Who put Hegel back into Marxism?

Nicholas Devlin

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: There is a consensus in the literature that the Marxism of the Second International (1889-1916) lacked philosophical sophistication and that understanding of Marxism’s Hegelian origins was lost soon after Karl Marx’s death, only to be recovered with the emergence of Western Marxism in the 1920s. This article challenges this consensus, urging revision of the basic outlines of the intellectual history of Marxism. It begins by sketching two ways contemporary scholars understand the Hegel-Marx connection. It then shows that these views were anticipated before World War I in the work of Max Adler. Against the view that Hegel was “put back into Marxism” in the 1920s or 1970s, then, this article maintains that there have always been sophisticated as well as simplifying accounts of the Hegel-Marx connection.

Keywords: Marxism; Hegel; Max Adler; Karl Marx; intellectual history (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B14 B24 P2 P3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2026-03-02
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Published in Review of Politics, 2, March, 2026. ISSN: 0034-6705

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