ABSTRACT
The impact of the First World War, and even more, the Russian Revolution brought the long-existing crisis of Marxism and the Western labour movements into violent eruption. Karl Korsch returned to a systematic, critical analysis of 'doctrinaire Marxism' on the publication of Karl Kautsky's The Materialistic Conception of History in which the author himself abandoned his earlier 'orthodox' point of view. Korsch's fresh concern with the relation between Marxism and philosophy sprang not from a specific interest in philosophy but rather from the need and desire to free the prevailing Marxism from its ideological and dogmatic encumbrances. Marx's critique of political economy was thus at once a programme of proletarian revolution towards the abolition of social class relations. Moreover, because Marx's main interest at the time or his own revolutionary activity was centred on the creation of a political-revolutionary party, V. L. Lenin's emphasis on the party as against the proletariat appeared to be harmonious with revolutionary Marxism.
