Group biographies are nothing new (ask Plutarch), but they are having something of a moment, and the history of socialism offers a rich vein of possible subjects. Christina Morina’s new book, The Invention of Marxism, translated by Elizabeth Janik, provides a “group portrait” of the eight men and one woman who are said to have invented Marxism.

Marxism, of course, takes many different forms. The variety purportedly invented here is the first stable form of Marxism after Marx, the variant of Marxist socialism that became a dominant European presence in the thirty years or so between Karl Marx’s death in 1883 and the beginning of the Great War. Morina calls this “Marxism” sans phrase, but, given that diversity, I refer to it here as “classical Marxism.” (“Second International Marxism” would also have been a close synonym.)

Classical Marxism, so understood, is connected with, but distinct from, the writings and activism of Karl Marx himself. It is variously, in Morina’s characterization, “a school, a worldview, a weapon, a doctrine for explaining the world, and a program for changing it.” And it is portrayed here as the creation of the nine protagonists who together form its “founding generation.” Listed in ascending date of birth, they are Jules Guesde (1845–1922), Karl Kautsky (1854–1938), Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932), Victor Adler (1852–1918), Georgi Plekhanov (1856–1918), Jean Jaurès (1859–1914), Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), Peter Struve (1870–1944), and Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919).