ABSTRACT
The theories of Marx exerted a great influence, particularly on the development of German socialism. At the end of the nineteenth century there was a break between the two tendencies within the German Social Democratic Party, one being more orthodox and the other revisionist. The latter saw itself as simply weeding out some clear excesses in Marx’s teachings, such as the theories of surplus value, impoverishment, concentration and catastrophe, and it also wanted the Social Democrats to take part in parliamentary work in cooperation with other parties and carry out reforms within the framework of the existing society. As time went by, more and more of the disagreements between the two groupings disappeared, particularly after the Russian Revolution, when even the orthodox group clearly distanced itself from Lenin and his minority interpretation of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
