Marxism

During the 1880s and 1890s Marxism became doctrine in many European labor and working-class political organizations. Its scientism accorded with the spirit of the age. Its prediction that capitalism cannot escape economic crisis seemed congruent with the so-called Great Depression of 1873–1896. Marxism spread through the German Social Democratic Party after the chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, instituted the antisocialist laws (1878), and in the wake of the party's legalization (1890) became its official ideology (1891). Although in other countries Marxism was less prominent, by around 1900 it was certainly the most influential left-wing ideology in Europe.

The main intellectual basis of doctrinal Marxism was Engels's version of Marx. Engels embedded Marx's analysis and critique of capitalism in a general view of history, which he in turn embedded in an ontological theory. As a theorist, Marx himself was mainly concerned with understanding the "economic law of motion of modern society" (Capital, 1st ed. preface), and after 1845 he rarely thought in more general terms. But in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880) and other writings, Engels portrayed Marx as the discoverer of a general theory of history, which Engels called "the materialist conception of history" or "historical materialism" (terms never used by Marx). Engels also contended that "scientific socialism" includes a theory of reality in general, according to which reality is material and dialectical (conflict-driven). Marx himself never put forward such a theory.

In Engels's version, Marxism claimed to be an all-embracing science. Whereas other socialisms are utopian, Marxism has the measure of the world as it is. In his 1883 "Speech at Marx's Graveside," Engels declared that Marx had discovered "the law of development of human history," just as Darwin had (allegedly) discovered the law of development of organic nature. In an age enamored of natural science, such claims were the way to popularity. But the result was to downplay Marx's early concern with human activity or praxis and his critique of estrangement. Relatedly, Engels misrepresented Marx's relation to Hegel.