Czechoslovak Marxist humanism and the revolution

Despite their emphasis on humanism and human individuality, Marxist humanists did not deny the importance of social revolutionary change. In the era of the 1960s, revolution still ranked among the central questions with which Marxist humanists were preoccupied. Czechoslovak Marxist humanists' efforts to develop a new concept of revolution fit firmly within the overall pattern of post-Stalinist thought. I discuss the works of Karel Kosik and Robert Kalivoda in order to present Czechoslovak Marxist humanism as an intrinsically variable intellectual current. An analysis of Kosik's and Kalivoda's texts reveals a general pattern within Marxist humanism, while at the same time revealing its specific Hegelian and structuralist variants.