Woltmann's Heterodox Marxism and Sorel's Heterodox Marxism Send Revolutionaries in Different Directions

Sorel published the works that would define his Marxist heterodoxy at about the same time that Ludwig Woltmann was putting together his own interpretation of Marxism. In that interpretation, Woltmann insisted that any comprehensive ontological “materialism” would necessarily include the “biological materialism” of Darwinism—from which he drew the racist consequences that were to influence the thought of the National Socialists of the twentieth century. Sorel’s heterodox Marxism, destined to have equally far-reaching sway, was fundamentally different from that of Woltmann. Both thinkers, each convinced that his thought was firmly rooted in the doctrines of Marx, led revolutionaries in radically different directions.

--A. James Gregor, Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 91.