- April 04, 2022
By Christina Morina
Translated by Elizabeth Janik
Published by Oxford University Press (2023)
Christina Morina’s illuminating book focuses on the first generation of Marxists who turned the work and ideas of one social theorist into one of the most powerful transnational political movements in modern history. This group portrait features Jules Guesde, Victor Adler, Jean Jaurès, Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, Georgi Plekhanov, Rosa Luxemburg, Peter Struve, and Vladimir Lenin, who discovered Karl Marx as young adults and then dedicated themselves to interpreting and applying his thought. The Invention of Marxism shows us how an idea transformed the lives of nine young activists, who aspired to change the world.
“Morina’s 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.” – Madoc Cairns, Times Literary Supplement
“The book is highly readable and accessible, perhaps surprisingly so for a work that started life as a German professorial dissertation (credit also to the translator, Elizabeth Janik).” – Andrew Bonnell, Jacobin
“Morina’s group biographical approach paints a convincing and nonjudgmental portrait of this founding generation.” – Anson Rabinbach, Contributions to the History of Concepts
“Morina offers an original portrait of Marxism’s invention, one that encourages us to reconsider the role of the ‘moderates’ in the history of European socialism.” – Peter E. Gordon, The Nation