Classical Marxism: Socialist Theory and the Second International

by David Renton

Cultural Writing. Political Science. The purpose of this book is to address a recent claim that socialist theory can be renewed on the basis of 'classical Marxism', the socialist politics of the Second International in the period between the death of Karl Marx and the Russian Revolution of 1917. This claim is approached, with both sympathy and some distance, through a series of biographical chapters that address the lives and arguments of important figures within the movement: Paul Lafargue, Tom Maguire, Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and V.I. Lenin.

Genres: Politics

184 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2002

About the author

David "Dave" Renton is a British academic historian and barrister.

He was born in London in 1972. His great aunt was the marxist historian, Dona Torr. His grandfather was the shoe designer Kurt Geiger. One uncle was an activist in Equity, the actors' trade union, while another was the Conservative MP Tim Renton, Baron Renton of Mount Harry. He was educated at all-boys private boarding school Eton College where he became a member of the Labour Party. He then studied history at St John's College, University of Oxford.

Renton received his PhD from the University of Sheffield for a thesis on fascism and anti-fascism in Britain after the Second World War ( The attempted revival of British Fascism: Fascism and Anti-Fascism, 1945-51 ) that was turned into the book Fascism, Anti-Fascism and the 1940s . He also became an academic historian and sociologist, teaching at universities including Nottingham Trent, Edge Hill and Rhodes University and Johannesburg University in South Africa.

Since 2009 Renton has practised as a barrister at Garden Court Chambers in London and has represented clients in a number of high-profile cases, especially concerning trade union rights and the protection of free speech.

He was for twenty-two years (1991-2013) a member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and he has published over twenty books on fascism, anti-fascism, and the politics of the left.

Reviews

[Titus Hjelm · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise overview of some central and less-known thinkers and doers of the Second International. The book arises from a need to respond to the debate about the direction of socialist thinking after the fall of 'actually existing socialism'. Renton nicely illustrates the internal diversity of the Second International, especially its division into right, centre, and left factions, and their fates. The main message is that, according to Renton, Marxism, whatever else it may be, is always a philosophy of change--something that neither right-wing social democracy nor Stalin's 'Leninism' figured out. That's what makes it a living tradition. I've always been more interested in 19th century socialism and the founders, but this was a good, critical overview that swims against the current of 21st century mainstream historians stuck in Cold War mode.