Introduction

This work is devoted to an examination of the theory and practice of a group of contemporary Yugoslav intellectuals whose public life, between 1964 and 1975, centered around the Marxist philosophical journal Praxis. While some of these theorists have attracted international attention as a result of the repressive actions of the Yugoslav government at Belgrade University culminating in early 1975, there is still no thorough treatment of the philosophical and sociological significance of this group as a phenomenon of postrevolutionary socialist society. The few existing studies which have devoted only partial attention to the Praxis Marxists¹ have as a rule neglected to consider the significance of their appearance as a distinct intellectual grouping, their history, the factors dividing them from other more officially “acceptable” currents of Yugoslav Marxist theory, and the problems arising from the peculiar mode of “philosophical” criticism which they have embraced. The present study has essentially two major purposes. It is based, first, on the premise that a clear understanding of these issues can contribute to a broader appreciation of important political and cultural trends in modern Yugoslavia. Moreover, it is offered in the hope that an analysis of this vital school of thought may represent a positive contribution to the widespread reevaluation of Marxian theory from a democratic, humanist perspective. For the Praxis Marxists are in fact Marxist heretics in a socialist country whose hallmark has been the rejection of Marxist dogma, prestigious intellectuals whose brand of outspoken criticism has put them at odds with the ruling institutions in Yugoslavia throughout the past decade. While they have considered themselves in the vanguard of the socialist intelligentsia, their history suggests parallels with intelligentsias of an earlier age who believed that it was their calling, not to glorify the ruling classes through ideological mystification, but instead to expose the inadequacies of the existing order and to contribute to its transcendence by a new and better society.

The history of the Praxis Marxists is, in a very important sense, part of the history of the Yugoslav revolution. It is they, rather than its “official” protagonists, who have most adequately and eloquently represented the ideals of the Yugoslav experiment to the international community and to Yugoslavia itself. Their special role has consisted in the relentless confrontation of Yugoslav practice with the socialist ideals generated by the process of social change that has continued unabated in Yugoslavia for the past thirty years. Today, crushed as a group, they find themselves in a grave situation which threatens once and for all to extinguish their brand of “creative criticism,” which in consonance with Marx's radical tone they have called the “critique of all existing conditions.” This situation itself bears tragic testimony to the abatement of revolutionary élan in modern Yugoslavia, a society increasingly absorbed by the need for stability rather than the need for change. Any further transformation, it has become clear, will be a transformation directed from above.

The problem of sustaining the revolutionary urge in the postrevolutionary age was not unfamiliar to Marx. “Proletarian revolutions,” he boldly asserted in “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,”

criticize themselves constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their own course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness the inadequacies, weaknesses and paltrinesses of their first attempts. . . .²

As would become evident from the history of the communist movements of the twentieth century, however, Marx's faith in the capacity of the proletarian revolution for “permanent revolution” through self-criticism was ill-founded. The revolutionary theories of the nineteenth century became the dogmas of the twentieth for much of the world. Yet just as in the history of religious doctrines, here too there would arise from time to time groups of individuals who would challenge existing orthodoxy and declare it to have been corrupted through its intimate association with ruling social institutions. That both the “orthodox” and the “heretics,” moreover, would derive their conflicting positions from the theory of Marx is one of the most significant and intriguing problems of modern intellectual history.

The eminent Polish philosopher Leszek Kotakowski has observed, in one of his undeservedly lesser-known works, that “whenever heresy arrives at an organized form, it in turn becomes orthodoxy and reinforces itself in the struggle with its own heresies; this process of proliferation can go on ad infinitum.”³ It is this dialectic of heresy—or more broadly, the dialectic of dissent—which will form the focus of my concern throughout much of the present work. For in discussions of the phenomenon of dissident thinking it has often been forgotten that the very activity of thought is an integral part of the world of action. To say this is not necessarily to make all truth relative to social interest as some traditional interpretations of Marxist doctrine would have us do, nor is it necessarily to diminish the value of the search for truths that transcend the level of everyday existence. It is rather to recognize that the specific form which dissident thinking assumes in a given historical instance may have a profound impact on its ability to persuade others and to sustain itself. It is not enough that the dissident intellectual think his dissident thoughts, he must also articulate them; and the manner in which those thoughts are articulated is a matter of some consequence. The dialectic of dissent thus involves a very subtle interplay between content and form, thought and structure, which is irreducible to neat and simple formulas.

The Eastern European intelligentsia has had a particularly long history of experimentation with different “structures of dissent.”⁴ In the history of the Russian intelligentsia, for instance, one finds a rich variety of cultural forms designed to articulate intellectual dissent, from the informal “circle” to the fully developed and organizationally bound daily newspaper. In the middle of the continuum was the important “thick journal,” whose heyday, by Robert Maguire's reckoning, lasted from 1839 to 1884—the dates of the rise and fall of the greatest of the thick journals, Otechestvenniye zapiski.⁵ As a genre, the thick journal was dominated by prose, but at its heart was the brand of literary criticism flavored heavily with “social” overtones made famous by the great Russian man of letters, Vissarion Belinsky. For many intellectuals the thick journal became not only a center of intellectual activity but also a crucial source of financial support more acceptable than the crass commercialism involved in “vending works of literature like pretzels or cattle.”⁶ Its audience was loosely defined, consisting of a general “literary public” wishing to keep current of cultural events in the capital and abroad. Each new intellectual trend would characteristically establish “its own” journal with a corresponding following, and by the 1860s and 1870s the proliferation of such journals was truly impressive. Above all it was the journals' ability to conceal (however crudely) from the censors their “social” concerns beneath the respectable veneer of “culture” that enabled them to play a vital role in the formation of the Russian intelligentsia. In the words of one of the foremost contemporary authorities on the Russian intelligentsia, Martin Malia:

The old order in Russia was corroding, not so much at the bottom, as at the top. The most important revolutionary statistics of the reign [of Nicholas I] are not those for peasant disturbances but those for the circulation of periodicals.⁷

The journal performed a similar function in the history of the South Slavic intelligentsias, which were somewhat slower to flower than the classic Russian prototype. To some extent there was a direct line of influence from the Russian experience of radical publicism to the South Slavs, as in the case of the early Serbian agrarian socialist Svetozar Marković, who fell under the influence of Chernyshevsky and others while in Russia and who returned to Serbia to found a vigorous populist press.⁸ By the mid-1920s, there had already been established in Yugoslavia a strong tradition of active publicism in which the thick journal— as in the Russian case, largely because of its ability to evade censorship through its ostensible preoccupation with general problems of culture—assumed considerable prominence. Indeed, it was not uncommon that such journals became centers of political sentiment as well as of cultural activity. Such was the case, for instance, with the Srpski književni glasnik, which, under the guidance of the litterateur-statesman Jovan Skerlić, became one of the most influential organs of the liberal movement in Serbia on the eve of the First World War.⁹

But it was above all in the Yugoslav communist movement in the interwar years that the thick journal acquired lasting significance. Its membership dominated by intellectuals and students up to the beginning of the Second World War, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia experienced serious internal tensions and occasionally open ruptures as it attempted, especially in the late 1930s under the influence of Tito's leadership, to rein in the intellectuals and to establish its control over all matters of doctrinal importance. This “conflict on the Left”¹⁰ reached its culmination in 1939-40 with two events: the dramatic publication of a scathing essay entitled “Dialectical Antibarbarus” by the eminent Croatian writer Miroslav Krleža in the journal Peɩat, and a massive rejoinder by the Party in what was to be the sole issue of another thick journal, Književne sveske. Indeed throughout the “conflict on the Left,” the thick journal emerged as a political symbol in its own right. The publication of a new journal—of which there was a whole succession in the interwar years—came to signal the advent of a new stage in the conflict, a desire on the part of one side or the other to differentiate itself more clearly and to expound its viewpoint at greater length, the creation of a new public forum, and a recognition that previously obscure differences had grown into unbridgeable chasms. Just beneath the surface of a high-minded public debate on principles of literary criticism and philosophical interpretation raged serious political turmoil which threatened to shake the Party to its core. In this context, the founding of a new journal became an act of the greatest political significance, while the thick journal as a genre became an established mode of structuring political discourse in an ostensibly cultural form. As such, it continued to appeal to communist intellectuals well into the postwar years as a weapon which could be brought to bear in the numerous controversies, internal and external, which followed upon the victory of Tito's Partisan forces and the formation of a socialist Yugoslav state.

The journal Praxis, established in 1964 as the culmination of a growing schism in the ranks of Yugoslav Marxist philosophy and an emerging confrontation between the dissident philosophers and the Party, followed firmly in the tradition of the “thick journals” described above. Like the line of Yugoslav journals that preceded it, Praxis, in the words of the editorial introduction to its first issue, was to be devoted to “key questions” of theory and society. Its founders conceived it as a forum for debate and controversy which would be committed to fostering open discussion in its pages, including “not only works by Marxists, but also works of all those who are occupied with the theoretical problems that concern us.” It would solicit contributions not only from philosophers, but also from “artists, writers, scientists, public figures, all those who are not left indifferent by the vital questions of our time.”¹¹ The prime commitment of the journal would be to the idea of a socialist humanism, and especially to the creation of a theoretical groundwork for a truly socialist consciousness. But at the same time the founders of Praxis boldly asserted that such a consciousness must be disencumbered of all traces of dogmatism and that truth must be allowed to emerge through the purifying flames of radical criticism rather than being inscribed by the brand of political authority. By raising this unprecedented challenge to the Party's ideological monopoly, the Praxis Marxists set themselves irreversibly onto a collision course with Yugoslavia's ruling political institutions.

But while the ultimate collision itself may have been visible from the outset, what was perhaps most remarkable about Praxis is that for nearly eleven years it was permitted to present to the Yugoslav intellectual public a thoroughgoing critique—from a Marxist standpoint, to be sure—of aspects of Yugoslav thought and practice which had never before been submitted to such intensive, continual, and open examination. Not only was Praxis unique in this respect within the Yugoslav context; while similar efforts had been made elsewhere in Eastern Europe, none enjoyed anything resembling the success of Praxis. Surely this circumstance in itself raises important questions about the Yugoslav political system, just as the history of Praxis's rise and fall reveals and reflects the many contradictory tensions to which that system has been subjected since its inception.

With the founding of Praxis, the “dialectic of dissent” discussed in the preceding pages came into full play. So long as they lacked a common symbol, the dissident intellectuals who later united behind Praxis were highly vulnerable to individual attack and manipulation by the regime; once having given symbolic and public evidence of their unity, however, their individual positions drew upon that very unity for strength and reinforcement. Yet at the same time, their journal—the “structure of dissent” which they had adopted—itself became ever more highly visible and hence vulnerable to attack. In its struggle against the ideological orthodoxy imposed by the ruling institutions in the name of Marxism, Praxis thus became nothing less than an institution of Marxist criticism. And all this is also to suggest that Praxis, by virtue of its attempt to articulate an alternative Marxist ideological framework and to offer a platform for responsible Marxist criticism, may sensibly be viewed on its own merits as a distinctive, if transitory, component of the political system of postwar Yugoslavia.

Only an approach, moreover, which seeks to appreciate Praxis as a nascent counter-institution in the borderline region between culture and politics can adequately account for the persistent efforts of the Party to undermine Praxis from within and without as well as the recurring feeling of frustrated isolation that was the Praxis Marxists' lot. Those directly responsible for Praxis found it necessary, from time to time, to reexamine the journal's orientation in response to major political developments. At all times, they took great care to define the journal's boundaries in order to preserve its integrity as a preeminently theoretical organ and thereby to shield its activity of criticism from potential charges of partisan political involvement. And while “politics” was something in which most Praxis Marxists had fervently and repeatedly disavowed any active interest, it was by the same token true that insofar as theirs was a social institution—an institution of criticism—their adherence to that institution was a political act of the first order.

This work, then, attempts to understand the Praxis Marxists and their reformulation of Marxist theory as an important phenomenon in the postrevolutionary politics of Yugoslav society. It should not be thought, however, that the significance of the Praxis group has been confined to Yugoslavia alone, for in a broader context Praxis has represented just one branch of the general revival, in both East and West, of the humanist and critical dimension of Marx's thought. Within Eastern Europe, Praxis and the various gatherings it sponsored provided, until the tragic year 1968, an important forum for like-minded philosophers who wished to restore a “human face” to the theory which was so much a part of the political framework of the countries in which they lived. Kolakowski from Poland, Kosĺk and Prucha from Czechoslovakia, Lukács and members of his circle in Hungary, were all active members of the outer ring of the Praxis collective and maintained continuing reciprocal contacts with the core group of Yugoslav theorists. The same was true of many eminent Western European and even American Marxists—Mallet, Lefebvre, Marcuse, Goldmann, Bloch, Fromm, among others—whose intellectual contributions and moral support were highly valued by the Praxis group. Thus Praxis, through its parallel Yugoslav and International Editions and its international symposia, came to represent a “bridge” between East and West and a landmark of Marxist humanist thought widely recognized throughout the world. So, too, the Praxis Marxists have addressed their message not to the Yugoslav audience alone, but to all the citizens of the world in the hope of a better and more humane future.