1001Philosophers

Most Famous Marxism Philosophers

Marxism is a body of philosophical, political, and economic theory developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the mid-19th century, and elaborated by their successors over the following century and a half. Its central claims include the materialist conception of history, the analysis of capitalism as a system of class exploitation, and a vision of communism as the resolution of class antagonism. Marxist thought has shaped revolutionary movements, social democratic politics, sociology, history, and literary criticism worldwide. It encompasses many schools, including Leninism, Trotskyism, the Frankfurt School of critical theory, structural Marxism, and analytic Marxism. As a research tradition it remains influential in the humanities and social sciences.

Philosophers in this tradition

  • Jean-Paul Sartre 1905 – 1980 · French

    Jean-Paul Sartre was a 20th-century French philosopher, playwright, novelist, and political activist, the leading public exponent of existentialism in the post-war period. His m...

  • Karl Marx 1818 – 1883 · German

    Karl Marx was a 19th-century German philosopher, economist, historian, and revolutionary socialist whose work founded the tradition of thought that bears his name. With Friedric...

  • Friedrich Engels 1820 – 1895 · German

    Friedrich Engels was a 19th-century German philosopher, social scientist, and revolutionary, the closest collaborator of Karl Marx and a co-founder of the tradition of thought t...

  • Theodor Adorno 1903 – 1969 · German

    Theodor W. Adorno was a 20th-century German philosopher, sociologist, musicologist, and a leading figure of the first generation of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. His ...

  • Herbert Marcuse 1898 – 1979 · German-American

    Herbert Marcuse was a 20th-century German-American philosopher and a leading figure of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, particularly in its American period. His major wo...

  • Max Horkheimer 1895 – 1973 · German

    Max Horkheimer was a 20th-century German philosopher and sociologist, the founder of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt and the central organising ...