The ‘Crisis’ of East-European Marxism. Objective Conditions or Actual Practice (The Case of Czechoslovak Marxism)

0579409 - FLÚ 2024 RIV eng A3 - Přednáška/prezentace nepublikovaná
Růžička, Jiří
The ‘Crisis’ of East-European Marxism. Objective Conditions or Actual Practice (The Case of Czechoslovak Marxism).
[Facing the Abyss: An Epoch of Permanent War and Counterrevolution. Historical materialism annual conference /19./. London, 10.11.2022-13.11.2022]
Způsob prezentace: Přednáška
Pořadatel akce: Historical Materialism Journal
URL akce: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ieDbhmqeFVbAj-BT79QjTID8nI_Ghw0p/view 
Grant CEP: GA MŠMT(CZ) EF18_053/0016929
Institucionální podpora: RVO:67985955
Klíčová slova: Marxism * Czechoslovakia * post-Stalinism * praxis * objective conditions
Obor OECD: Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology

In the second half of the 1950s, Czechoslovak Marxism slowly began to liberate itself from the hitherto dominant Marxism-Leninism, opening up the horizons for a conception of Marxism that would be able to cope critically with the prevailing trends of contemporary philosophy. The problem of the human being and human “essence” was a part of these trends, but for Czechoslovak Marxists it also represented a perspective through which they aimed to liberate themselves from the oppressive shackles of Marxist orthodoxy. The centrality of the humanist theme was so fundamental throughout East-European Marxism that one of the Marxist currents of the time, Marxist humanism, is often identified with the entire intellectual development of post-orthodox Marxism in the Eastern Bloc. But nothing can be further from the truth – alongside the aforementioned Marxist humanism, there was also techno-optimism and dialectical determinism. Although all the currents unanimously affirmed Marx’s thesis of the non-existence of an immutable human essence, all of them tried to specify what is characteristic of human beings, especially in relation to purely physical and biological entities, but also what makes it possible to think of the mutability and historical determination of this human “essence”. With some simplification, we can say that they all found this in creative human activity – practice (“praxis” in their terms), i.e. the activity of objectification. But while Marxist humanists focused on this activity itself, whose moments and overall form they attempted to elaborate, dialectical determinists focused on the objective conditions of such practice – dialectically grasped laws. At this point, however, Czechoslovak Marxism seems to have become stuck in a circle, from which it could not find a way out. For even Marxist humanists were aware that practice was “not hanging in the air” and needed an explanation of its own conditions. Nevertheless, these “prior” conditions were understood again as practice, but now as fixed, objectified one. In my paper I aim to analyze this circle in which Czechoslovak Marxism moved, and which can be formulated roughly as follows: “The essence of man as a species-being is the creative activity of objectification into the external world. This activity, however, requires objective conditions for its existence, which are again only already objectified, ‘fixed’ (but not unchangeable) human practice”. More specifically, I want to ask how this circle can be broken, or if breaking of it is necessary at all (i.e. whether it is a vicious circle or what might be called a good circle). At the same time, I would like to raise the question whether the “crises” of East-European Marxism (and Marxism more generally) in the 20th century also have their origins precisely in the (in)ability to solve the problem posed above, and whether the classic question of primacy is raised again in this dilemma – primacy no longer understood in the sense of whether being or consciousness (matter or thought) is primary, but in the sense of whether actual practice or its objective conditions are primary.
Trvalý link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0348318