Marxism absorbed and was shaped by each nation’s preexisting modes of thought.

Evidence

In Russia Marxism came into existence as a critical trend within populism, in Italy in the form of a syncretism with positivist sociology, in Austria—and Bulgaria—in tandem with the thought of Lassalle. Second International Marxism was a heterodox affair, with numerous tendencies competing for political attention, and nothing approaching a finished body of doctrine. Marxism was necessarily superimposed on preexisting modes of thought which it incorporated rather than displaced, and which were regarded as being intrinsic to the new outlook… . — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1091

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s broader thesis that Marxism was never a finished doctrine but a living amalgam — relevant to how Du Bois could simultaneously be a Marxist and a Black radical.