By V. G. Kiernan
When Marx died in 1883 and Engels, less than twenty years before the Great War, in 1895, they left the outlines of a “Marxist” philosophy to be carried forward by disciples of their own like Kautsky, and by new men in new lands like Plekhanov and then Lenin in Russia, or Labriola in Italy. The Marxism held its ground against “revisionist” criticism in the international socialist movement before 1914, but more securely in appearance than in reality because most of its upholders were too much concerned to defend it as an established creed, too little to develop it and keep abreast of changing times.
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