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Hungarian Marxism can be seen as not simply a geographical term, but the name of a school. As such, it is more Hegelian, more dialectical, & more concerned with alienation than is Austro-Marxism. Alienation has two sources: (1) the failure to see societies in historical perspective, characteristic of the right, & (2) detotalization, the egocentrization of political thought in fanaticism, characteristic of the left. The main political project is the effort to find a concrete solution to the problem of alienation. Humanist Marxism, founded in the nonmaterialist part of Marx's thought, & serving a demystifying function, is the only alternative to turning Marxism into a new school of apologetics. W. H. Stoddard.

Marx and morality / Richard W. Miller -- Marx and morality : a reply to Richard Miller / Patrick Riley -- Marx and revolutionary virtue / Frederick G. Whelan -- On reading Marx politically / Sheldon S. Wolin -- On reading Marx apolitically / Stephen Holmes -- The storming of heaven : politics and Marx's Capital / Alan Gilbert -- Is there a Marxist theory of law? / Mark Tushnet -- Is there a Marxist theory of law? comments on Tushnet / Leon Lipson -- Iron law : why good lawyers make bad Marxist / Tom Gerety -- Reconsidering historical materialism / G.A. Cohen -- Marx's enterprise of critique / Peter G. Stillman -- Exploitation, freedom, and justice / Jon Elster

K. Korsch (Marxism and Philosophy, Halliday, F. [Tr], London, 1970) understood Marxism as a science epistemologically founded on social practice. Forms of knowledge & social structures were not autonomous & separable realities. Korsch's activism in the late 1920s involved rejection of both Leninism & social democracy. His critique of social democracy was grounded in its treating Marxism as a purely scientific system not grounded in a specific class, in its failure to see scientific knowledge as part of the forces of production, & in its reformist approach to the bourgeois state. His critique of Leninism was based on its treating the labor movement as needing to be led by a party holding a correct theory, rather than as the basis for the growth of theory in its concrete struggles. Central problems for him from this perspective were the critique of the trade-union movement as corporativizing the masses, & the failure of the council movement, through identification with Marx's Jacobinism & through failure to recognize the commune as a form capable of bourgeois content, such as it had been in the Middle Ages. This led him to seek a revision of Marxism based on the view that capitalism had achieved a stabilization of social conditions. Marxism, in his view, was, like all scientific knowledge, specific to a particular era. What is lost in this is recognition of the transcendental dimension of Marxism, the distinction between historical & logical levels of analysis. Korsch saw fascism as a new form of capitalist state for which Marxism had no valid analysis. Stalinism was seen as a similar system. The only answer, in Korsch's view, was an ultra-leftist advocacy of proletarian spontaneity. W. H. Stoddard.

For many years, Marxism was the frame of reference for the European workers' movement. It took the form of a millenarist faith & was embodied in large organizations; however, this orthodox Marxism lost its reason for existence when the Wc became integrated in modern society. The advent of Communist governments in Eastern Europe brought a new inspiration, but at the expense of intellectual degeneration; when it became a state religion, Marxism ceased being creative. The various forms of leftism that emerged in the 1960s are the last avatars of Marxism in the developed countries, but they have only a remote relationship with Karl Marx's doctrine. A similar process took place in the Third World, where Marxist-Leninism was absorbed by nationalism. Modified HA

A review essay on a book by: Howard J. Sherman, Reinventing Marxism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U Press, 1995). Aimed at making Marxist theory more unified & accessible to laypersons, Sherman presents a rebuilt Marxism that returns to its theoretical origins with economic relations at its base. He explains the dialectic, & attacks reductionism, introducing in its place a "relational approach," which maintains that society can be analyzed as a set of social relations. Sherman's application of method to economic issues is good, but he only provides a cursory discussion of social issues. His historical-relational method is used to explain the dialectic. The postmodern worldview is compared with Sherman's philosophic determinism, indicating that human agency does play a role in history. Overall, Sherman's work is praised as a useful tool for those seeking to understand the highest human aspirations of freedom, democracy, & socialism. T. Noland

In an attempt to understand revisionist Marxism & its relationship to current Soviet politics, the theoretical boundaries of authentic Marxism, revisionist, & post-Marxism are discussed & the evolution of communist ideology is traced, including socialist realism, real socialism, & perestroika (restructuring) of socialism. A theory of communist statism based on the structural control exercised by a statist ruling class over the state that is able to control the economy & other areas of culture is elaborated, concluding that Karl Marx's economic model fails in its attempt to explain communist statism as a sociopolitical formation; however, he is helpful in understanding the outcome of the struggle between capitalism & communism. W. Howard

Part of a review symposium on a book by John Holloway, Change the World without Taking Power: The Meanings of Revolution Today (London: Pluto Press, 2002). References.