Reviewed by Chris Arthur
It has long been known that there exists in Yugoslavia a flourishing school of non-dogmatic Marxists grouped around the journal Praxis. Foremost among these is Gajo Petrovic, and it is the purpose of this note to draw readers' attention to the fact that a sample of his views is now accessible in English. The book is Marx in Mid-Twentieth Century, Anchor 1967, paperback; 12/-, and is a collection of articles written between 1961 and 1964. It is believed that Petrovic has recently been expelled from the Party and, judging by this book, it is the Party's loss.
I shall not attempt a critique here but merely indicate some of the important points. The point that Petrovic comes back to again and again is that, for Marx, man is essentially a being of praxis, i.e. a being that creates his world and himself through action. A subsidiary theme, naturally enough, is alienation, i.e. the process in which, instead of a free creative
praxis, there occurs the turning of man’s powers against himself, and his subordination to apparently self-subsistent, non-human entities such as capital. These writings, therefore, are slap in the middle of the
‘humanist revival’ in Marxism, inspired by the early writings, though, be it noted, Petrovic argues for the continuity of the later Marx with the earlier, ;
The analysis is at a very general level ~ we are usually talking about ‘man’ rather than, sey, the bourgeoisie or proletariat. Nevertheless Petrovio makes telling points. For example, in the first essay, Marxism versus Stalinism, the fractured Marxism of Stalinism is criticised for having expelled man from the centre.
"In the centre of the Stalinistic conception of dialectical mnater=
ialism are such concepts as ‘matter’, ‘nature’, 'mind', ‘consciousness’,
‘universal conneotion', 'movement' ete. In historical materialism
everything turns upon ‘socdety', ‘conditions of material life’,
‘productive forces'. Neither adalectioal nor historical materialism,
as conceived by Stalinists, contains any word about man as man.
Some people say that one cannot speak about: man as man, that man as
such is an emply abstraction. ‘Matter’, ‘mind', ‘movement’, ‘quantity’,
'quality',; ‘society’, etc. accardineny are not * abstractions! Is only
man abstract?
The study of different aspects. or.forms of man's activity (econonic,
political, artistic, soientific) that. are abstracted from the whole
man Stalinism regards as contrete. Only the whole. (concrete) man is
abstract!" {(p. 22).
Perhaps the most interesting essay in the book is the one entitled Man as Rconomic Animal and as Praxis. This summarises pithily the views on historical materialism of Marx, Engels, Labriola, Plekhanov, Lenin and © Stalin and develops into an assault on the ‘theory of factors and an affirmation of the unity of man's being. However, the theory of factors is not simply a logical mistake, Petrovic suggests, but reflects an historical process. :
"It is natural for the social thooght of class society to move inside
the limits of the theory of factors, because it is a-self-alienated
sooiety split into mutually independent and conflicting spheres."
In sum, spart from two technical pieces, the book ts very readable, and worth reading.
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