This interpretation has been popular among Western Marxists and academics, notably Marshall Berman, who references the Praxis group in his major works.

These Soviet actions, while strengthening control over Eastern Europe, alienated many Western Marxists.

Many Western Marxists still deny that the experience of Eastern bloc countries has any direct relevance for the future planned performance of Western economies following their transformation into socialism.

There has been a considerable fashion for functionalist accounts among Western Marxists, since an apparently more elegant intellectual apparatus than those of orthodox instrumentalists can be constructed.

Western Marxists have commonly (but not exclusively) worked as professional academics; philosophers, sociologists, political scientists, literary critics, and so on.

Western Marxists have thus elaborated often-complex variations on the theories of ideology and superstructure, which are only thinly sketched in the writings of Marx and Engels themselves.

Within Marxism these criticisms are mirrored by the criticisms of socialist humanists, Western Marxists, Autonomist Marxists and other similar thinkers.

The value-form school has become very popular especially among Western Marxists who are not economists.

The term was used in the 1960s particularly in Germany and Austria, among others by Western Marxists writing in the tradition of the Frankfurt School and Austromarxism.

Yet while trying to emphasize Communist theory over Stalinist practice, most Western Marxists admit they cannot ignore events in Eastern Europe.