Co-founder of Western Marxism, the German philosopher who challenged Marxist orthodoxy with Marxism and Philosophy
“If we get a few more of these Professors spinning out their theories, we shall be lost.” — Zinoviev at the 5th Comintern Congress, 1924, attacking Korsch and Lukács
German Marxist philosopher and revolutionary who, alongside Lukács, laid the foundations of Western Marxism. In Marxism and Philosophy (1923) he applied the materialist conception of history to Marxism itself, arguing for the revolutionary recovery of the Hegelian dialectic, a move that drew fierce denunciation from the Comintern. Served as Justice Minister in the 1923 Thuringian workers' government and as a KPD Reichstag deputy before his expulsion as a left-oppositionist. Fled the Nazis for American exile, where his scholarship left a deep imprint on Brecht, Benjamin, and the Frankfurt School.
Career Timeline
- 1906–1910Studies law and philosophy at Munich, Geneva, Berlin; doctorate in law, University of Jena
- 1912–1914Legal research in London; joins the Fabian Society
- 1914–1918German Army service — refuses to carry weapons; awarded the Iron Cross twice for bravery
- 1917Joins USPD; elected delegate to soldiers' soviet
- 1920Joins KPD with the USPD left wing; lecturer at University of Jena
- 1923.3Publishes Marxism and Philosophy; becomes target of fierce Comintern criticism
- 1923.10–11Justice Minister, Thuringian workers' government — collapses after 27 days under Reichswehr intervention
- 1924–1928KPD Reichstag deputy; delegate to 5th Comintern Congress
- 1926.4Expelled from KPD; forms the Resolute Lefts (Entschiedene Linke) opposition faction
- 1933Flees Germany the night of the Reichstag fire; passes through Denmark and England
- 1936–1961US exile — Tulane University, Institute for Social Research; teaches Marxism to Brecht
- 1938Publishes Karl Marx; deeply influences Benjamin's Arcades Project
- 1950Ten Theses on Marxism Today — declares break with orthodox Marxism
Marxism and Philosophy and the Recovery of the Hegelian Dialectic
Published in 1923, Marxism and Philosophy is Korsch's masterwork and, alongside Lukács's History and Class Consciousness, the founding text of Western Marxism. Korsch applies the materialist conception of history to Marxism itself, analyzing how Marxist theory came to forget its own relationship to its historical conditions. He argues that the "orthodox" Marxists of the Second International (Kautsky, Mehring, and others) treated Marxism as a "pure science," effectively discarding the dialectical principle that Marx and Engels had rescued from Hegelian idealist philosophy. These orthodox Marxists insisted Marxism had nothing to do with philosophy, and on this point they found unwitting agreement with bourgeois philosophy professors. Against this, Korsch contends that Marxist theory is the "real expression" of the proletarian class struggle and that the dialectical unity of theory and practice is the lifeblood of revolutionary Marxism. The "principle of historical specification" (the methodological insistence that all social categories must be grasped in the specific form they take in a given historical epoch) became the hallmark of Korsch's thought, elaborated more systematically in his Karl Marx (1938). The 1923 book was a radical attempt to reintegrate the history of Marxism into the history of philosophy, and it provoked Zinoviev's public denunciation at the Fifth Comintern Congress in 1924. In the 1930 second edition, Korsch added a fundamental critique of Leninism, sealing his break with Communist orthodoxy. The work deeply influenced the Frankfurt School, Brecht, and Benjamin, and was rediscovered by the New Left in the 1960s.