Karl Korsch and the Lost Futures of European Marxism

Karl Korsch was one of the most brilliant figures of interwar German Marxist culture before it was shattered by the rise of Nazism. His death in 1961 came just before the New Left began to rediscover his contribution to Marxist theory.

In histories of Marxism, Karl Korsch’s name is often linked with that of Georg Lukács. Two Central European intellectuals, from Germany and Hungary, respectively, Korsch and Lukács were both radicalized by the impact of World War I and aligned themselves with Russia’s October Revolution and the Communist International that was formed in its wake.

In 1923, the two men published works that sought to give revolutionary Marxism a more elaborate philosophical content: Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy and Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness. The response in