Question of Power: Struve and LeninEngagement as Science: LuxemburgIII ENGAGEMENTOn Misery, or the First Commandment: The Radical Study of Reality Miserable Living: Depicting Proletarians and PeasantsMiserable Labor: The Proletarian World of WorkOn Revolution, or the Second Commandment: Philosophy as Practice Revolutionary ExpectationsRevolution at Last? Dress Rehearsal in St. Petersburg, 1905/06CONCLUSION: From Marx to Marxism: Fieldworkers, Bookworms, and Adventurers

Morinas pen-portraits - fine-grained, deftly interlinked - are superb. Forgotten figures, such as Adler and Struve, are coaxed back into the sunlight, famous ones - Lenin, Kautsky, Luxemburg - reimagined