Maximilien Rubel (10 October 1905, in Chernivtsi – 28 February 1996, in Paris) was an Austrian Marxist historian, humanist, and council communist.
Rubel was educated in law and philosophy in Vienna and Chernivtsi National University, the town of his birth and was influenced by the Austro-Marxist Max Adler.
In his encounters with Marxist members of the resistance movement in this milieu Rubel was reputedly astonished by the incoherence and confusion that surrounded Karl Marx and so-called "scientific" socialism.
It was Rubel who originally coined the term "marxologie" to refer to a systematic scholarly approach to the understanding of Marx and Marxism, which he saw as quite distinct.
Van recalls that, in addition to a re-reading of Marx, Rubel introduced the group to other "incorruptible and pitiless judges of their era" such as Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, thinkers who espoused "new sets of values, new reasons for living, new norms for acting, a new ethic.