Practice group

Practice journal

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Praxis group was a group of Yugoslav philosophers and social scientists who advocated a humanistic , undogmatic Marxism . You were the organizer of the annual “summer school” on the island of Korčula and the editor of the magazine Praxis .

Basic consensus

The members of the practice group represented different positions and dealt with different topics. Together they advocated a “ humanistic Marxism ” that sharply rejected Stalinism as a doctrine that contradicted the ideas of Karl Marx and instead tried to reconstruct an authentic Marxism and develop it further as “creative Marxism” , especially by studying the early works of Marx .

Members of the practice group

Members of the editorial team and the editorial board of the magazine Praxis as well as members of the organizing committee of the summer school included:

• Professors at the University of Zagreb : the philosophers Gajo Petrović (1927–1993), Milan Kangrga (1923–2008), Predrag Vranicki (1922–2002), Branko Bošnjak (1923–1996) and the sociologists Rudi Supek (1913–1993), Veljko Cvjetičanin (1927–2001) and Ivan Kuvačić (1923–2014);
• Professors at the University of Belgrade : the philosophers Mihailo Marković (1923–2010), Miladin Životić (1930–1997), Dragoljub Mićunović (* 1930), Svetozar Stojanović (1931–2010), Veljko Korać (1914–1991), the sociologists Mihail (1925–2011) and Zagorka Pešić-Golubović (1930–2019), as well as Ljubomir Tadić (1925–2013) and Vojin Milić (1922–1996), professors of political philosophy and sociology;
• Professors at the University of Sarajevo : the philosophers Ivan Focht (1927–1992) and Abdulah Šarčević (* 1929);
• Also: Veljko Rus (1929–2018), professor of sociology in Ljubljana , Danko Grlić (1923–1984), editor for philosophy and sociology at the Yugoslav Lexicographical Institute , Andrija Krešić (1921–2018), philosopher at the Institute for the Study of the Labor Movement in Belgrade, the political scientist Žarko Puhovski (* 1946), then assistant at the University of Zagreb, and Nebojša Popov (1939–2016), sociologist, and Trivo Inđić (1938–2020), political scientist, who were both assistants at the University of Belgrade at the time ;
• Danilo Pejović (1928–2007), professor of philosophy in Zagreb, who initially also belonged to the practice group, left it in 1966.

The summer school on Korčula

The summer school was an open gathering where lectures and discussions took place on the topics that the members of the practice group dealt with. It first took place in Dubrovnik in 1963 and then became an annual event on Korčula . In addition to the members of the practice group, both Marxist and non-Marxist scholars from abroad took part; the summer school was also open to interested laypeople.

The topics of the summer schools were:

• 1963: progress and culture
• 1964: Sense and Perspectives of Socialism
• 1965: what is history?
• 1966: In that year the summer school was canceled due to pressure from the Union of Communists of Croatia .
• 1967: creation and reification
• 1968: Marx and the Revolution
• 1969: power and humanity
• 1970: Hegel and Our Time - Lenin and the New Left
• 1971: utopia and reality
• 1972: freedom and unity
• 1973: The bourgeois world and socialism
• 1974: Art in modern society

The magazine Praxis

Praxis magazine was founded in 1964 and banned in 1975. The editorship consisted of Zagreb members of the practice group, in a larger body, the "editorial board", were scientists from all over Yugoslavia and from abroad (including Norman Birnbaum , Ernst Bloch , Erich Fromm , Jürgen Habermas , Leszek Kołakowski , Henri Lefebvre , Georg Lukács and Herbert Marcuse ).

Praxis International, 1st edition

In addition to the Yugoslav edition, an international edition of the practice appeared from 1965 to 1973 , which was continued from 1981 to 1994 ( ISSN  0260-8448 ). Since then the magazine Constellations ( ISSN  1351-0487 ) has been published as a follow-up publication .

Prohibition of the practice group

On January 28, 1975, eight members of the practice group ( Trivo Inđić , Mihailo Marković , Dragoljub Mićunović , Zagorka Golubović , Nebojša Popov , Svetozar Stojanović , Ljubomir Tadić , Miladin Životić ) were expelled from the University of Belgrade . Shortly afterwards, the publication of the magazine “Praxis” and the organization of the summer school were also banned.

literature

• Yugoslav magazine wins fight against authorities . In: The Times . April 3, 1967, p. 4
• Gajo Petrović: Revolutionary Practice. Yugoslav Marxism of the present . 1969
• Der Spiegel , 10/1970: Article, p. 169 - Conversation with Gajo Petrović and Milan Kangrga, p. 170–174 (The conversation is also reprinted in: Georg Wolff (ed.): Wir Leben in der Weltrevolution . ISBN 3- 471-60376-X , pp. 71–82 - see also: p. 191)
• Rudi Supek & Branko Bošnjak (eds.): Yugoslavia thinks differently. Marxism and Critique of Statistical Socialism . 1971 ISBN 3-203-50242-2
• Mihailo Marković and Robert S. Cohen: Yugoslavia: the rise and fall of socialist humanism; a history of the "Praxis" group . 1975, ISBN 0-85124-129-8
• Ernst Bloch : Yugoslavia is nailing the flag to the mast . In: Der Spiegel . Issue 6/1975, p. 80 ff.
• Ursula Rütten: Marxism as social criticism. The PRAXIS group in Yugoslavia - its limits and possibilities . Inaugural dissertation, TH Aachen, 1976
• Julius Oswald , Revolutionary Practice. Presentation and criticism of the philosophical position of the founders of the magazine "Praxis" with special consideration of their religious criticism (= topics and theses of theology), Düsseldorf 1982, (university publication , also Munich, Univ., Diss.), ISBN 978-3-491- 71045-0 .
• Ursula Rütten: At the end of philosophy? The failed “model of Yugoslavia”. Questions to intellectuals within the PRAXIS group . 1993, ISBN 3-85435-209-3
• Nebojša Popov (eds .; with: Milan Kangrga, Zagorka Golubović, Ivan Kuvačić, Božidar Jakšić, Ante Lešaja): Sloboda i nasilje, razgovor o časopisu Praxis i korčulanskoj letnjoj školi . 2003, ISBN 86-902945-1-1
• Boris Kanzleiter & Krunoslav Stojaković: 1968 in Yugoslavia. Student protests and the cultural avant-garde between 1960 and 1975 . Dietz, Bonn a. Rh. 2008, ISBN 3-8012-4179-3 (detailed review: die tageszeitung October 29, 2008, p. 15)
• Frederik foot (ed.): The forgotten Marxism. Contributions from the Yugoslav practice group. Syndikat-A, Moers 2019, ISBN 978-3-9817138-6-2

Web links

• List of the members of the editorial team and the editorial board of the journal Praxis
• Practice group (English) in the Marxists Internet Archive
• An extensive archive of texts from the practice group
• Gajo Petrović: The Frankfurt School and the Zagreb Philosophy of Practice (PDF file; 131 kB)
• The practice group at the initiative for practice philosophy
• Lino Veljak: The legacy of the practice group
• Nenad Stefanov: Review of the book Sloboda i nasilje (see above)
• Katja Diefenbach: The children of 1974 (on the ban on the practice group 1974/75; from Jungle World 49/1999)
• Frederik Fuß: From Philosophy of Practice to Thinking of Revolution ( Malmoe 80/2017)

swell

1. ↑ Ursula Rütten: Marxism as social criticism (see above). P. 9; Revolutionary practice (see above). Pp. 275-280
2. ↑ Ursula Rütten: Marxism as social criticism (see above). P. 209 f.
3. ↑ Gajo Petrović: Revolutionary Practice (see above). P. 17
4. ↑ Ursula Rütten: Marxism as social criticism (see above). P. 191