Second International Marxism, German Social Democracy, Austro-Marxism:
Selected Secondary Bibliography

Compiled by Ralph Dumain

Books

Second International Marxism

Bronner, Stephen Eric. Socialism Unbound. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001. (1st ed: New York; London: Routledge, 1990.)

Cole, G. D. H. A History of Socialist Thought. Volume 3. The Second International, 1889-1914. London: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1953. (Series of 5 “volumes” published as 7, 1953-1958[?])

Joll, James. The Second International, 1889-1914. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1955.

Kołakowski, Leszek. Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth, and Dissolution. Volume 2. The Golden Age; translated from the Polish by P. S. Falla. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. Contents of vols. 1-3. See also review:

Wartofsky, Marx. “The Unhappy Consciousness: Leszek Kolakowski’s «Main Currents of Marxism»,” PRAXIS International, issue 3 / 1981, pp. 288-306.

German Social Democracy

Bonnell, Andrew G. The People’s Stage in Imperial Germany: Social Democracy and Culture 1890-1914. London; New York: Tauris Academic Studies; New York: Martin’s Press (distributor), 2005.

Grebing, Helga. The History of the German Labour Movement: A Survey; abridged for the English ed. by Mary Saran, translated by Edith Korner, with a chapter on foreign policy by Mary Saran. London: Wolff, 1969. (Rev. ed. Leamington Spa, Warwickshire; Dover, NH: Berg Publishers, 1985.)

Lidtke, Vernon L. The Alternative Culture: Socialist Labor in Imperial Germany. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Miller, Susanne; Potthoff, Heinrich; comps. A History of German Social Democracy from 1848 to the Present, translated from the German by J. A. Underwood. Leamington Spa [Warwickshire]; New York: Berg [distributed by St. Martin’s Press], 1986.

Pierson, Stanley. Marxist Intellectuals and the Working-Class Mentality in Germany, 1887-1912. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Rogers, H. Kendall. Before the Revisionist Controversy: Kautsky, Bernstein, and the Meaning of Marxism, 1895-1898. New York: Garland, 1992.

Schorske, Carl E. German Social Democracy, 1905-1917: The Development of the Great Schism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.

Tudor, H. & J. M., eds. Marxism and Social Democracy: The Revisionist Debate, 1896-1898. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Karl Kautsky

Donald, Moira. Marxism and Revolution: Karl Kautsky and the Russian Marxists, 1900-1924. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993.

Geary, Dick. Karl Kautsky. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987.

Kautsky, John H. Karl Kautsky: Marxism, Revolution & Democracy. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1994.

Salvadori, Massimo L. Karl Kautsky and the Socialist Revolution, 1880-1938, translated by Jon Rothschild. London; New York: Verso, 1990.

Steenson, Gary P. Karl Kautsky, 1854-1938: Marxism in the Classical Years. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978. (Reprinted with new preface, 1991)

Eduard Bernstein

Gay, Peter. The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein’s Challenge to Marx. New York: Columbia University Press, 1952.

Steger, Manfred B. The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism: Eduard Bernstein and Social Democracy. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Austro-Marxism

Austro-Marxism, texts translated and edited by Tom Bottomore and Patrick Goode, introduction by Tom Bottomore. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1978. (A primary, not a secondary work.)

Blum, Mark E. The Austro-Marxists, 1890-1918: A Psychobiographical Study. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1985.

Gruber, Helmut. Red Vienna: Experiment in Working-Class Culture, 1919-1934. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Rabinbach, Anson, ed. The Austrian Socialist Experiment: Social Democracy and Austromarxism, 1918-1934. Boulder: Westview Press, 1985.

Georgi Plekhanov (Russian Marxism)

Baron, Samuel H. Plekhanov in Russian History and Soviet Historiography. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995. (Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies; no. 23)

Baron, Samuel H. Plekhanov: The Father of Russian Marxism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1963.

Great Britain

Johnson, Graham. Social Democratic Politics in Britain 1881-1911. Lewiston, Queenston and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002. See also review by John S. Partington.

Pierson, Stanley. Marxism and the Origins of British Socialism: The Struggle for a New Consciousness. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 1973.

Socialism in the United States

Lloyd, Brian.  Left Out: Pragmatism, Exceptionalism, and the Poverty of American Marxism, 1890-1922. Baltimore; London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.  See also review:

Dumain, Ralph. “The Ins and Outs of Lloyd’s Left Out” (2003).

Articles in Books

Colletti, Lucio. “Bernstein and the Marxism of the Second International,” in From Rouseau to Lenin: Studies in Ideology and Society; translated by John Merrington and Judith White (New York; London: Monthly Review Press, 1974), pp. 45-108.

Journal Articles

Arato, Andrew. “The Second International: A Reexamination,” Telos, no. 18, Winter 1973-74, pp. 2-52.

Ferguson, Kathy. “Class Consciousness and the Marxist Dialectic: The Elusive Synthesis,” Review of Politics, 42 (October 1980), pp. 504-532.

Jacobitti, Edmund E. “Labriola, Croce, and Italian Marxism (1895-1910),” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 36, No. 2, (April-June 1975), pp. 297-318.

Bibliographies & Web Links

On Other Sites

A Marx Bibliography (Andrew Chitty)

Revolutionary Reading Guide by Chris Wright

Emancipatory Social Thought: A Bibliography
by James Herod, May-June 2002

A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, 2nd. ed., T. B. Bottomore et al

Marxists Internet Archive
The largest digital library of Marxist & related literature on the web. Multilingual.

On This Site

Neo-Kantianism, Its History, Influence, and Relation to Socialism: Selected Secondary Bibliography

Vienna Circle, Karl Popper, Frankfurt School, Marxism, McCarthyism & American Philosophy: Selected Bibliography

British Marxism in Philosophy, Science, and Culture Before the New Left: Essential Historical Surveys

Salvaging Soviet Philosophy (1)

Marx and Marxism Web Guide

Note: This bibliography is obviously lopsided. This is a result of my particular research interests, which involve getting an overview of these topics, with an eye to their intellectual history. There are areas within this overall subject matter which are huge in themselves, e.g. Rosa Luxemburg, Rudolf Hilferding, Russian Marxism, Italian Marxism.