Song Tieyi and Lu Yanjun: The Realistic Dimension of East European Neo-Marxist Theory
Eastern European Neo-Marxism gradually took shape and developed into a non-negligible sub-branch of Marxist theory in the mid-20th century. Among its currents, the Korčula Summer School—one of the primary operational bases for the Yugoslav Praxis School—developed for a time into an international platform for academic exchange. It not only facilitated scholarly discussion between different schools within Eastern European Neo-Marxism but also attracted the participation of representative figures of Western Marxism, such as Mandel, Fromm, Habermas, and Bloch.
However, as we entered the 21st century, Eastern European Neo-Marxism seemed to gradually fade from the horizon of theoretical research due to historical realities. Except for the Budapest School’s continuation in Australia, almost all other schools fell into silence and lost their theoretical creativity—becoming a "past tense." Yet, it is precisely the erstwhile glory of Eastern European Neo-Marxism and the theoretical characteristics it manifested against a specific historical background that determine its significant value within the study of foreign Marxism. In fact, as a result of the fusion between Eastern Europe's unique cultural traditions and Marxist theory, Eastern European Neo-Marxist theory demonstrates an internal unity between cultural critique and the critique of political economy. Their theoretical concern for the historical fate of socialism and their practical efforts to explore the diversification of socialist paths have opened a unique dimension of practical significance, constituting a potential directivity for the further study of contemporary Eastern European Neo-Marxism.
Critique and Construction: The Dimension of Theoretical Construction of Socialism
The theoretical traditions of both Western Marxism and Eastern European Neo-Marxism can, from the perspective of their origins, be traced back to the turn toward theoretical critique initiated by Lukács, positioning themselves as a form of social critical theory. However, Eastern European Neo-Marxism differs strikingly from Western Marxism in its practical horizon, and on this basis, formed its own theoretical characteristic: a focus on socialist reality and its historical fate.
Eastern European Neo-Marxism continued and developed the important intellectual theme regarding reflections on the European proletarian revolution held by early representative figures of Western Marxism such as Lukács and Gramsci. The practical situation of the European proletarian revolution was the realistic foundation and a key theme from which early Western Marxism emerged; however, this theme gradually faded from the vision of Western Marxism in its subsequent theoretical development. Conversely, due to the practice of socialism, reflections on the European proletarian movement and even European socialism constituted a vital theoretical dimension for Eastern European Neo-Marxism. In the process of reinterpreting Marxist theory and striving to reveal the philosophical implications of Marx’s critique of political economy, Eastern European Neo-Marxism sought—within a socialist context—to use theoretical critique to advance more profound and totalizing transformations of Eastern European society. It carried out the theoretical construction of socialism itself across multiple fields, including economy, politics, and culture.
For example, the Yugoslav Praxis School [1] criticized economistic views of European socialism on the one hand, while on the other, it conducted an in-depth analysis of the practical situation of Yugoslavia’s socialist reforms and its forced participation in the world market. On this basis, the Praxis School attempted a theoretical inquiry into commodity production within a socialist context and proposed the socialist vision of "workers' self-management." Although this radical vision was fundamentally detached from the actual economic base, it nonetheless formed a relatively independent Yugoslav theory of socialist economics and politics. In this regard, the socialist context of Eastern European Neo-Marxism endowed its critical theory with a unique constructiveness—namely, the theoretical exploration and construction of diverse paths to socialism—forming an important component of Eastern European socialist theory.
Foundation and Paths: The Analytic Dimension of the Typology of Forms of Ownership
In a certain sense, the theoretical divergence and respective developmental paths between Eastern European Neo-Marxism and Western Marxism are vivid theoretical reflections of the rising and falling fortunes of the European proletarian movement and socialism. (Setting aside for a moment the socialist reality of Eastern European Neo-Marxism, the discussions of related issues in mid-20th-century French academia, especially among French left-wing thinkers, are typical within the Western Marxist tradition.) Therefore, from a global perspective, whether it is Western Marxism or Eastern European Neo-Marxism, their successful experiences and failed lessons in theory and practice possess both "mirror" significance for theory and a certain "typological" significance for socialist paths. One could say that within the horizon of the diversification of socialist paths, the internal connection and historical fate between the failure of the West European proletarian revolution and East European socialist construction reveal two possible "typological" investigative paradigms: the cultural type and the ownership form type.
In fact, in the Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858 (the Grundrisse), Marx discussed various pre-capitalist forms of production, stating that "property (in its Asiatic, Slavonic, ancient, and Germanic forms) originally means a relation of the working (producing) subject (or a subject reproducing itself) to the conditions of his production or reproduction as his own." He further noted that the "Asiatic form necessarily survives the longest and most stubbornly." Evidently, Marx had already noticed the differences and particularities among old communities [2]. In Capital, Marx mentioned this issue once more in the form of a footnote. Thus, Marx not only focused on the diachronic developmental process of the forms of primitive communal ownership but was also attempting to further reveal the synchronic relationships formed by the divergence of historical processes. Building upon this, in the 1882 Russian Edition Preface to the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels explicitly raised the question of Russia's socialist path—whether it could pass directly to the higher form of communist common ownership, or must first undergo the same process of dissolution as in the historical development of the West. They noted: "If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development."
In truth, Marx’s "typological" discourse on forms of ownership has not yet been integrated into the research horizons of Western Marxism or Eastern European Neo-Marxism, and this is precisely what can open up a direction for deepening the study of the latter. Of course, this research direction may depend upon a fusion of horizons [3] involving Western Marxism, Eastern European Neo-Marxism, and Marxism within the Chinese context (a horizon that is gradually taking shape in Chinese academia). At the same time, the formation and development of this comparative horizon can promote the further enrichment and development of Marx's relevant thoughts.
Experiences and Lessons: The Exploratory Dimension of the Diversification of Socialist Paths
The exploration of the diversification of socialist paths should become a vital dimension of the aforementioned horizon, as the diversification of socialist paths itself inherently contains philosophical relationships such as universality and particularity, possibility and reality, and contingency and necessity. After Eastern European Neo-Marxism fell into silence and the socialist context gradually faded from the horizon of Western Marxism, the exploration of socialist paths has been fully manifested primarily through the practical form of the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics. However, this does not mean that the attention Eastern European Neo-Marxism once paid to the theme of socialism has entirely lost its practical significance. In the process of constructing the contemporary system of socialist theory, both successful experiences and failed lessons should receive attention and emphasis.
Regarding its "mirror" significance, and starting from Marx’s discourse on types of ownership, Eastern European Neo-Marxism—in its process of theoretically constructing socialism and exploring the diversification of socialist paths—did not conduct an in-depth attempt to explore the numerous possibilities of socialist ownership forms. Consequently, its concern for the real fate of socialism remained at an abstract theoretical level. In this sense, investigating Eastern European Neo-Marxist theory, especially its discourses on socialist economy under the background of socialist practice, and revealing its theoretical contributions and biases in the sense of Marx's "typology" of ownership, not only allows us to "re-discover" its theoretical value but also possesses a certain academic significance for understanding the particularity of the ownership form characterized by "public ownership as the mainstay, with multiple forms of ownership developing together."
(The authors' affiliation: School of Marxism, Party School of the CPC Heilongjiang Provincial Committee)