You should judge—to that end you have been given your eyes and your understanding. . . . We humanists have all of us a pedagogic itch. Humanism and schoolmasters—there is a historical connection between them, and it rests upon psychological fact: the office of schoolmaster should not— cannot—be taken away from the humanist, for the tradition of the beauty and dignity of man rests in his hands. The priest, who in troubled and inhuman times arrogated to himself the office of guide to youth, has been dismissed; since when, my dear sirs, no special type of teacher has arisen.

—Settembrini, in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain

Since 1945, Yugoslavia has been in a state of constant and at times dramatic social change, regardless of the formal continuity of political leadership at the highest level. Indeed, the rapid progression in the past thirty years of substantive constitutional changes, and even of new constitutions, has been merely the formal expression of more far-reaching changes in general social structure. It is only natural, moreover, to expect that social changes of such magnitude should be accompanied by the erosion of old values and symbols and the articulation of new ones. But while the Yugoslav ruling political stratum has responded to structural change and dislocation in a relatively flexible manner and has even been responsible for many highly imaginative new approaches in the institutional sphere, its ability to respond to change in the sphere of cultural values has been somewhat less impressive. While the Party leadership did assume the early responsibility for destroying isolated aspects of the Stalinist theoretical system as part of its more profound restructuring of the Yugoslav polity, the task of formulating a new, integrated world-view adequate to the new concept of democratic, self-managing socialism fell to professional academics, philosophers and sociologists. Over the years, these theorists did indeed develop a new world-view, but one which rejected in its entirety the very core of the old ideological system which served as the basis for a highly authoritarian society, that paradoxical blend of metaphysics and coarse pragmatism known as “dialectical materialism.” The new world-view, based on a profoundly Marxist, humanist vision of man liberated from all forms of alienation, carried its proponents by its own internal logic from a critique of theory to a critique of practice—of the Party, bureaucracy, and social structure—within Yugoslavia. Resistance from traditionally-minded official sources only served to strengthen the resolve of the new critics to confront the pressing social issues of the day with a keener eye and with the total honesty that they felt befitted the intellectual in a socialist society.

Yet for all this Praxis, which became the mouthpiece of the Yugoslav Marxist-humanist intelligentsia, never did become— the claims of its detractors notwithstanding—the core of an outright oppositional political movement. Instead, the Praxis experience may perhaps more sensibly be viewed as a particularly vigorous reappearance of the classical intelligentsia, so important to the history of Eastern Europe in particular, in the modern context.

To appreciate the historical significance of the intelligentsia it may be useful to have reference to two alternative models of intellectual activity. In one model, characteristic of the “sociology of knowledge” school of analysis, the intellectual is seen in the more or less passive role of “guardian of truth,” whose separation from the sphere of social action is understood as being desirable both for the integrity of the intellectual and for the good of society as a whole.¹ A second model, more typically employed in historical analysis, presents the intellectual as dedicated by virtue of the historical context in which he lives to certain ideas of social justice and human dignity, which have been only incompletely realized in the course of his society's development and to whose realization he is committed.² On closer inspection, these models may in turn correspond broadly to two different types of societies: the first, to societies in which change is gradual or at least contained and where there exists a broad consensus about the pace and boundaries of change; the second, to societies where cultural development is for one reason or another permitted to run far ahead of changes in social structure and where inadequacies in the latter become increasingly intolerable with the passage of time. It is societies of the second type that are prone to give birth to intelligentsias, conscious collectivities of intellectuals that formulate and articulate the ideals of the age to the rest of society and urge their immediate realization. The institution which most adequately accommodates the role of the intellectual in the first type of society, in the modern age, is the university; for the intelligentsia which finds itself in the midst of profound processes of social change, a variety of forms can mediate between it and society at large—the circle, the journal, the newspaper, the political party, or even the conspiratorial organization—depending upon the diverse factors giving rise to the intelligentsia in each instance and upon the extent to which the intelligentsia has had the opportunity to develop as an independent social force.

Throughout their history, the subjective identity of the Praxis Marxists as intellectuals was an important factor in their self-definition with respect to the society in which they lived. As they were progressively excluded from officially sanctioned forums, their gaze turned inward and they became increasingly preoccupied with the question of the intelligentsia and its role in the postrevolutionary society. Their numerous writings on this theme testify to the depth of their concern and moreover offer us a valuable insight into their collective personality and goals. Therefore in this concluding chapter we shall discuss the Praxis view of the intelligentsia in the modern world and try to assess the effectiveness of Praxis itself as an institution of intellectual criticism in a socialist society.

The Concept of a Humanist Intelligentsia

The heightened importance of the “man of knowledge” in the contemporary world, Rudi Supek argues, is to a large extent the product of the growth of industrial society. While such societies may assume varied political forms, they exhibit certain common sociological characteristics such as the growth of the tertiary sector, the demand for higher qualifications in all occupations, the increased significance of research, and consequently the demand for increased levels of training and education. Education becomes a primary factor in social mobility.³ Lipset and Dobson connect similar observations with the further assertion that “certain features inherent in the role and social organization of intellectual life give rise to critical activity,” and that

the rising prestige of the institutions of knowledge production and creative intellectuals, along with the interdependence between these social units and other key institutional structures, leads to the rapid diffusion of critical ideas and values, thereby amplifying the impact of such activity.⁴

While this latter line of argument seems to account persuasively enough for the growth of intellectual dissidence in modern society, it does little to account for resistance to such movements of dissent—without which, indeed, words such as “dissent” and “criticism” would pertain only to empty categories.

Again, setting aside important differences in political structures, it is possible to argue that much of the critical initiative emanating from the university may be fundamentally at odds with the ethos, if not the goals, of industrial expansion, which, through its seemingly insatiable demand for ever higher levels of technical sophistication and training, has in Lipset and Dobson's view so enhanced the prestige of the university. The very “interdependence” of which Lipset and Dobson speak between “institutions of knowledge production” and “key institutional structures” may in fact constitute reason for pessimism, rather than optimism, about the future of intellectual dissent in the modern world.

One of the most common fallacies in the study of intellectual movements seems to lie in the simplistic assumption that the “intelligentsia” can be conceived of as a more or less homogeneous social category consisting of all people engaged in those professions which demand the application of mental, rather than physical, skills.⁵ In fact, no assumption can be more misleading. In the modern world the man of learning is as often the legitimator of accepted social values and practices as he is a skeptic; certainly in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union this is no less true than anywhere else. A corollary fallacy seems to be that the “intellectual” professions have a uniform tendency to generate critical intellectuals, regardless of the proximate concerns of each individual field of study. To be sure, the “democratic movement” in the USSR seems to provide grounds for such an assertion, drawing on professional scientists as well as on writers, artists, and scholars in the humanities. But to offer the Soviet intelligentsia as a paradigmatic case would be to overlook the very peculiarities of Soviet society—above all, the imposition of strict regulation in all fields of intellectual endeavor—which have generated an intelligentsia that has been able to focus on the very minimum conditions of all intellectual activity: the freedom of inquiry and expression.

With respect to Eastern Europe, however, François Fejtö has evidently extrapolated from the Soviet case, arguing that it is “the technological intelligentsia and the scientific and literary elite” which is the major force behind reform and economic development. Fejtö is thus led to reduce the goals of these distinct groups to the following oversimplified assertion:

The main argument of the revisionists, from the Petöfi Circle in Hungary to the Praxis group in Yugoslavia, and the Polish periodical Po Prostu to the Czechoslovak Lilerarny Noviny, is that neither the working class, nor its vanguard (the party), nor even the vanguard's vanguard (the “new class”), are equipped to manage a modern industrial society efficiently.⁶

For the Praxis Marxists, at least, efficiency is actually only a secondary concern, bowing before the larger issues of human fulfillment and equality. While they are certainly not alone in holding this conviction, the skepticism of the Praxis Marxists toward efficiency as a social value is considerably more marked than that of most intellectuals living in the neighboring countries of Eastern Europe. This fact itself doubtless reflects the unusual origins of Praxis Marxism as well as the unique nature of Yugoslav socioeconomic development with respect to the rest of the socialist world. At best a means to the higher goals of the elimination of misery and alienation for all men, efficiency—it is the Praxis contention—all too often takes the place of these ends in the minds of technocrat and bureaucrat alike, who view human beings as mere objects to be manipulated for the sake of higher production figures or for the ambiguous aim of “social control.” There is a sober awareness in Praxis theory that increased technological sophistication and industrial output are not in themselves sufficient conditions for the development of a more just and humane society, even though they may be vitally necessary for the achievement of the material abundance which can bring such a society closer to realization.⁷

In many Praxis essays the confrontation between the ethic of efficiency and the ethic of self-realization has been personified in a conflict between two categories of intellectuals—the technical intelligentsia and the humanistic intelligentsia. The former term seems to apply, in occupational terms, to natural scientists, engineers, managers, functionaries, and all those involved in the generation and application of techniques of manipulation and control—be it of the physical or of the human world. The “humanistic intelligentsia,” on the other hand, is composed of workers in the arts and humanities whose primary activity involves the articulation and evaluation of cultural symbols and the general quality of social life. Perhaps the most radical distinction between the two is made by Tadic, who focuses simultaneously on the social role and the nature of knowledge sought by each. The technical intelligentsia, he writes,

is situated in a social climate created by bourgeois society. . . . Its exact, rational knowledge is legitimized either on the basis of its application in immediate production and for technical ends, or of its useful commitment to the provision of various social services. . . . Being situated in a wage relationship similar to that of the bureaucracy, the natural scientific and technical intelligentsia serves the mechanism of industrial competition and social service, while attractive rewards and the nature of the work . . . make it indifferent toward all that happens in social life.

But “writers and philosophers,” Tadic continues,

are in a different position. Despite the peculiar type of rigor involved in its manner of thinking, this type of intelligentsia is “handicapped” by the fact that it cannot put its knowledge directly to profitable use. This is the source of its difficulty in achieving equal status and acknowledgment in modern society. . . . The role of writers and philosophers, in this sense, is primarily negative and destructive rather than positive and creative.⁸

Certainly in the historical context of industrializing and industrialized societies, this distinction between two intelligentsias—one positivist in outlook, the other by definition critical— is on the surface quite appealing. But on closer scrutiny it becomes untenable in this severe form. What sense can it make, for instance, of the scientist with a “social conscience” or the historian who writes textbooks celebrating the present? While such examples, to be sure, can be found in Western societies, the question becomes all the more pressing when we consider the problem of intellectual dissent in countries such as the Soviet Union. Indeed in that society, where the fields of the natural and precise sciences are most immune from the direct imposition of political standards, the scientific intelligentsia has been in the forefront of the dissident movement. As Lipset and Dobson observe, it was three physicists—Sakharov, Tverdokhlebov, and Chalidze—who in 1970 established the Moscow Committee for Human Rights in an attempt to bring some manner of coordination and unified purpose to the movement's often disparate activities.⁹ And as Sakharov himself tells us in his brief preface to Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom:

The views of the author were formed in the milieu of the scientific and scientific-technological intelligentsia, which manifests much anxiety over the principles and specific aspects of foreign and domestic policy and over the future of mankind. This anxiety is nourished, in particular, by a realization that the scientific method of directing policy, the economy, arts, education, and military affairs still has not become a reality.¹⁰

The almost naive faith expressed in this passage in the capacity of science to resolve the problems of the world is what many Praxis Marxists find most suspect in the claims of the technical intelligentsia. As Tadic points out, “the progress of technique and of science resting on technique is not equivalent to human progress.”¹¹ Životić, in particular, takes Sakharov to task for holding

a technocratic vision of the future founded on the belief in the unlimited power of science . . . [in which] the two superpowers will undertake an organized struggle for “geohygiene,” for a higher standard of living, for the solution of the famine problem, etc. . . . An affluent society might emerge but, in the framework of the existing bureaucratic structures, it would be a society without personal freedoms.¹²

In reply to Životić's latter contentions, it suffices simply to point to the adamant insistence of Sakharov and other like-minded Soviet intellectuals—scientists, for instance, like Zhores Medvedev, Tverdokhlebov, and others—on the freedom of thought, the elimination of censorship and police repression, and the exposure of Stalinism, in order to demonstrate their radical aversion to “the existing bureaucratic structures” and their commitment to individual freedom. The suspicion lingers, however, that Sakharov's advocacy of the freedom of thought is at least generically derived from his abiding belief in the power of science, and, what is more disturbing, that many of his scientific colleagues might well be content with a freedom of thought limited to the scientific community itself. For the mainstream of the “democratic movement,” however, the urge for the freedom of scientific inquiry seems to have merged with the strivings of other intellectuals to a point where the particular claims of each group have become nearly indistinguishable from the whole.

If sense is still to be made of the distinction between the “humanist” and “technical” intelligentsias, perhaps it should be sought not so much in the nature of the intellectual's professional interests as in the relationship of the intellectual to his labor. Any occupation, Supek stresses, is “technical” if it involves merely the application of a means or a method to a predetermined end defined independendy of the immediate producer. Indeed, he argues, “there are purely ‘technical occupations' in all the humanistic and social sciences, these occupations being defined by the limited nature of their research arrangements and the diverse application of scientific discoveries.” The decisive factor, he concludes, is the nature of the relation of the producing subject to the object, process, and outcome of intellectual production:

The humanist intelligentsia possesses a developed sense which links human creativity—regardless of whether it lies in the field of natural, social, or technical science—with the goals of that creativity, and accordingly it possesses a sense of personal responsibility in the formation of human conditions of life. The humanist intelligentsia has a certain “relation of craftsmanship” toward its work, which is to say that it takes account of all phases of production, conceptualization, conduct and application. . . . The technical intelligentsia, on the other hand, is a typical product of industrial society, a developed division of labor, a routine relationship toward one's own production. It does not ask itself about the totality of its production, but only about the phase for which it is immediately responsible . . . abandoning personal responsibility for the goals of the person who issues the orders, and concerned only with fulfilling the order according to norms of quality.¹³

Whether the scientist or the philosopher is more inclined to assume this sense of responsibility now becomes a secondary concern, for as we have seen, the issue can be argued either way under different social and political conditions. The hallmark of the “true intellectual” becomes the sense of obligation to examine ends as well as means and the refusal to be content with the greater sophistication of technique and method as the sole end of one's own activity.¹⁴ For the communist intellectual in particular, any other ethic would represent a betrayal of responsibility, an act of concession to those who possess the resources which enable them to impose their own goals on the rest of society. In Nebojša Popov's words, “to be undefined means to be on the side of the stronger.”¹⁵

By the same token, there is no inherent reason, in the Praxis view, why each member of the social organism in a socialist society cannot possess the critical consciousness characteristic of the humanist intelligentsia. Indeed the entire Praxis theory of socialism departs from the premise that the right of criticism is a necessary feature of any developed socialist society, for it is only by exercising this right that the individual, no matter what his place in the social division of labor, can begin to exercise his full powers and responsibilities as an autonomous decision-maker equal to the challenge of self-management in all areas of social life. This critical spirit, however, does not arise spontaneously nor under all social conditions. It is this important point, in fact, which is at the core of the Praxis critique of the situation of the Yugoslav working class. It would also be well, therefore, and completely in the spirit of the Praxis “critique of all existing conditions,” to observe with Karl Mannheim that “it is not until we have a general democratization that the rise of the lower strata allows their thinking to acquire public significance.”¹⁶

There are special circumstances, however, under which the effects of social structure on ideas can be reversed. One such circumstance is to be found in the existence of a strong, self-conscious intelligentsia which has assumed as its mission the preservation and articulation of the ideals of a social movement. In this situation, the intellectual can become the “living leaven that leads an economically conditioned revolt to consciousness of the class and historical mission of the proletariat”¹⁷—“the spark,” as Lenin might have put it. But what Lenin failed to understand, in his profound, organizationally motivated suspicion of the independent intellectual, was that the revolutionary intellectual cannot play this catalytic role for long with any significant degree of success without the essential preconditions of free thought and expression within the revolutionary movement itself. Otherwise, what may begin as a revolutionization of consciousness may end tragically in an educational dictatorship.¹⁸ The intellectual, like Sartre's writer, “gives society a guilty conscience,” revealing society to itself “as seen”¹⁹—but can do so only so long as those in power can afford the luxury of considering their own complicity.

Praxis as an Institution

To the casual observer, the ability of Praxis to have survived for over ten years in an increasingly hostile domestic environment must seem comprehensible only in the light of the remarkable courage and tenacity displayed by its individual contributors and the relatively open nature of the Yugoslav political system in the years between 1964 and 1975. It would certainly be impossible to deny the importance of either factor. Yet there is also little doubt that without strong bonds of personal friendship and a common awareness of the identity of their concerns—and of their fate—the Praxis Marxists would not have enjoyed such success in testing the limits of the Yugoslav system and would probably each have found his or her own individual efforts drowned quickly in a sea of personal tragedy. The face that they presented to the world was one of a fellowship of philosophers and sociologists—all powerful theorists in their own right and intellectually responsible only to themselves—who, while they must be read and understood individually, collectively compensated for each other's weaknesses, both personal and professional.

While it is possible to view the group as a whole as consisting of various roles, these roles were played naturally, without the prescribed behavior patterns and sanctions for deviance characteristic of the great majority of social institutions. There were those (such as Petrović, Kangrga, Tadić, Marković, Stojanović,

Krešić, and Grlić) who viewed themselves as dedicated primarily to the pursuit of philosophy, but for whom philosophy as a way of seeing the world made urgent demands on that world and on the philosopher as an individual; sociologists (such as Supek, Kuvaɩić, Popov, and Pešić) for whom the analysis of society cannot be approached independently of human perspectives and values; provocateurs (Stojanović, Grlić, Popov, Životić, and occasionally Kangrga) and men of caution (at various times, Supek, Vranicki, Marković, and Petrović); and not least importantly, those such as Danko Grlić whose faculty for wit and jest often enlivened discussions and cooled heated passions. Their diversity, to be sure, often generated very serious internal disagreements in theory and in practice, the latter often being manifested, for instance, in varying degrees of commitment to the student cause. By the same token, it was this very diversity which permitted their response to attacks on their common symbol— the journal Praxis—to be extremely flexible and at times evasive. Their peculiar unity of theory and practice, as much the result of a union of independent personalities and temperaments as of a unity achieved within each personality, was probably the most important key to the success of their common undertaking.

Thus if Praxis is to be thought of as a kind of social institution, an institution of social criticism, this was a very special kind of institution indeed. While there were always two individuals nominally designated as coeditors-in-chief of the journal, all important editorial decisions were made on the basis of strict collectivity at weekly meetings of the Editorial Board. And while certain individuals, particularly Gajo Petrović, may have invested far more personal effort and time in the journal than others to the point of experiencing a deep sense of personal identification with it, at no time was it possible to identify the journal with the views or personality of any single individual. For Praxis was an institution without leaders—or perhaps more accurately, an institution consisting only of leaders. It was an institution small enough to be based primarily on ties of personal friendship of long standing, one in which collaboration, free from jealousy and suspicion, was organic and spontaneous rather than enforced. It was an institution whose dogma consisted in the struggle against all dogmatism and whose chief object was to make itself superfluous by dissolving the concerns of the professional intellectual into the critical consciousness of the public at large.

Peter Gay's description of the nature of association among the philosophes of the French Enlightenment is remarkably applicable to the Praxis Marxists as well. He calls the philosophes a “philosophic family” who

did not have a party line, but . . . were a party . . . Moreover, harassment or the fear of harassment drove the philosophes to remember what they had in common and forget what divided them. The report of a book banned, a radical writer imprisoned, a heterodox passage censured, was enough. . . . Critics trying to destroy the movement only strengthened it.²⁰

Indeed, the Praxis Marxists, like the philosophes, were unquestionably at their best when under attack. Instead of lowering themselves to the level of everyday political declamation and insinuation, they insisted on maintaining a consistent tenor of reasoned and public discourse. To defend themselves against charges of making politically suspect and “alarming” assertions they took refuge in the argument that their statements were “only theoretical,” although as suggested in earlier discussions, their view of “theory” was a uniquely dynamic one, lending itself to flexible, if at times facile, interpretation. And certainly the persecution of a colleague, even for the expression of views with which they may have profoundly disagreed (as in the case of Mihailo Djurić), never failed to evoke among the Praxis Marxists a united front and a redoubled sense of common commitment. These various reactions may sensibly be viewed as mechanisms directed toward protecting the integrity of a common undertaking. When a collectivity begins to act in such a way, it becomes possible to speak in terms of institutional self-preservation.

In the above pages, however, it has often been asserted that Praxis was not only an institution, it was a political institution. If this is true, then it would seem appropriate to determine the political program advocated by the Praxis Marxists. And at this point we abruptly discover that Praxis had no single political program to offer. Some observers of the Yugoslav scene have in fact perceived the absence of such a prescription for action as a vital flaw. William Dunn, for instance, has spoken of “an inability among humanists to articulate a program which will reconcile and integrate self-management and some system for the cultural direction of socialist development.”²¹ On the other hand, it has been argued from within the Praxis group that for the Left to have a defined program would be for it to establish reified goals for the future which would then tend to dictate certain predetermined courses of action, creating a fundamental contradiction between the practice of the movement and that free activity which is “the substance of the new world” and the true goal of the Left as a social movement.²² Whichever view may be correct in the long run, it is well to point out that the longevity of Praxis itself was at least partially attributable to the fact that its adherents were never so insensitive to their immediate political environment as to attempt to present a common set of concrete political objectives, even if this had been possible. To do so would have been to divest themselves of their sanctuary in the realm of theoretical criticism and to step out irrevocably onto the slippery ground of politics as that art is understood by the practitioners of power.

This is not to say, however, that individual Praxis Marxists did not advocate specific changes in the world of political institutions. Stojanović and Tadic, for instance, repeatedly focused their attention on the Party as (normatively) composed of people who represent “the most advanced and resolute section” of the proletarian movement who “have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.”²³ It might be noted in this connection that neither Stojanović nor Tadic (and this is true of their colleagues as well) have embraced any notion of a pluralist or multi-party political system based on the concept of the direct representation of social interest. Indeed, this is most clearly the point at which the Praxis Marxists have explicitly distinguished themselves from Djilas's political thought.²⁴ Tadic, for instance, rejects the “institutionalized,” “petrified pluralism of bourgeois democracy” in the same breath as he rejects Stalinism: both, he maintains, assure the reign of reified political forms over and against the real political community.²⁵ Similarly, Stojanović's entire critique of group-dominated decision-making in the economic sphere certainly implies the rejection of pure pluralism as a structural principle as inconsistent with the basic goals of socialist democracy. Elsewhere he has observed that in a practical sense as well, multi-partism would generate a very tenuous political situation in Yugoslavia, since it would certainly result in the crystallization of national enmities along formal political lines and even legalize the formation of both pro-Stalinist and pro-bourgeois parties. Such an “interparty struggle for power in Yugoslavia,” he cautions, would result in political instability,

which would in turn imperil further democratization. . . . A multi-party system in Yugoslavia as it is today would most probably be only to the advantage of the most treacherous statist forces and [would] help them to strike a blow under the pretext of “saving” the revolution.²⁶

Indeed nowhere else than in their ideas about alternative political models is it so clear that the thought of the Praxis Marxists lies squarely within the bounds of communist political culture, although with the passage of time they did move perceptibly further away from positions acceptable to ruling elites. In the pre-1968 period, the Praxis Marxists tended to concentrate on more traditional—and, they felt, more fruitful—issues such as democratic relations and the presence of criticism and genuine working-class representation within the party itself. A Praxis editorial from 1968 was unambiguous on this score, reading in part:

We consider that outside of or alongside of a Marxist-communist ideological basis and perspective, outside of or alongside of the program of the LCY, there exists today no ideological-political force capable of safeguarding the integrity of this country. Secondly, the problem of socialism is not and cannot be in the dilemma of a one-party or multi-party system, but rather in the question of the character and role of the proletarian party.²⁷

After the crucial year 1968, the Praxis Marxists generally grew more openly critical of the Party, taking it openly to task for not having outgrown its authoritarian origins. By 1975, only Vranicki and the young Žarko Puhovski retained their Party membership, others having renounced it or having been deprived of it in the preceding years. Yet not even this bitterly disappointing experience led the Praxis Marxists to renounce all personal ties with Party officials or to deter many of them from their obsession with the concept of the Party, much less to embrace alternative modes of political organization. This latter reluctance was surely a function of the genuine skepticism of many Praxis thinkers toward all forms of institutionalized political activity as adequate vehicles for the free, creative, and critical spirit of human praxis. In their rejection of bourgeois liberalism as well as Party dogmatism in the name of the proletarian movement, they should perhaps be thought of not as deriving so much from the tradition of Nagy, Dubcek, and Djilas, but instead from that of such radical communist theorists as Lukács, Gramsci, and perhaps most of all, Rosa Luxemburg.²⁸

On the broader sociopolitical plane, the consistent and thorough realization of the goal of workers' self-management was the overriding passion of the Praxis theorists. Perhaps none of them has written so extensively and provocatively on this theme as Mihailo Marković, and a close examination of Marković's work reveals a very definite political program in this regard. Marković's proposal to create independent information centers for the formulation of decisional alternatives for self-managing units was briefly noted in preceding pages.²⁹ While the immediate goal of this innovation would be the democratization of economic decision-making, in the long term, in Marković's view, such impartial information centers would constitute an important step toward the systematic elimination of the sphere of professional, alienated political activity. In its broad outlines, his blueprint for the deprofessionalization and democratization of politics shares the same optimism, and some of the same faults, of Lenin's antibureaucratic realm of bookkeepers sketched out in State and Revolution. Marković's bookkeepers, to be sure, are the instruments of the cybernetic age. “All routine administrative operations,” he asserts,

including the analysis of information and the search for optimal solutions within some given programs, will be performed much faster and in a more accurate way by electronic computers. A considerable part of [the] bureaucracy would thus lose any raison d'être.

Yet these analytic functions, Marković emphasizes, can and must be subject to strict popular control:

Even today everybody could share in decision-making and management, and the present unlimited competences of professional politicians could be reduced to the activity of experts who analyze data, propose alternative solutions, and work out practical measures, leaving to elected members of self-managing organs to adopt vital decisions.³⁰

And in order to instill these decision-makers with a clear sense of value, as well as to counteract the dulling effect of the raw data that would be provided them, Marković furthermore proposes the establishment of critical study groups within each self-managing collective and at all levels of social decision-making— itself a striking attempt to universalize the institutionalization of criticism beyond the relatively narrow boundaries of the humanist intelligentsia.³¹

In more general terms, Marković seems to favor a Fabianesque global strategy of what might best be described as “creeping self-management.” While he warns that it would be a serious mistake to attempt to achieve the total democratization of a modern industrialized society overnight, it is possible to commit oneself, in his words, to

a series of continuous changes in all the micro-cells of society which taken as a whole could represent a discontinuous change of the total system. This has already happened once in history: the English bourgeois revolution was not made, but it nevertheless ended in 1688. Under the wing of feudal society, islands of the new bourgeois society were [permitted to] develop)—the free cities. Today the universities, tomorrow the factories, might similarly become the self-managing atoms from which the new democratic, socialist society will be constituted.³²

Marković's optimism, to be sure, should be tempered by the observation that democracy confronts different types of obstacles in industrial and educational settings. But irrespective of these differing contexts, democracy is predicated everywhere, in both East and West, on the cultivation of the questioning, critical mind. This consideration, rather than any specific program of action in the political sphere, is the most important contribution which the Praxis Marxists have to offer to democratic theory in general as well as to the development of socialism in Yugoslavia. As Supek cautioned in a 1972 newspaper interview,

when we talk about the relationship of philosophers and of the Praxis group toward politics, I would put the accent not on those activities which we perform as citizens who live in specific organizations . . . where we can be concerned about the practical problems of our system's functioning, but on problems of social consciousness in a socialist direction, for which we as intellectuals . . . are directly responsible.³³

Indeed when closely examined, even the “political” platforms advocated by thinkers such as Stojanović, Tadic, and Marković deal with institutional questions only insofar as institutions such as the Party or the “technocracy” infringe on the free development of a socialist culture adequate to the demands of the new society. No one more than Rudi Supek has articulated so clearly and persistently the need for a vigorous socialist culture. Supek's concern over the lack of a genuine “struggle of opinions” in the Pogledi period and his long-standing demand for self-management in the spheres of cultural production and distribution³⁴ formed the basis of his numerous Praxis essays on the problem of socialist culture. For him, this has been the central problem of socialism in the post-revolutionary stage. “The goal of socialist culture,” Supek wrote in an early article, “is to make man free.”³⁵ This socialist culture is distinguished above all by its critical content, which affirms future possibilities derived from the present as well as representing “a merciless analysis and condemnation of all forms of inhumanity and dehumanization.”³⁶ Such an understanding of socialist culture is inconsistent with a notion of “Marxist education” which, in Supek's words, “in the spirit of the theory of reflection, operates through the mechanism of conditioned reflex, [believing that] it is enough to repeat one thing constantly in order for people to adopt it, without any consideration of the critical relationship of the individual toward reality.”³⁷ It encourages instead what we might call, with Tadić, a “negative . . . ‘pedagogy'”³⁸ which cultivates the critical faculty and whose primary goal is to present the “student” with a total view of the world in which he lives. It calls for a science of society which discovers what is rational in human relations and which shatters ideological myths surrounding relationships of exploitation and power, rather than a science which complacently observes and describes in the blissful state of value-neutrality, absolving itself of all social responsibility.³⁹ And perhaps most importantly, it is a call for openness and dialogue in the sphere of culture in the place of bureaucratic rigidity and dogmatism. As Supek urges, “without the freedom of cultural action . . . it would be impossible to arrive at a conception of the new socialist culture and the new profile of man.”⁴⁰

To be sure, this approach to culture is itself thoroughly political in nature, although on a higher plane of politics than the everyday pursuit of political power. While it calls for autonomy in the creation and articulation of cultural values, it understands those values as intimately related to the kind and quality of social life enjoyed by the members of a community. It is this kind of culture which the Enlightenment philosophes represented in their time and whose impact, it would seem, has been virtually dissipated by the sheer diversity of mass culture characteristic of postindustrial society. In the countries of Eastern Europe and in other parts of the world, however, where the articulation of alternate cultural symbols and values is heavily regulated by the ruling political elites, the “word” seems to have retained its former political significance. Here, official repression and popular discontent, stirred by the catalyst of intellectual dissidence, have often combined in an explosive compound.

Modern Yugoslavia seems to represent an unstable cross between these two polarities. Appeals for the open “struggle of opinions,” somewhat modified in the mid-ig6os by the ideology of the economic reforms encouraging the struggle of opinions in the marketplace, have competed with the periodic reassertion of the hegemony of the ruling political institutions at times of real or perceived social crisis. The relatively open ideological situation in Yugoslavia in the early 1950s, when the freedom of cultural creativity was formally embraced in official theory and to a limited extent encouraged in practice as well, stimulated the critical intelligentsia to seek new and more daring avenues in which to challenge official symbols. As a consequence, philosophy and social theory became the new battleground in the struggle for cultural hegemony, and the open advocacy of “criticism” gradually acquired a respectability (if not always an acceptability) unparallelled in the other countries of Eastern Europe.

In all this, the journal Praxis—it is this study's main contention—played a vital role, offering the proponents of criticism a concrete sense of their own identity. To some outsiders, especially in the political sphere, the journal became a symbol of intellectual recalcitrance and, even more threateningly, of political opposition. But it was this same journal, however paradoxically, which also offered the Praxis intellectuals a measure of protection as well, for the regime—in its eagerness to present the appearance of encouraging the free discussion of views, particularly those that were undeniably Marxist in character—long displayed a reluctance, at decisive moments, to force Praxis to cease publication altogether or to invoke severe sanctions against its adherents. As we have seen, in the period following the 1974 LCY Tenth Congress this situation changed dramatically, as official Yugoslavia prepared to unify itself for life after Tito. At that time, it seemed that the degree of the Praxis Marxists' future success in continuing their public criticism would be a revealing indication of the path Yugoslavia would follow in the post-Tito era: toward a new strengthening of one-party rule and a partial or total negation of Yugoslavia's achievements of the past thirty years, or toward further revolutionary social transformation true to the spirit of its previous history of socialist experimentation. With the closing of Praxis and the repressive measures against its contributors—these only among the most publicized in a series of acts directed toward consolidation of the regime's overall control—the shape of Yugoslavia's future seems somewhat clearer than before.

What of Praxis's impact? In seeking an answer to this question it is first necessary to note that Praxis's immediate audience was rather small: in the court decisions on the 1971 bannings, for instance, both the District and Supreme Court judges seemed somewhat mollified by the fact that the 3-4/1971 issue had been printed in only 3,000 copies and could hardly have been considered a massive assault on Yugoslav public opinion.⁴¹ Not only was Praxis's readership small, it was very select as well, consisting principally of other philosophers and sociologists, a segment of the general university population, and—the bureaucracy. In the words of the District Court's opinion of August 1971:

It is obvious that the number of persons who familiarize themselves regularly with the content of this philosophical bimonthly is quite limited. According to the testimony of witness Gajo Petrović, its subscribers are members of the [Croatian] Philosophical Society …, while it is also received by the highest political representatives, as well as by the libraries of the LCY Central Committee, the Central Committee of the republican Leagues of Communists, and the leadership of the Trade Unions, Youth, and Socialist Alliance [organizations].⁴²

This court statement, intended to minimize the extent of Praxis's immediate influence, nevertheless contained an important clue to the question of its overall effect on Yugoslav social life. The types of readers mentioned here were not, after all, representative of a broad cross-section of Yugoslav society. Instead, the readers of Praxis derived, for the most part, from political, cultural and educational elites responsible either for the making of decisions vital Yugoslavia's future or, perhaps even more important, for the preparation of its future leaders. The Praxis group's ability to reach beyond these social strata to the general public was impaired not only by restrictions on public appearances⁴³ or blacklists maintained by the mass media, but also by virtue of the high social position which its members occupied in the most prestigious institutions of learning in the country, the lofty theoretical level of their published works, and the relatively restricted orientation and appeal of their journal. While the universalization of the critical consciousness may have been the Praxis Marxists' ultimate goal, Praxis itself may be seen as having had, not necessarily by design, a more modest role in Yugoslav social life:⁴⁴ to engage in an unremitting dialogue with the bureaucracy, to wage a practical struggle to legitimize unofficial intra-Party Marxist criticism, and to provide a forum for the open and rational discussion of unorthodox ideas by otherwise “mainstream” thinkers whose initial exposition may not have been welcome within the ranks of the organized institutions of social power.⁴⁵ Even one of Praxis's most prominent archenemies, Mika Tripalo, was compelled to acknowledge Praxis's success in achieving these objectives when in 1966, at the height of one of the many anti -Praxis campaigns, he stated that the “merit of Praxis is to have provoked all of us, and perhaps even the League of Communists, to an intensive theoretical discussion on a number of open questions.”⁴⁶

Of this semi-incestuous relationship with the bureaucracy several Praxis Marxists seem to have been more or less aware. Danko Grlić, for one, once observed that the bureaucracy— imperfect as it is—does have “pores” through which opinions expressed in critical journals can penetrate, at least until such time as adequate precautions are taken to protect the bureaucracy's ideological integrity and to shut off the flow of ideas. And Miladin Životić has spoken reproachfully of an “illusion” apparendy shared by some of his Praxis colleagues that

we need merely offer a model of genuine, true socialism to the bearers of bureaucratic resistance to the development of self-management and they would accept that model sooner or later. There were illusions that in this manner of enlightenment, by pointing the way to a genuine socialism, it would be possible to influence the bearers of political bureaucracy.⁴⁷

To Životić and most likely to others as well, the repressive aftermath of the student revolt of 1968, culminating in the drastic anti -Praxis measures of early 1975, must surely have demonstrated that such an illusion, if in fact it was ever openly shared in exactly this form, was indeed hopeless.

For their part, there were times when the Yugoslav rulers seem to have been aware that, as Leszek Kolakowski has observed, “the spiritual domination of any class over the people, far more than its material domination, depends on its bonds with the intelligentsia.”⁴⁸ In times of crisis the ruling elites did, in fact, recognize (if only obliquely) the strategic importance of the Praxis intellectuals, as in the wake of the 1971 nationalist outburst in Croatia. There have also been indirect echoes of several Praxis theses in statements of official position and even in far-reaching policies adopted by the government. The anti-statist rhetoric of Praxis has been absorbed by such eminent regime theoreticians as Kardelj and was even utilized, ironically, in defense of the controversial 1970-71 constitutional amendments decentralizing the federation. Similarly, Praxis's appeal for a thorough application of the principle of workers' self-management—perhaps its central political prescription of lasting significance—was clearly reflected in the language of the new Yugoslav constitution adopted in early 1974.⁴⁹

To be sure, those ideas which the Yugoslav government did appropriate from the Marxist-humanist intelligentsia were carefully tailored to the needs of the ruling elites, while their original proponents were characteristically denounced all the more vigorously as “anti-socialist” in order to set a healthy distance between the source of those ideas and the final result. Nevertheless there was a constant interplay between the radical Marxists and the bureaucracy, for both were aware (and to a certain extent continue to recognize) that they originally issued from the same political culture and social conditions. This circumstance gave birth to a bizarre symbiotic relationship between the two major ideological offshoots of the Yugoslav revolution (excluding the Stalinists), each of which seemed dependent on the other for the sake of its own legitimacy. For many years the bureaucracy seemed to have feared that by decisively rejecting the radical Marxist critics, it would do itself irreparable political damage in the eyes of socialist and liberal public opinion not only in Yugoslavia, but in areas well beyond its boundaries; subsequent events seem to have borne this out. The Praxis Marxists, in turn, aware of the dangers of reification and institutionalization which belie all radical social movements, had a convenient target for precisely such charges in the bureaucracy. At the very least, the bureaucracy spoke a shared political language with the Praxis Marxists and it responded to their criticism in a manner which seems to have proved that the two parties inhabited a shared symbolic universe. The conflict between Praxis and the bureaucracy represented, in more general terms, a fundamental clash between two rival political cultures with common roots in the Yugoslav revolutionary experience. And even in the light of all the bitterness and disillusionment caused by the government's repressive course of action embarked upon in the early 1970s, neither side yet seems willing to take the final step of renouncing their common heritage.

The Zagreb literary critic and Praxis sympathizer Milan Mirić spoke in the late 1960s of “reservations for thought and action” which, in his view, characterized the cultural-political situation in Yugoslavia. These “reservations” were areas of relatively free activity whose impact was confined by the bureaucracy and the more impersonal forces of the marketplace within fairly well-defined boundaries. For the workers, their “reservation” lay in the domain of a parcellized system of self-management, while the “reservation” of the intelligentsia consisted of

journals around which they gather, their books, their professional and protest meetings, their offices and institutes in which they act; [their] reservation is all which by its true nature should be directed toward the destruction of every constraint and which should revolt before the slightest suggestion of conformity from within, much less the sense of imprisonment which arises as a result of institutional pressure from without.⁵⁰

Until the demise of Praxis, the idea of an invisible “reservation” for the intelligentsia was quite appealing in the amount of light it shed on the situation of the Praxis Marxists and on Praxis itself as an institution of criticism. The Praxis Marxists indeed resided in a separate sphere of social action, aspire as they might have to penetrate to the broader public consciousness. In part their isolation was imposed by the bureaucracy, through repression, public misinformation, and the attempt to portray them as hopelessly abstract theorists whose active intervention in public affairs could only have had disastrous consequences. These tactics seem to have enjoyed a limited degree of success outside of the academic community. Within the university, however—and especially among the students as well as the academic professions—for all its efforts the regime was remarkably unable to tarnish the reputation of the Praxis Marxists or to gain widespread acceptance of its final, desperate acts to remove their influence altogether.

What the “reservations” idea did not adequately convey was that the isolation of the Praxis Marxists was to a significant degree self-imposed as well. Their principled refusal to lower themselves to the plane of everyday political combat was perhaps most important in this regard, for in addition to matters of principle, the Praxis Marxists were keenly aware that to engage in this sort of activity would have exposed them to dangers far more serious than those which they actually encountered. The enterprise that was Praxis represented no less than an only half-disguised attempt to institutionalize social criticism by providing for it a secure harbor where it could be protected from precisely the dangers of political institutionalization which its adherents most feared. Yet perhaps their natural resistance to any suggestion that Praxis belonged in the category of “institutions” blinded the Praxis Marxists to their main purpose, causing them to mistake tactical issues for matters of principle. Thus the frequently employed institutional self-defense that the assertions contained in Praxis were “only” theoretical ultimately took on a reality accepted all too readily by friends and foes of Praxis alike, while the larger social mission of Praxis's critical theory came to be obscured by a misconception for which the Praxis Marxists themselves bore a significant burden of responsibility.

These travails of the modern radical Marxist intelligentsia in Yugoslavia, when viewed in a larger historical framework, seem but to confirm the tragic fate of all intellectual movements whose quest for justice at some point comes into conflict with their commitment to principle. In the words of Victor Brombert, writing of the French tradition of the “literary hero”:

For his condemnation of bad faith . . . is inextricably bound up with the tragic awareness of his own guilt and complicity. Obsessed by the suffering of others, convinced that man's salvation lies in solidarity, he is equally convinced of the walled-in nature of human consciousness and paralyzed by his very lucidity. Dreaming of his high social and spiritual mission, he knows his efforts doomed to defeat, yet blames himself for his own futility. Concerned with the regeneration of mankind, driven on by the urge to speak for and with others, he also flirts with catastrophe and yearns for his own destruction. He is in fact the hero, the victim and the buffoon of a tortured era which has experienced politics as tragedy, freedom as necessity, and where history has assumed the urgent voice of a fatum.⁵¹

This existential despair, however, is not characteristic of the Praxis Marxists, who remain firmly committed to the positive task of creating the cultural basis for the new society. Well aware of the dangers of bureaucratization inherent in the process of directed social change, they are convinced that only a strong, critical sense of public awareness will be capable of resisting these trends. So long as this public consciousness is still young and fragile, Marković asserts,

the most important means are truth, bold demystification of existing social relationships, dethronement of deified persons and institutions, and above all a great moral strength. . . . What is needed in this phase is a critical science: a new revolutionary culture, a powerful democratic public opinion. Above all a new morality is needed—a morality of human dignity, solidarity, stoic persistance [sic—GSS], and spiritual superiority which can struggle with a strong material force.⁵²

As the history of the Praxis Marxists suggests, the bearers of such a “new revolutionary culture” may find themselves in a highly vulnerable position by virtue of their isolation and the very scope of their ambitions. They may be perceived popularly, and not, perhaps, without some reason, as cultural elitists who do not feel that the masses by themselves are capable of attaining the moral heights of the new socialist man, while by the political elite they may be suspected of harboring sentiments antithetical to the very basis of the social order. The Praxis Marxists have met this challenge fully conscious of these pitfalls and hopeful that with time the necessity for a critical vanguard will itself be abolished. In the eloquent words of Mihailo Marković:

By working for them [ultimate revolutionary goals—css], by participating in the creation of a new faith of millions of people, we take an enormous responsibility: there is no certainty that our undertaking will not bring about a considerably different society from the one anticipated, or raise quite new and unsuspected problems, or eventually turn out to be a tragic defeat and the loss of noblest human energy. However, only by taking such a risk can we consciously create possibilities which could never be brought to life by blind economic and social forces.⁵³

“The problem of the intelligentsia in socialism,” writes Ljubomir Tadic,

is part of the more general problem of the tasks unaccomplished by the socialist revolution. It is a question, primarily of socialist praxis that has not succeeded in facing up to political alienation. The return of the legitimacy of negative reason . . . constitutes one of the essential elements of the socialist renaissance.⁵⁴

The question of intellectual responsibility, then, dissolves into the much more far-reaching question of the responsibility of a society to its own ideals. And to this question not even the Praxis Marxists have found a ready answer.