From Marx’s death until the October Revolution
The first Marxist parties and movements formed during Karl Marx’s lifetime in a period that extends from the publication of Anti-Dühring by Friedrich Engels (1877) until German social democracy drew up its Erfurt Program (1891).
This phase also witnessed the establishment of the Second International (1889), an association of workers’ organisations from various countries. Moreover, the period was marked by the spread of Marxism at the international level via popular works such as Engels’ manuscript Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. It also saw the canonisation of certain writings that brought together Marx and Engels’ school of thought and developed it into a more or less coherent worldview; however, this contradicted Marx’s own stance and thought. Clearly, in the run-up to the period stretching from 1914 to 1917, a considerably diverse number of currents existed at the international level that claimed Marx’s ideas for themselves.