Western Marxism
In his earlier work, Merleau-Ponty supported Soviet communism while remaining critical of Soviet policies and Marxism in general, adopting a skeptical stance which he termed Western Marxism. His reluctant endorsement of the Soviet show trials and prison camps was published as "Humanism and Terror" in 1947, though he would later denounce Soviet terror as being counter to the purportedly humanist aims of the revolution.