The Influence of Marxism 1880 – 1914

By the 1890s labour movements not linked to socialism were as common in the Anglo-Saxon regions – Britain, Australia, the USA – as they were rare outside it. Nonetheless in those countries too Marxism was of some significance, though less so than in continental Europe. Nor, especially in the USA, should we underestimate the importance of a mass of immigrants from Germany, tsarist Russia and elsewhere, who often brought Marxist-influenced ideologies with them to the new world as part of their intellectual baggage. And nor should we underestimate the movement of resistance to "big business" during this period of acute social tension and ferment in the USA, which made a number of radical thinkers receptive to, or at least interested in socialist critiques of capitalism. One thinks not only of Thorstein Veblen but of progressive, centrally placed economists like Richard Ely (1854–1943) who "probably exerted a greater influence upon American economics during its vital formative period than any other individual". For these reasons the USA, though developing little independent Marxist thinking itself, became, rather surprisingly, a significant centre for the diffusion of Marxist writings and influence. This affected not only the Pacific countries (Australia, New Zealand, Japan) but also Britain, where the small but growing groups of Marxist labour activists in the 1900s received much of their literature – including not only Marx and Engels but also Dietzgen – from the Chicago publishing house of Charles H. Kerr.

Eric Hobsbawm

1917 - 2012