The Warsaw School of Marxism
The Warsaw School of Marxism

Summary/Abstract: This article concerns the Warsaw School of Marxism, which was created at the University of Warsaw after the Second World War and functioned simultaneously with the famous Warsaw School of the History of Ideas. The Warsaw School of Marxism was formed in the circle of Julian Hochfeld, a pre-war socialist who not only wanted to bring Marxism into the social sciences and culture in Poland but also to redefine it in order to use it to analyse socialist societies. Inspired by Hochfeld’s ideas, his pupils – including Zygmunt Bauman, Włodzimierz Wesołowski, Maria Hirszowicz, Jerzy Wiatr, Witold Morawski, and Aleksandra Jasińska-Kania – engaged in original reflection and research. Some of their studies came to be seen as milestones for sociology in Poland. The history of the school is presented here in the context of the social and political changes occurring in the Polish People’s Republic: Stalinism, the “Polish Way to Socialism” after 1956, and the breakthrough between the 1960s and 1970s. The history of the school is interesting in itself and can also serve to further an understanding of the dynamics of “real socialist” societies within the framework of totalitarianism.

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