Marxism, in its diverse twentieth-century manifestations, belonged to the most powerful political ideas of the modern age. By the late nineteenth century, it had captured the imagination of wide sections of the organized working class across Europe.1 It became a governmental ideology in the Soviet Union after the successful Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and after 1945, the Red Army ensured its presence as governmental ideology across Eastern Europe.2 In the context of the Cold War, Marxism became a global force, with many anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist movements adopting Marxist perspectives—often under the influence of the Soviet Union. But Marxism did not only radiate where Communism ruled. It also proved attractive to a range of social protest movements in Western Europe during the second half of the twentieth century, especially those broadly on the left that were sceptical of and sought to overcome the bipolar world order of the Cold War.
Going back to the interwar period, undoubtedly the Bolshevik Revolution cast a long shadow across Europe. Its reception oscillated between model and threat, fascination and horror. Fascists used the repulsion with Marxism and Communism to win support and justify their respective regimes of terror.3 The Communist left sought to emulate the Bolshevik success and increasingly saw the Soviet Union as the motherland of revolution showing the only possible way towards Communist redemption. Western Marxism developed in discussion with Soviet developments and Western Marxists, Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats and Anarcho-Syndicalists alike, developed the theoretical and political positions that allowed multiple Marxisms to blossom and develop over the twentieth century.4
Each and every Marxism takes as its starting point the works of Karl Marx, even if some are critical of aspects of Marx’s writings.5 They could represent their critique as being in line with Marx who had famously claimed not to be a Marxist, warning of the tendency of an all-too-rigid ideologization of his work. Nevertheless, there is a long history of intellectual debates surrounding the issue of how to interpret Marx correctly.6 The revisionism controversy within German Social Democracy was an early culmination of those debates before the First World War.7 In the interwar period, Communists developed Marxism–Leninism into an increasingly rigid orthodoxy later extended to Stalinism. Outside the world of Communism, Marxist socialism found a leading theoretician in Karl Kautsky who was also one of the key critics of Leninism.8 Many West European intellectuals were attracted to Marxism in the interwar period and helped to develop it further. Among the most influential we could name Communists, such as Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukács, and Social Democrats, such as Otto Bauer.9 Western Marxism had lots of points of tension with Leninism in the Soviet Union, but both also remained dialogically connected.10
Overall, from the nineteenth century to the present day there never has been a benchmark Marxism that was a unifying credo across all those calling themselves Marxists.11 At best, there have been core ideas common to many of those Marxisms, such as the belief in the scientific foundations of Marxist teaching, materialism, the critique of capitalism and its relations of production, the historic mission of the working class, alienation and exploitation as well as internationalism. Ideal-typically, it makes sense to differentiate between an orthodox Marxism–Leninism in Eastern Europe and a more heterodox Western Marxism that was more democratic, more critical of forms of economic determinism and more open towards a recognition of cultural factors.12 It was the heterodox nature of Western Marxism that allowed it to renew itself over the course of the twentieth century and develop an important influence in a left-wing milieu which comprised a range of diverse social protest movements.13 In particular, the neo-Marxism of the 1960s developed the Western Marxisms of the interwar period further.14 In the historical culture of Western Europe, unorthodox Marxism played an influential role.15 Marxist-inspired historical narratives acted as transmission belts between general debates about Marxism and its interpretation as legitimation for social protest.16 A variety of Marxisms therefore continued to belong integrally to the kaleidoscopic characteristics of left-wing social protest movements in Western Europe during the Cold War and beyond.17
Marxist political ideas, interpretations and controversies formed a framework for interpreting the world that had an impact on how social groups interacted.18 This framework was never stable but continued to develop picking up new intellectual cross-currents that in turn influenced interactions and cultural social practice, including festivities, myths, clothing, forms of popular culture and the languages of social protest. At the heart of a Marxist-inspired social movement culture stood mutual exchange processes that exchanged values, ideas and emotions and brought those forth in the process of interaction.19 Marxism thus was not only an ideology but also a habitus and a system of practical social relations that influenced the life world of protest movements across Western Europe.20
The life worlds of Marxism can be subdivided into several strands. Outside of the world of party communism, many Marxists on the left remained highly critical of the democratic deficits of Communism. Anarcho-Syndicalists and Socialists/Social Democrats were strongly influenced by the writings of Marx and other Marxists, but these movements on the left also were critical of aspects of Marxist thinking and merged Marxism with a variety of other ideological inspirations. Anarcho-syndicalism remained a strong political force in many European countries, not only Spain, up until the end of the interwar period.21 And Socialist as well as Social Democratic parties began abandoning Marxism fully only during the early Cold War period, and even then, many retained an affinity to Marxist thinking.22 Beyond the organizational realm of the classical labour movement, new Marxist-inspired protest movements emerged already in the interwar period around issues of unemployment, war, imperialism and poverty.23 The interwar period saw massive economic and political crises which threatened the liberal-bourgeois political order.24 If it did not bring about any successful revolutions outside of the Soviet Union, it ensured Marxisms a wide reception. Marxist ideas, Marxist political rituals and its suggestive inclusion of the masses appealed to broad social groups across Europe.25 Thus, several anti-imperialist movements, the proletarian women’s movement, movements promoting workers’ culture and workers’ education as well as the peace movement all picked up intellectual impulses from Marxism. Before the late 1920s, many of those movements included both Social Democrats and Communists.26 Both the deep historical roots of social protest movements and the influence of Marxism upon them have been, by and large, ignored by scholarship on the interwar period.27 Especially, the manifold networks that existed between Marxist-inspired political parties, trade unions and protest movements remain virtually unexplored—this is true for key personnel, ideological influences and cultural practices alike.28
The end of the Second World War saw the extension of Communist influence in Eastern Europe and another crisis of the liberal-bourgeois order in Western Europe.29 In 1945, capitalism was widely associated with fascism and war, and this strengthened Marxist and Marxisant historical interpretations that underpinned left-wing protest movements. Whilst these crises did not result in an overthrow of liberal capitalism, they ensured the survival of Marxist ideas and cultures well into the post-Second World War period.30 The legacies of anti-fascism had a major role to play in that remarkable resilience of Marxism in the Cold War world of Western Europe.31 Marxists could point to their finest hour and their sacrifices in the battle against fascism. The aura of anti-fascist resistance gave Marxism a renewed lease of life and attraction in the post-Second World War Europe.32 It allowed Communist parties in France, Italy, Belgium and, at least temporarily, in the Netherlands and Sweden, to rise to mass membership parties that had significant successes in the early post-war elections in Western Europe. They forged powerful alliances with mighty trade union movements.33 Socialist parties, in which Marxism had at least some influence, celebrated spectacular election victories in Britain and Norway in 1945. They significantly influenced the post-war political agendas in their respective countries.34 Even where anti-Communism was strong, as in West Germany and Denmark, various left-wing political movements were influenced by Marxist ideas. These included a variety of anti-capitalist movements as well as the nascent peace movement.35
The Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956 provoked much dissent in West European Communist parties and a departure of a more unorthodox Marxist thinking from the orthodoxies of really existing socialism in Eastern Europe. The New Left was to develop an attractive Marxist framework for the new s...