Western Marxism is a body of various Marxist theoreticians based in Western and Central Europe, in contrast with philosophy in the Soviet Union. György Lukács's History and Class Consciousness and Karl Korsch's Marxism and Philosophy, first published in 1923, are often seen as the works that inaugurated this current of thought. The phrase "Western Marxism" was coined by Maurice Merleau-Ponty at a much later date, 1953 .