Almost 70 years after the Communist manifesto, Marxism was becoming popular with many people around the world. In order to gain more support for Communism, the Soviet Union was formed, and several other nations followed suit. But some Marxists believed that Communism had lost sight of the original ideals of the communist movement. These thinkers condemned apologists for the Soviet government and opposed the spread of Communism internationally.
Frankfurt School of thought was a group of Marxist intellectuals who established a new form of Marxism. Their leading figures include philosophers Max Horkheimer and Walter Benjamin; sociologists Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, and Wilhelm Reich; and psychoanalyst Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno. This group had a great influence on 20th-century social theory.