Humanistic Potential of Soviet Critical Marxism

Abstract

The article examines the objective grounds for the possibility and necessity of reviv­ing the humanistic heritage of Soviet critical Marxism of the 1960s and 1970s, one of the leaders of which was E.V. Ilyenkov. The main methodological features of this di­rection are highlighted: development and consistent implementation of materialistic dialectical method in solving problems of personality, social exclusion, etc.; identifi­cation of objective laws of social development and criteria of social progress (free harmonious development of personality); study of the contradiction of human social existence as a product of dominant social relations and as a creator of history, etc. These elaborations of Soviet critical Marxism are put in the context of the processes of development of humanistic philosophical thought. The authors show that the main achievements of this school are developed (in some cases independently of the So­viet tradition) by modern supporters of eco-socio-cultural priorities of the social de­velopment. Special attention is paid to the achievements of Soviet critical Marxism in the study of personality problems and prospects for free harmonious human develop­ment in a voluntary working association. The article shows that in modern condi­tions, both positive (technological progress leading to the priority development of creative activity) and negative (the need to remove social exclusion) grounds for the implementation of this imperative are developing. The article concludes with an anal­ysis of the contradictory trends in the development of the USSR, which created the basis for the development of both dogmatic and critical Marxism, and indicates that the traditions of Ilyenkov and his colleagues in the post-Soviet space are being devel­oped by new generations, in particular, by representatives of the post-conscientious school of critical Marxism.