Marxist Humanism in the USSR: the Creative Development of Marxism-Leninism or reaction?

Abstract

The article analyzes the features of the formation of Marxist humanism in the Soviet Marxist-Leninist philosophy of the 50s and 60s. The prerequisites for the emergence of Marxist humanism in the USSR, in addition to the material of the "Manuscripts of 1844", should include the widespread spread of social democratic revisionism among representatives of Soviet social science thought. The article pays special attention to the influence of foreign tradition on the content and problems of domestic Marxist humanism (in particular, the French Communist Party and such theorists as R. Garodi and L. Sav). In addition, the study analyzes the conceptual positions of Soviet philosophers regarding the nature of humanism during the period of socialist construction (M. Petrosyan, P. Fedoseeva, G. Smirnova, I. Frolova). In particular, the issues of the correlation of socialist and bourgeois humanism, the correlation of personal and social under the socialist system, the concept of "comprehensive personality development" under communism, discussions about Marxist anthropology are considered. В At the same time, it is emphasized that the solution of these (and some other) issues proposed within the framework of domestic Marxist humanism was idealistic and divorced from the real practice of socialist construction. In conclusion, the article concludes that Marxist humanism in the Soviet Union was not a creative development of the provisions of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, but was, for the most part, a reworked social-democratic and neo-Marxist revisionism. In our opinion, this conceptual and categorical "sabotage" led to the theoretical and ideological substitution of Marx's provisions instead of their development, which became one of the reasons for the "decomposition" of the party and its loss of the status of the "leading force of the proletariat" in the USSR.