Praxis: neuspjeh kritičkog marksizma
Praxis: the failure of revisionist Marxist critical thought

Author(s): Marko Zubak
Subject(s): Political Philosophy, Political history, Marxism, Post-War period (1950 - 1989), History of Communism, Historical revisionism
Published by: Hrvatski institut za povijest
Keywords: Praxis; dissidents; revisionist Marxism; socialist Yugoslavia;
Summary/Abstract: This essay, on the example provided by the Yugoslavian philosophical journal Praxis and a group of sociologists and philosophers gathered around it, points to certain characteristics inherent in the formation of critical thought within communist society. Revisionist Marxism, just like the very system it sought to cleanse from within, contained many contradictions within itself. This text emphasizes a deconstruction of the prevailing relations between the conditions which generally enabled the emergence of critical thought of the ‘praxist’ type on the Yugoslavian social-political scene and its ultimate failure. Deeply entrenched Titoism, a general philosophical orientation as well as an elitism tied to it and a non-transparent relation toward the broader social classes, an anti-national line of criticism, utopian language and Marx as the main and basic starting point – these were all conditions which helped Praxis maintain its position of a relatively independent subject through an entire decade. All these, moreover, were reasons why Praxis’s criticism, however original and humanistic it may have been, was unsuccessful in generating the all-encompassing social transformation for which it called.

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