When Marx dissected the capitalist economy and intervened in the international workers’ movement, he did so in the service of freeing people from alien, uncontrolled power. His political project was the realisation of what he called the social republic, and his theoretical project was to identify the forces that promote or retard this political project. In order to bring out the specificity and cogency of the social-republican Marx, this essay uproots the positive-freedom reading that has overgrown the edifice of his (...) thought. Marx certainly hoped for ‘real freedom’, which is a sort of self-realisation. He also hoped for a sort of collective self-determination. And he thought that collective self-determination was a prerequisite for general self-realisation. But Marx also thought that generalised freedom from domination was a prerequisite for collective self-determination. (shrink)

The article seeks to fill a lacuna in Marxist scholarship concerning the actually-existing Marxism of politically-mobilised workers as an organic philosophy in its own right. To shed light on this issue, I investigate the reading-material which stimulated Marxist conversion and the accompanying intellectual invigoration of workers at the turn of the twentieth century in Russian Poland. For proletarian readers Marxism was the main political language, ushering them into the public sphere and allowing them to comprehend the emerging capitalist world. As (...) a particular liaison of scientific knowledge and a practical political weapon, it allowed its adherents to redefine themselves and make political claims. Such a situational Marxism, drawing from but not reducible to the prevailing ‘orthodoxy’, allows one to see the latter as a socially diverse plethora of ideas. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia by Bernard Suits is one of the most influential works in the philosophy of sport. In the book, Suits investigates two fundamental issues in general p...

This article examines the evolution of Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of culture during his over-sixty-year-long scholarly activity. Bauman wrote his first books on the theory of culture (Culture and Society; Sketches in the Theory of Culture) when he was a Professor at Warsaw University. The ideas put forward at that time were later developed in his writings. This applies in particular to the critical nature of his thought, the combination of synchronic and diachronic perspectives, the inclusion of the context of the (...) social structure as well as his references to the structural dimension and to agency. Later years – starting with the publication of the book, Culture as Praxis – saw Bauman’s growing emphasis on the transcendence of the existing reality and the creative role of an individual in the transformation of cultural reality. This article shows how other theorists of culture inspired Bauman and how he critically referred to them. The article offers a holistic look at Zygmunt Bauman’s oeuvre. It also creates an opportunity for English-speaking readers to become familiar with Bauman’s writings in his mother tongue. (shrink)

Socialism is strictly “impossible.” Its impracticability is not, as Bryan Caplan has suggested, a “quantitative” matter, nor does he show that real‐world socialism's incentive problems outweighed its informational ones. Caplan's criticism of Ludwig von Mises's critique of the “possibility” of socialism fails to appreciate what he meant by “socialism” and misunderstands Mises's argument about economic calculation. History, too, suggests that socialism's informational deficiency was the most significant problem facing those who tried to implement socialism.

Socialism is strictly “impossible.” Its impracticability is not, as Bryan Caplan has suggested, a “quantitative” matter, nor does he show that real‐world socialism's incentive problems outweighed its informational ones. Caplan's criticism of Ludwig von Mises's critique of the “possibility” of socialism fails to appreciate what he meant by “socialism” and misunderstands Mises's argument about economic calculation. History, too, suggests that socialism's informational deficiency was the most significant problem facing those who tried to implement socialism.

Zygmunt Bauman was one of the leading revisionists in Poland before March 1968. Together with six other academics he was expelled from the University of Warsaw on the basis of the decision of the Minister of Higher Education taken on the 25st March 1968. It should be stressed, however, that at the beginning of his academic career Bauman had been a staunch believer of the Polish United Workers’ Party and an adherent of the Marxist-Leninist ideology. In his first revisionist paper, (...) published soon after the Polish October, he criticized the previous policy of the Party and expressed his hope that significant changes will take place in Poland. As a result of Party withdrawal from the reforms, his attitude towards both the communist rule and Marxism-Leninism had been changing. This paper analyses the evolution of his thought towards revisions. It presents the characteristic features of Bauman’s revisionism as well: an emphasis on human praxis, alternative thinking, and heterogeneity of culture. (shrink)