Castoriadis and Critical Theory Crisis Critique and Radical Alternatives

Castoriadis and Critical
Theory
Crisis, Critique and Radical Alternatives
Christos Memos
Castoriadis and Critical Theory
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Castoriadis and Critical
Theory
Crisis, Critique and Radical Alternatives
Christos Memos
Department of Sociology, University of Abertay, Dundee, UK
© Christos Memos 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978–1–137–03445–8
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this

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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2014 by
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Memos, Christos, 1968– author.
Castoriadis and critical theory : crisis, critique and radical alternatives /
by Christos Memos, lecturer in sociology, Department of Sociology, University
of Abertay, UK.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary: “Combining philosophical and political analysis, this study offers
a comprehensive reassessment of Castoriadis’ contribution to critical theory
in and through his critical confrontation with both the crisis of the
traditional Left and the crisis of modern capitalist societies. The key
concepts of ‘crisis’ and ‘critique’ are considered throughout the text and
Castoriadis’ ideas are situated in a critical debate with other radical
thinkers, such as Lefort, Pannekoek, Arendt, Althusser, Axelos, Papaioannou
and Marx. The study supplies an extensive analysis and explores the
contemporary relevance of Castoriadis’ views regarding the Russian Revolution
of 1917, the Hungarian revolt of 1956 and the events of May 1968 in France.
It argues for a re-radicalization of his thought in light of the current
capitalist crisis and seeks to trace his radical alternative to crisis by
critically examining and further elaborating his positions with respect to
socialism, autonomy and revolution” — Provided by publisher.
1. Castoriadis, Cornelius, 1922–1997. 2. Critical theory. I. Title.

B2430.C3584M46 2014
194—dc23 2014026285
To my sister Chrysa Memou
την αδελϕή μoυ Xρύσα Mέμoυ
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: Reading Castoriadis Politically 1
1 Origins: Early Years in Greece, Migration and Life in

France 7
1.1 Formative years and the historicopolitical
setting in Greece 7
1.2 Cultural milieu and intellectual influences 11
1.3 The peculiarity of Castoriadis’ migration 14
1.4 Castoriadis in France 18
2 The Critique of Totalitarianism 26

2.1 Castoriadis, Lefort and the questioning of Trotsky 27
2.2 An exchange of letters between Castoriadis
and Pannekoek 34
2.3 ‘Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR: Four
Letters, Four Lies’ 36
2.4 Keeping the question open 42
3 Subversive Praxis, Open Crisis and Critique 46

3.1 Castoriadis, Arendt and the Hungarian Uprising of
1956 47
3.2 Castoriadis and the crisis of Marxism debate 55
3.3 Louis Althusser: ‘At Last the Crisis of Marxism
has Exploded!’ 60
3.4 Castoriadis versus Althusser 63
4 Marx in Question 70
4.1 Castoriadis, Axelos and Papaioannou:
Distinctiveness and the common basis of
their critique of Marx 71
4.2 Castoriadis and Marx 80
4.3 The limits of Castoriadis’ critique 88
4.4 Freeing or freezing Marx? 95
vii
viii Contents
5 The Crisis of Modern Societies and the Revival of

Emancipatory Politics 100
5.1 Castoriadis and the crisis of May 1968 101
5.2 Crisis, reification and class struggle 108
5.3 Crisis and the odyssey of the project of autonomy 116
5.4 Towards a radical social transformation: Socialism,
autonomy and revolution 123
Conclusions 132
Notes 141
Bibliography 170
Index 182
Acknowledgements
I should like to express my deep gratitude to my sisters, Chrysa and

Antigoni. I am forever indebted to Chrysa for her unconditional finan-
cial and psychological assistance and to Antigoni for her continuous
moral support, care and attention. Our stimulating discussions and their
sharp insights were a powerful source of inspiration and energy. This
book would not have been possible without their endless patience,
encouragement and support when it was most required. My sincere
gratitude goes to my parents for their love, help and understanding.
Part of Chapter 1 was previously published in Premat, Rosengren and
Jollivet (eds) Destins d’exilés. Trois philosophes grecs à Paris: Kostas Axelos,
Cornélius Castoriadis, Kostas Papaioannou (Paris: Éditions Le Manuscrit),
2011, pp. 19–43. Some of the material that appears in Chapter 2 was
published in Critique, 39 (4), 2011, 525–544. Parts of Chapter 3 appeared
in Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 8 (2),
2012, 100–116. Chapter 4 contains revised parts previously published
in Philosophy and Social Criticism, 39 (10), 2013, 1029–1047. I wish to
thank the editors for kindly giving me permission to reproduce them.
Last but not least, I would like to express my warmest thanks to the
editor and the team at Palgrave for all of their support and good will
during the production of this book, and the Department of Sociology at
the University of Abertay, Dundee, for their support.
ix
Introduction: Reading
Castoriadis Politically
In the crisis-ridden contemporary world, the prevailing theoretical,

political, social, economic and cultural paradigms have been called
into question. Deriving from longstanding accumulated contradictions
of modern societies, this multilateral crisis has given rise to a grow-
ing social dissatisfaction, which has been expressed through protests,
riots and uprisings. The emerging social struggles all over the world are
indicative not only of the exhaustion of the neoliberal project; they
have also disclosed the inability of the Left to provide a radical alter-
native. It appears that traditional Left modes of thought and practice
constitute part of the general crisis. Most importantly, they prolong and
perpetuate the current crisis while at the same time acting in a manner
that blocks the configuration of radical alternative solutions. Thus the
questions remain urgent and vital: Why are we not able to escape the
current world capitalist crisis, moving towards a more human, free and
egalitarian society? How could the critical exposition of the precondi-
tions of this crisis lead to the formation of a new radicalism? And, above
all, is there a need, in general, for a new radicalism?
This book aims to grapple with the above questions by provid-
ing a critical reading of the social and political writings of Cornelius
Castoriadis. But why him? Over the last 30 years there has been grow-
ing interest in the thought of Castoriadis, which is expressed in both
academic and political circles. In times of severe crisis, Castoriadis’
thinking could act as a source of constant inspiration and motivation
for critically rethinking the foundations of Western neoliberal societies.
Despite the radicalism and unique significance of his thought, his ideas
are mostly praised and utilized, but they have been deprived of any
critical and radical meaning. What is more, the canonization of the
later Castoriadis and the numerous references to his writings that have
1
2 Castoriadis and Critical Theory
appeared in academic journals are marked by an uncritical admiration

for his work, without any deeper understanding of its political signifi-
cance. As a result, Castoriadis’ contribution to critical social and political
theory has been presented only in fragments, not fully researched and
kept apart from social and political reality. In an original and schol-
arly manner, combining philosophical and political analysis, this study
intends to reassess Castoriadis’ contribution to critical theory in and
through his critical confrontation with both the crisis of the traditional
Left and the decline of Western-type neoliberal societies. In this sense,
the key concepts of ‘crisis’ and ‘critique’ run through the book and are
related to Castoriadis’ more radical philosophical and political positions
with a view to formulating the answers to the inability to build a radical
alternative to neoliberal capitalism.
Reading Castoriadis politically means, first of all, detaching his
thought from the condition of being used as part of the ‘succession
of fads’, from its reduction to another of the ‘successive waves of the
ruling system’s complementary ideology’, exactly that which Castoriadis
was explicitly and fiercely opposed to.1 Reinstating Castoriadis to his
actual political substance implies separating his critical theory from the
dominant tendency of becoming ‘fashionable’ and involves critically
confronting the ‘compilation, misappropriation and distortion’ of his
own ideas.2 Giving back to Castoriadis’ work its proper radical problem-
atic would amount to disengaging it from the idolatry of words, the
construction of a new jargon. As Castoriadis would say, ‘the magic of
words is thus used to make the reality of things disappear’.3 Even after
the severe financial crisis of 2008, the ‘fashionable’, abstract, philosoph-
ical and apolitical readings of Castoriadis appear to remain detached
from the social and political reality. The ‘fashionable’ scholars of his
work resemble, as Castoriadis brilliantly put it,
those who discourse about the rights of man, the indeterminacy of

democracy, communicative action, the self-foundation of reason, and
so on – the Panglosses who go on spouting their navel-watching
rhetoric without ever allowing themselves to be distracted by the
sound and fury of effectively actual history.4
It seems that, as was the case with numerous academics and intellec-
tuals after the movements of the 1960s, the demise of the regimes
in Eastern Europe provided scholars ‘with a minimum of ideological
justification’ or a ‘legitimation’ both for the profound disregard of rad-
ical ideas and practices that followed the collapse, and ‘for their own
incipient privatization while also retaining some sort of “radical sensibil-

ity” ’.5 The philosophical writings of the later Castoriadis, as happened
with specific aspects of the work of Gramsci or the members of the
Frankfurt School, were convenient for ‘a retrospective legitimation of
withdrawal, renunciation, noncommitment, or of a punctilious and
measured commitment’.6 Indisputably, Castoriadis threw himself open
to this treatment both because of the direction and content of a large
part of his later theoretical elaborations, and due to the fact that he
unfortunately did very little to clarify that he aimed at a ‘political and
revolutionary’7 critique of totalitarianism, Marxism and Marx, which
was made from a ‘political, praxical, revolutionary perspective’.8 This is
not to claim that this part of Castoriadis’ work is not worthy of scholarly
and analytical engagement. This is simply to argue that this does not jus-
tify the almost exclusive reading of Castoriadis’ thought via these texts
at the expense of the whole body of his social and political writings.
Castoriadis was first and foremost a political and radical thinker, and
the intended oblivion of the largest part of his work is quite undeserved
and has led, for the second time after the 1970s, to a distorted and
misleading reception of his theorizing. In many academic circles, for
example, he is known, read and used as a psychoanalyst or his work is
indissolubly connected to an abstract and indefinite account regarding
concepts such as imagination, chaos, creation, monad, self, body, psy-
che, magma, tragedy, ensemblistic-identitary logic, legein and teukhein.
In this way, Castoriadis’ thought could eventually be converted into
an academic discipline, canonized and kept isolated from contempo-
rary social and political struggles. In some other instances, the attitude
towards him has been a nihilistic, unqualified and dogmatic condem-
nation and rejection of his thinking. This is the case with the vast
majority of the Marxist or radical Left treatment of Castoriadis. Having
settled for decades ‘for the role of revolutionary-by-proxy’, ‘cuckolded
and defeated as revolutionaries sans revolution’,9 traditional leftists and
Marxists seem to perceive nothing new as they have seen and known it
all before.10 In their own way, they opened the door and they are respon-
sible for the apolitical and conservative appropriation of Castoriadis’
thought.
Both of these positions cancel Castoriadis’ critical and radical mean-
ing and represent an abdication, abandonment and concealment of
the political character of his views. They ultimately neglect and bury
the riches of Castoriadis’ political and intellectual heritage, deferring
treatment of the vital questions that he addressed. Contrary to these
approaches, Castoriadis championed critical reason’s historical role of
‘provoking insubordination and destroying horrors’.11 In contradis-

tinction to the ‘canonized’, ‘positive’, ‘responsible’ and ‘constructive’
reading of his works,12 Castoriadis defended the critical function of
thought13 and argued that the most ‘singularly singular’ creation of
human history is ‘the one that permits the society under considera-
tion to itself call itself into question. This is the creation of the idea
of autonomy, of the reflective return upon oneself, of criticism and
self-criticism, of a questioning that neither knows nor accepts any
limit.’14 Diametrically opposed to the approaches that apprehend the
function of scholarly work as being at the service of the established
order, Castoriadis was adamant that the role of the scholar ‘ought to
be critical’ and argued against a ‘generalized pseudoconsesus’ and those
intellectuals who are ‘caught up in the system’ and by abandoning
and betraying their critical role they ‘became rationalizers for what is,
justifiers of the established order’.15 In this sense he went against the
grain of the academics and intellectuals who seek to catch previously
marginal or subversive ideas and words, as ironically is now happen-
ing with Castoriadis’ work, and make them ‘one phenomenon among
others, commercialized like the others’ with a view to completing the
‘harmony of the system’.16 In one of his interviews in 1991 and in
answer to the question of what the role of the intellectual should be,
Castoriadis clarified and specified his positions further: ‘Uncompromis-
ing criticism of existing realities and elucidation of the possibilities for
transforming them.’17
From this vantage point, Castoriadis’ meaning of ‘critique’ is unfolded
in a dialectical relationship with the concept of ‘crisis’. In his work the
crisis is significant for theoretical and political reasons as it reveals the
contradictions that are deeply rooted in the social relations of capi-
talist society and pinpoints the available alternatives that point to a
radical transformation of existing society. Crisis, then, is not just an eco-
nomic phenomenon, a mere financial structural dysfunctionality, but it
expresses the fundamental and inherent instability of capitalist social
relations. The issue at stake here is not just to use Castoriadis’ work
to identify and describe the crisis of modern societies or the crisis of
the Left broadly conceived, but to understand what generates this cri-
sis, to explore its origins. Hence the concept of ‘crisis’ is understood as
an open one, as a conceptualization of antagonistic and contradictory
social relations that are always fluid and in motion. Crisis is articulated
as a critique of ‘existing realities’, as the subversive power of struggle,
negativity and doubt. It manifests itself not only as the ‘disruption and
disorder’ of riots, revolts and uprisings, but also as elucidation of the
possibilities for transforming the established order, as a ‘moment of

opportunity or of necessity for acting’.18 What is more, for Castoriadis
‘the crisis of criticism is only one of the manifestations of the general
and deep-seated crisis of society’.19 Taken in this way, in Castoriadis’
problematic concerning the relation between critique and crisis, after
the end of the Second World War and in particular since 1950, ‘the
Western world has entered into crisis, and this crisis consists precisely
in this, that the West ceases to call itself truly into question’.20
This book, based upon the concepts of ‘crisis’ and ‘critique’, sheds
light on the largest part of Castoriadis’ work, which is located within
the context of radical tradition. To this end, his ideas are situated in a
critical debate with other radical thinkers, such as Lefort, Pannekoek,
Arendt, Althusser, Axelos, Papaioannou and Marx. Concurrently, the
study offers an extensive analysis and explores the contemporary rel-
evance of Castoriadis’ views regarding the Hungarian Uprising of 1956
and the events of May 1968, which have not escaped the general neglect
of commentators on Castoriadis. The purpose is to elucidate, explore
and bring back to the surface Castoriadis’ lost anti-authoritarianism,
anti-capitalism and radicalism, without neglecting the limitations, con-
fusions and ambiguities of his intellectual endeavour. His brilliant
political analyses of social conflicts, revolts and revolutions stand in
need of being reconsidered and associated with contemporary anti-
capitalist struggles. Can we understand him better than he understood
himself? The book stands for a critical broadening of our understand-
ing of Castoriadis and argues that the reradicalization of Castoriadis’
thought would amount to a reassessment of his contribution to critical
theory in the light of the current world crisis. It first considers his for-
mative experience in Greece, his distinctive migration, and the political
and intellectual context in post-war France, which shaped his intellec-
tual development. The study goes on to examine his immanent critique
of Marxism. From a critical confrontation with Trotsky’s thought, he
moved on to explicating the class nature of the USSR and analysing the
phenomenon of totalitarianism, ‘the crisis of our century’,21 according
to Hannah Arendt. Castoriadis expressed the crisis of totalitarianism22
and the demise of the social regimes in Eastern Europe in his own
eloquent way:
There was this huge event that is the collapse of the Soviet Union
and Communism. Can you point out to me a single person,
among the politicians – not to mention the political wheeler-dealers
[politicards] – on the Left who would have truly reflected on what
happened and on the reasons why it happened, and who, as is

stupidly said, has drawn some lessons from it? And yet a develop-
ment of this sort, in its initial phase – the rise of this monstrosity,
totalitarianism, the Gulag, etc. – and then in its collapse, merited
some very in-depth reflection, as well as a conclusion, about what a
movement aimed at changing society can do, is to do, is not to do,
and cannot do. No reflection at all! 23
Castoriadis’ dealing with the issue of the Soviet bureaucracy and the
phenomenon of totalitarianism led him to a critique of Lenin’s and
Trotsky’s ideas. Given this line of analysis and after shedding light on his
largely neglected correspondence with Anton Pannekoek on the issue of
the Russian Revolution, the book explores Castoriadis’ analysis of the
crisis of Marxism. It focuses, in particular, on the events of Hungary
1956 – along with the respective analysis of Hannah Arendt – as well
as on his attack against Althusser’s attempt to interpret the decline of
the Marxist current. In the context of the ongoing disputes about the
crisis of Marxism, however, he moved on from a critique of Marxism to
a critique of Marx. Indeed, he considered Marx’s particular ideas respon-
sible for the crisis of Marxism and the labour movement more generally.
Castoriadis’ critique is situated as part of a broader critique of Marx
developed by two other Greek thinkers who had a close affinity with his
work: Kostas Axelos and Kostas Papaioannou. Building on this critique,
the book discusses Castoriadis’ critical confrontation with the crisis and
decay of Western neoliberal societies. Positing as a starting point his
analysis of the revolutionary crisis of May 1968, the study expands on
his critical confrontation with the crisis of modern societies. Finally and
with the aim of reinvigorating the radical tradition, the book critically
assesses Castoriadis’ contribution to the struggles to overcome the crisis,
the existing possibilities for the revival of emancipatory politics and the
creation of a self-instituting and self-governing society. It concludes by
offering an evaluation of Castoriadis’ limits, legacy and contribution to
critical political thought.
1
Origins: Early Years in Greece,
Migration and Life in France
The aim of this chapter is to illuminate Castoriadis’ early stages and

initial influences following his transition from Greece to France. His
formative years were very significant for his future intellectual and polit-
ical evolution. The ideas that he developed later were definitely related
to his social environment and were inseparable from the cultural and
historical process. More specifically, this chapter examines the concrete
historical circumstances, the sociopolitical background and the intellec-
tual milieu in Greece and France that influenced the early Castoriadis.
He went through unique experiences that formed his personality and
his intellectual background. Growing up in Greece, he lived under the
dictatorship of 4 August 1936 and the Nazi occupation of Greece (1941).
He also joined the Greek communist-Trotskyist movement. He realized
from experience what Stalinism and Trotskyism meant and he experi-
enced the very beginning of the Greek civil war (the armed conflict
of December 1944), as well as the intervention of British imperialism.
The chapter goes on to investigate the distinctiveness of Castoriadis’
migration and outlines the political and intellectual context in post-war
France, where he experienced the developing intellectual ferment and
opened himself up to other radical influences and intellectual currents.
In this regard, the chapter concludes that his early years in Greece, the
existentialist experience of his migration and, later on, the intellectual
milieu in France decisively shaped his intellectual distinctiveness and
were reflected in Castoriadis’ later theoretical and political trajectory.
1.1 Formative years and the historicopolitical

setting in Greece
Cornelius Castoriadis was born on 11 March 1922 in Constantinople

(Istanbul), but he grew up in Greece, as the Greek Turkish conflict forced
7
his father to relocate the family to Athens. Cornelius’ father, Caesar, was
a Francophile, an admirer of atheist Voltaire and a rabid anti-royalist. His
mother, Sofia, had a great interest in music and imparted to her son her
love for the arts. She developed symptoms of schizophrenia after 1933,
no doubt an unpleasant situation for young Castoriadis’ emotional well-
being. Both parents had a strong influence on Castoriadis’ intellectual
habits and cultivated his curiosity and critical thinking. Castoriadis was
13 years old when he expressed a strong interest in philosophy and
began to read classical philosophical texts by himself. At the same time,
the social conditions and the Greek political developments fostered his
involvement in political issues.
During that period, Greece was marked by profound social changes
and political upheavals, which were accelerated due to the military
defeat by the Turks in 1922, the ‘National Disaster’ and the collapse of
the ‘Great Idea’. The military collapse caused a massive wave of refugees
from the Near East to Greece, whose urgent need for re-establishment,
integration and welfare accelerated the land reform and led to rapid
urbanization and industrialization. The rapidly increasing industrial
expansion, however, was not accompanied by analogous technologi-
cal advances. There was no heavy industry and working-class incomes
remained extremely meagre. The working conditions in the factories
were awful and the economic achievements did not entail an improve-
ment in working-class standards of living. Greece remained an agrarian
and petty bourgeois country, and its economic growth was coupled
with an authoritarian parliamentary system and political instability. The
dominant bourgeoisie was represented by two major political parties:
the liberals (Venizelists) and the populists (anti-Venizelists). Their strug-
gle to seize political power and establish liberal political institutions
was based on charismatic leadership and repressive political measures
in order to preserve the bourgeois order. This period was also marked by
military coups and dictatorships. Among them, Pangalos’ (1925–1926)
and Metaxas’ (1936–1941) dictatorships not only led the institutions of
bourgeois democracy to collapse but also involved mass political perse-
cutions and established concentration camps (Metaxas) for leftist and
Communist Party members. Both parliamentary and dictatorial govern-
ments under the pretext of the threat of communism imposed their
political terrorism in order to oppress and control the Greek labour
movement.
Within this political context and around the same time as the begin-
ning of his philosophical engagement, Castoriadis started to express his
political interests through the reading of the communist publications
Early Years in Greece, Migration and Life in France 9
and texts by Marx that were available in Greece in the years before
the outbreak of the Second World War. Philosophy and politics would
constitute the two pillars upon which Castoriadis’ intellectual course
would be based, and they would determine the content and nature of
his scholarly work. Castoriadis was attracted to Marxism due to his ‘very
strong feeling about the absurdity and injustice of the existing state of
affairs’,1 and his mode of thinking was arguably marked by the polit-
ical milieu in Greece and his participation in the Greek working-class
and communist movement. Though fragmented and weak at its very
beginning, the Greek labour movement was organized at a national
level in 1918, thanks to the foundation of the Greek General Foun-
dation of Labour. The formation of the Greek Communist Party (KKE)
and its Bolshevization in 1924 was a turning point in the course of
the labour and leftist movement. Throughout the interwar period the
Greek Communist Party was prosecuted, oppressed and, from time to
time, outlawed. The dictatorship of 1926 signalled the beginning of a
period of systematic persecutions and underground political activities
for the members of the party. The ‘Idionymon Law’ of 1929, passed by
the liberals, introduced punishment for communist ideas and resulted
in the imprisonment and the exile of thousands of communist mem-
bers and leftists. Given the fact that the labour movement gained
strength during these years (e.g. mass strikes and bloody demonstra-
tions in Thessalonica, May 1936), Metaxas’ dictatorship (August 1936)
dealt a devastating blow to the Greek leftist movement. Not only com-
munist and leftist citizens but also republicans were arrested and exiled
to islands and concentration camps. At the same time, basic bourgeois
civil rights (e.g. freedom of speech, expression, association and the press)
were abolished.
The role of the Communist Party at that time should be understood
in a double sense. On the one hand, it reflects the international devel-
opments of the Communist movement and more particularly what hap-
pened to the USSR, especially after the intervention of the Comintern
and the Stalinization of the Greek Party in 1931. Due to the fact that
there was no other mass radical alternative to the bourgeois policy dur-
ing the interwar period in Greece, the Communist Party capitalized
on the initial achievements of the Russian Revolution. On the other
side, the course of the Communist Party reflects the development of the
Greek Labour movement with its difficulties and contradictions. More
emphatically, however, it shows the great heroism and self-sacrifices of
the Greek communists, which attracted many young intellectuals who
rallied round the Communist Party, among them Cornelius Castoriadis,
who had joined the underground Greek Communist Youth in 1937.

He thus first became familiar with the practice of Marxism through
the political activities of the ‘orthodox’ and Stalinist Greek Communist
Party. Later on, after the beginning of the Nazi occupation, Castoriadis
expressed his opposition to the ‘chauvinistic policy’ of the Greek Com-
munist Party (KKE). With some of his comrades, he endeavoured to alter
the policy of the Communist Party, but he very soon came to realize that
this was far from being a realistic goal.2 Having been disillusioned, he
established relationships with the Trotskyists and, more specifically, he
joined the Trotskyist group of Stinas in 1942.
Stinas was a leading member of the Greek Communist Party, but
later on he espoused Trotskyism and led several Trotskyist groups that
resulted from the fragmentation and numerous splits of the Trotskyist
Greek movement. Despite their sectarian policy and their political
marginalization, all of these minor groups kept alive a critical attitude,
particularly concerning the nature of the Soviet system. Even under the
hard times of lawlessness, exile or imprisonment, the Greek Trotskyists
continued a critical dialogue on ‘Stalinism’ and the ‘Russian question’.
In this context, Stinas’ political and theoretical thought had contributed
to a large extent to Castoriadis’ intellectual progress.3 According to
Castoriadis, Stinas was for him ‘a model fighter’, ‘a fighter without polit-
ical taboo’.4 Having been under the influence of Trotskyism and Stinas’
ideas, Castoriadis formed the basic core of his later critique of the Soviet
system. The following questions raised by Stinas designated Castoriadis’
early thinking and shaped his theoretical itinerary: Why did the Russian
Revolution degenerate? Why did Lenin and Bolshevism emerge? How
did they win the working class’s confidence? Why did Luxemburg’s cri-
tique remain a voice in the wilderness? And finally, did Marx’s theory
include from the very beginning some elements that rendered possible
this development and allowed bureaucrats and ‘executioners’ to make
use of it?5 One could clearly see in Castoriadis’ writings in France an
attempt to provide a satisfactory reply to Stinas’ agonizing questions.
In this climate, Castoriadis argued that the armed conflict between
the National People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) and the British Army
(in December 1944) arose from the totalitarian and bureaucratic policy
of the Greek Communist Party, which aimed at seizing absolute power.6
He criticized the chauvinistic policy of the Greek Communist Party,
its centralism and bureaucratization, and characterized the conflict of
December as ‘the first Stalinist attempt of a coup d’état in Greece’.7
In this context, in early 1945, Castoriadis went on to claim that the
political activities of the Greek Trotskyist group that he belonged to did
not accord with Trotsky’s theory of the USSR as a ‘degenerated work-

ers’ state’. Hence he suggested that the group had to dismiss Trotsky’s
analysis.8 Stinas’ Trotskyist group made an effort to apply Luxemburg’s
internationalism to the specific conditions in Greece and did not draw
any distinction among Germans, British, French, Russians and Greeks.
Hence for this policy the Greek Trotskyists, with, of course, Castoriadis
among them, were persecuted by the Germans, the Greek Stalinists and
later on by the British Army and the right-wing Greek government.9
In other words, Castoriadis experienced not only the fight against fas-
cism and British imperialism but also the fight between ‘comrades’, since
the Stalinist Greek Communist Party carried out assassinations of Greek
Trotskyists and socialists. He thereby obtained a very strong taste of
orthodox Marxism in practice through Stalinist ideology, the bureau-
cracy and dogmatism of the KKE. He also ran the risk of being arrested
and murdered by the Greek Stalinists, and undoubtedly this experience
caused him obsessions or traumas, which proved to be crucial in forming
the ground of his later critique of Marxism and Marx.
1.2 Cultural milieu and intellectual influences
Throughout this early period in Greece, Castoriadis not only had unique
practical-political experience but he obtained a very strong flavour of
the vulgar, codified and mechanistic Marxism of the Greek Communist
movement. The transmission of Marxist ideas was undoubtedly linked
with the level of Greek capitalist development and the organization of
the labour movement, as well as with the political and ideological class
struggle that was taking place in those circumstances. Unlike in other
advanced countries, Greek Marxism was to a large extent formed and
transmitted in underground conditions and more specifically in prisons,
places of exile and concentration camps. A truly dogmatic and oversim-
plified Marxism based on the eclectic reading of texts was circulated and
reproduced among the militants and used as a theoretical tool for polit-
ical and social struggles. Economism, determinism and many aspects
of the mechanistic and instrumental materialism that characterized the
theory and practice of the Greek Communist movement derived from
that period. In a repressive context of censorship and punishment of
Marxist and leftist ideas, the Leninist and Soviet version of Marxism was
the dominant one.
Yet the political and ideological dominance of the Communist Party
in the domain of the Greek Left did not mean that the other leftist
groups had no theoretical and publishing activity.10 The most significant
contribution that these political groups made was the transmission of

Marxist ideas to Greece during the interwar period. Both the minor
socialist and Trotskyist groups sought to make the Greek people famil-
iar with an alternative Marxist literature and aspects of Marxism that
were opposed to the dominant Stalinist policy and ideology of the Greek
Communist Party. Nevertheless, their political and theoretical elabo-
rations remained within the boundaries of the orthodox Marxism of
Trotskyism or of the Second International. According to Castoriadis’
personal testimony,
Under the Metaxas dictatorship all left-wing books were burnt. And
then there was the occupation. So one was not really in touch with
the literature. Still, in 1942–1943 in Greece, I had the good luck to
find copies of Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed, Victor Serge, Ciliga’s
book and Boris Souvarine’s Stalin.11
Castoriadis did not make clear in which language he read the above
books, but there is little doubt that he did so in French or in English,
since there were no Greek translations of these books at that time, except
for Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed. At any rate, the number of transla-
tions of Marxist texts that Castoriadis had available before 1945 was
limited. The first translations of works relating to ‘scientific socialism’
appeared at the beginning of the 1920s. They were mostly translations
that were aiming to popularize socialist theory, transmitting the ideas of
Marxism, Leninism and educating the cadres of the labour and trade-
unionist movement theoretically.12 In 1911 the Communist Manifesto
was published, and in 1921 a summary of Capital by P. Lafargue and
both Wage, Labour and Capital and Wages, Price and Profit. The Contribu-
tion to the Critique of Political Economy was published in 1927, followed
by volume one and the first six chapters of volume two of Capital in
1927–1928, and Value, Price and Profit in 1928.13
In a parallel way, in 1923 the journal ‘Aρχ είoν τ oυ Mαρξ ισ μoύ’
(Marxist Archive) started to publish Marxist works in order to instruct
the workers and improve the intellectual level of the communists. For
this reason, in its first volume in 1923, it published Lenin’s State and Rev-
olution and Imperialism, Varga’s Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Kautsky’s
Erfurt Program and Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program. In its sec-
ond volume in 1924–1925 it published Lenin’s Left Wing Communism:
An Infantile Disorder and Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky,
Engels’s Anti-Dühring and Marx’s The Civil War in France and the Poverty
of Philosophy. Finally, in its third volume, it published, among others,
Lenin’s What is to be Done?, Bogdanov’s Short Course of Economic Science

and Trotsky’s Europe and America and Where is Russia Going?14 In addi-
tion, the following were available: Marx’s On the Jewish Question (1933),
Engels’s Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1920), Social-
ism: Utopian and Scientific (1920) and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of
German Classical Philosophy (1927), Bukharin’s Lenin as Marxist (1927),
Trotsky’s Terrorism and Communism (1921), Kollontai’s Sexual Relations
and the Class Struggle (1933), Kautsky’s Economic Doctrines of Marx (1927)
and Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History (1923), Sombart’s The
Proletariat (1921) and The Future of Capitalism (1933) and Luxemburg’s
Reform or Revolution (1945).15
These translations were made under particularly difficult circum-
stances due to the persecutions against the labour and communist
movements. As a result, the vast majority of the Marxist translations
were done to a low standard and many of them remained unfinished.
Another barrier to these translations was related to the fact that the
Greek language was lacking the appropriate ‘scientific terminology’
(notably in economics).16 Unlike other countries, such as Italy, the lack
of translations acted as a brake on the creation of a ‘Greek school of
Marxist thought’.17 The orthodox Marxist literature was predominant,
and significant texts by Marx were lacking. There was also a notable
absence of other important Marxist writers, such as Luxemburg, Korsch,
Gramsci and Lukács. The issue of the available Marxist literature during
the interwar period in Greece is a matter of great importance in order
to trace Castoriadis’ initial intellectual roots. It indicates the version of
Marxism with which Castoriadis became familiar. Therefore it can be
noted that in his formative years in Greece, Castoriadis obtained a very
strong taste of orthodox Marxism in both theory and practice.
Alongside his political participation, Castoriadis joined the philo-
sophical circles of his times, taking part in the discussions organized
by a group called Aρχείo της ιλoσoϕίας (Archive of Philosophy),
which consisted of mainly conservative but highly educated intellec-
tuals. At the same time, he graduated from the eighth male gymnasium
of Athens18 and enrolled in the Faculty of Law in Athens on 15 Novem-
ber 1937. He obtained a BA in political sciences (19 February 1942) and
a BA in law (27 March 1942). According to his student file, his grades
and the results of his final exams, Castoriadis was an exceptional stu-
dent graduating from the university with a distinction 8 9/12 = 9. His
attendance on specific courses and modules indicates some of his initial
inclinations and preferences, and the likely impact of the department’s
professors on his later intellectual trajectory.19 From his file it appears
that, apart from the law modules, Castoriadis did extremely well and
passed with a distinction the modules in economics. It is worth men-
tioning here that the faculty of law in Athens was the first department
in Greece (and the only one by 1921) where the module ‘Political and
Public Economy’ was taught.20 In the period when Castoriadis studied in
the department, the module was run by Prof. Aggelos Aggelopoulos. He
was an economist who dreamed of a universal economic collaboration,
a convergence of the economic systems, and who believed in a com-
bination of a planned economy with respect to basic individual rights
and liberties.21 Moreover, he maintained that ‘the socialist idea is not
restricted to Marxism’.22
One thing that is of interest here is that Marx’s thought and Marxism
were almost excluded from the Greek academic mainstream. The vast
majority of the progressive professors were socialists or social-democrats,
who kept a distance from more radical and revolutionary aspects of
Marxism. Others who taught in the same department, for instance
Varvaresos, sought a new social and economic system beyond capital-
ism and socialism,23 and Zolotas argued that the collapse of capitalism
constituted a moral demand of the people.24 Finally, Tsatsos argued
for a ‘non-dogmatic socialism’25 and advised his students to be scep-
tical of leftist propaganda about the inevitable collapse of capitalism.
All of these theoretical positions seem to have influenced Castoriadis’
thought in the sense that they strengthened his objections to the valid-
ity of Marxism-Leninism, the codification of socialist theory, the Marxist
deterministic interpretation of history and the inevitable collapse of
capitalism. These influences, along with the codified and mechanis-
tic Marxism of the Greek Communist Party, combined with its harsh
and opportunist Stalinist practices, continued even in France to be a
point of reference in the eyes of the Greek intellectual. As the first 20
years of his intellectual itinerary demonstrated, the generic intellectual
and political atmosphere in Greece had a very strong influence upon
Castoriadis’ later theoretical elaborations. Located within this context,
the peculiarity of his migration could make more sense and shed light
on the formative experiences and the early influences of the young
Greek intellectual.
1.3 The peculiarity of Castoriadis’ migration
The post-liberation period in Greece did not amount to a new phase of

peace, social stability and economic development. There was no room
for rapid and structural transformations and reformations, because for
Greece the end of the Second World War signalled a new period of
crises and conflicts, and the first phase of the events which led up to
the outbreak of the Greek Civil War (1946–1949). The British imperi-
alist intervention, in collaboration with the provocations of the Greek
right-wing establishment, led to the armed conflict of December 1944
(the so-called ‘Dekembriana’). On 3 December 1944, the Greek police
opened fire on a mass demonstration organized by the leftist move-
ment, killing more than 28 people and injuring 148. Over a month’s
fighting was set off between the forces of the Greek leftist fighters and
those of the Greek government and the British Army, in which the Greek
leftist movement was defeated militarily. The peace agreement (Varkiza
Agreement) of 12 February 1945, which was signed between the Greek
right-wing government and the National Liberation Front/National Peo-
ple’s Liberation Army (EAM/ELAS), indicated that the ‘balance of power
in Greece as a whole [had] swung suddenly and decisively against the
Left for the first time since 1942’.26 The Varkiza Agreement was aimed
at finishing the December 1944 military conflict and at reconciling the
conflicting political and social sections leading the country to sociopo-
litical stability and economic growth. Contrary to its alleged aims and
declarations, however, Greek society remained divided and polarized.
The agreement was followed by a period of uncontrolled violence, and
atrocities were committed against the Greek leftist movement and the
civilian population.
Right-wing violence and purges marked the beginning of the ‘White
Terror’ period (1945–1946). Leftists and democrats paid a heavy price
during these purges. Leftist newspapers were banned, leftist organiza-
tions were destroyed and their members were prosecuted, jailed and
murdered. As Voglis has noted, ‘within one year of the Varkiza Agree-
ment, according to EAM sources, the results of the “White Terror” were:
1,192 people killed, 159 women raped, 6,413 people injured and 551
offices and printing shops raided’.27 Unlike in other European coun-
tries, in Greece, purges took place in the civil service, not against the
Nazi collaborators but rather against leftists and members of the Greek
Resistance.28 In this context the ideological dominance of the Right was
the corollary of its political and military victory. The Greek government
not only abolished basic civil liberties by suppressing the freedom of
speech and by intervening in the trade unions in favour of right-wing
trade unions, but also attempted to control and manipulate all of the
ideological and educational institutions. The situation in higher educa-
tion could be characterized in many ways as tragic, bleak and desperate.
Purges took place in the universities, and many university professors
were prosecuted and fired because of their participation in the Greek

Resistance.29 This reign of terror in the universities was combined with
a general intellectual, scientific and cultural regression. Tsoukalas has
very vividly described the situation in Greek universities and mainly in
the area of the social sciences:
In higher education the situation was even worse, at least in the

humanities and in the social sciences. Sociology was by definition
suspect; political science remained marginal. All ‘new’ and poten-
tially critical branches were absent, whether as a result of deliberate
intent or possibly of simple ignorance. The study of psychology
was rudimentary at best. Predictably, psychoanalysis was not even
mentioned as a possible discipline. Contemporary history was con-
spicuously absent from the curricula, while economic and cultural
history were generally relegated to the background.30
The state of Greek society as a whole after the Second World War
was very critical. It was characterized by violence and terror against a
large percentage of the population. There was neither peace nor secu-
rity, and the social and economic conditions were chaotic. Under these
circumstances, survival was the citizens’ only concern. The Greek peo-
ple felt threatened at any time and, consequently, looked to escape
from a situation that was oppressive and dangerous for their lives.
During the Nazi occupation of Greece, George Theotokas, a distin-
guished liberal intellectual, eloquently expressed how desperate the
situation was:
Last winter – our journey into Hell. I dared not write about what
I saw – it was too burdensome and painful . . . [Those who were not
there] will have the urge to relive it, perhaps indeed to discern in the
midst of the horror, the magic of great historical moments. All we ask
is never to see such things again, to flee from them. To flee – but in
what direction?’31
Two years later, in 1945, and despite Greece’s liberation from the Nazis,
the above agonized question remained unsolved and equally urgent.
People wanted to flee, but how and in what direction? The less privi-
leged citizens fled to the mountains, and according to Woodhouse they
numbered around 20,000.32 On the other hand, for some young Greeks,
life was more generous. Approximately 220 young Greek intellectuals
fled to France, thanks to a scholarship provided to them by the French
government. The first group, which included 123 Greek students, on
22 December 1945 travelled in a ship called Mataroa from Piraeus to

Tarantas, and then, via Bologna and Basel, arrived in Paris by train on
28 December 1945.33 Octave Merlier and Roger Milliex, the two directors
at the French Institute of Athens, contributed decisively in order for the
French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to award scholarships to a surprisingly
large number of young Greeks to move to France and study there. There
were approximately 800 candidates for the scholarships and the process
of selection appeared to be very difficult. The majority of these young
intellectuals belonged to the category that Laura Fermi has described as
not ‘fully educated adults . . . who were too young at the time to hold
the equivalent of a college degree but had been molded to a great extent
by the cultural forces of their country of origin’.34 A large proportion of
the recipients were leftists, members of the Greek Communist Party and
had taken an active part in the Greek Resistance, and some of them had
already been persecuted by the right-wing Greek government. Accord-
ing to the later tragic political developments and the outbreak of the
Greek Civil War, their migration to France could be considered as the
last and simultaneously the best resort in order to survive and keep
themselves alive.
This exodus could be seen as the last episode of the intellectual
migration that took place in Europe after the Nazi seizure of power in
Germany. Some of the future most significant Greek intellectuals left
Greece for good; inter alia Cornelius Castoriadis, who was in good com-
pany during the days spent travelling with Kostas Axelos (1924–2010)
and Kostas Papaioannou (1925–1981), with whom he had not only per-
sonal but also theoretical affinities. The experience of migration had a
considerable impact upon Castoriadis and constituted a fundamental
feature of his formative experience. It also had an important and lasting
influence on his theoretical development. In this sense there are sev-
eral points of similarity between the case of Castoriadis and migration
of the Frankfurt School and the critical theorists. As Kellner reminds
us, ‘Critical Theory, like much modern philosophy and contemporary
social theory, is exile theory, the product of thinkers forced by adverse
circumstances into emigration.’35 As with the critical theorists, so for
Castoriadis, his social and political theory is ‘exile theory’, strongly
influenced by the experience of migration. Koestler argued that ‘the
most productive times for revolutionary philosophy had always been
the time of exile’.36 None the less, the experience of migration and its
influence upon intellectuals’ evolution is very often underemphasized
in the literature that is concerned with critical theory.37 For Kellner, the
conditions of exile and the situations in which the intellectual migrants
find themselves
can be conducive to producing critical and original thought and writ-

ing. For the political emigrant is often fuelled by a passion to criticize
and unburden himself or herself of anger and frustration. Conse-
quently, the thought and writings of political refugees often contain
a sharp critical edge and a polemical passion and intensity.38
Likewise, one could ascribe to the experience of migration the ‘polem-

ical passion and intensity’ as well as the sharp critique developed
by Castoriadis against orthodox Marxism, the USSR and Marx’s own
thought. The existential experience of migration and the hard times
in Greece not only rendered him ‘fuelled by a passion to criticize and
unburden himself of anger and frustration’ but also made him able
to look at the social and political issues from a different angle and
develop ‘original and often striking ideas and perceptions’.39 The critical
theorists’ experience and writings, in particular those of Adorno,40 are
indicative of how ‘exile influenced their choice of language, modes of
expression and development of their social theory’.41 The same applies
to Castoriadis. He was not allowed to visit Greece until 1956 (11 years
after his migration). He also had great difficulty in taking French citi-
zenship and he was only granted full French citizenship in 1970. It was
no coincidence, therefore, that until the 1970s, Castoriadis ‘published
his political articles under pseudonyms for fear of endangering his émi-
gré status in France’.42 His theoretical and political familiarity with the
orthodox Marxism of the Greek communist movement, along with the
existentialist experience of his migration, run through his critical theo-
rizing. They shaped his intellectual distinctiveness and were reflected
in his later theoretical contribution. Arriving in France, Castoriadis
met a world with freedom of thought and favourable conditions to be
productive and creative. He found all of these social and educational
conditions that enabled him to contribute decisively to the flourishing
and enrichment of post-war continental critical thought.
1.4 Castoriadis in France
After the end of the Second World War, France became the ideal des-
tination for the dissident intellectuals of Europe, and especially for
those who came from authoritarian or fascist regimes and who had
been deprived of basic civil liberties and rights for years. The collapse
of 1940 and the role that the Resistance movement played during the
Second World War had as a result the discrediting of ‘liberal-bourgeois
intellectual and political traditions, leaving the nation in a conceptual
vacuum’.43 During the post-liberation period, this theoretical void was

filled with theoretical debates regarding social transformation and the
issue of communism. Although Catholics and Gaullists participated in
the Resistance, it was obvious that the leftist movement and, in partic-
ular, socialist and communist intellectuals had gained in prestige. To a
considerable degree, the intellectual atmosphere in post-war France was
influenced by the social and political circumstances, and was signifi-
cantly determined by Communist Party policy and the issues addressed
by it with respect to domestic and foreign problems. The Commu-
nist Party reached the peak of its influence and won 5 million votes
in 1945, and by 1947 it consisted of 900,000 members. However, its
own political presence was marked by a distinctive authoritarianism,
overcentralism, blind obedience to the party line, and party patriotism
coupled with a strong nationalist flavour and a personality cult related
to its secretary-general, Maurice Thorez, all elements that are consis-
tent with its Stalinist theoretical and organizational characteristics.44
Its patriotic role was reassured through its participation in government
from 1944 to 1947. In general, the party managed to capitalize on its
own role in the Resistance and the fact that it was seen by the new gen-
erations as being the only French political power that symbolized the
heroic and glorious victory of the USSR against Nazi Germany. Above all
it exercised a very considerable impact on French intellectuals, notably
the young ones, who seemed to ignore the past, namely the ‘Molotov–
Ribbentrop Pact’ or ‘the troubling Soviet domestic record of the thirties’
and ‘saw in the party a political movement responding to their own
desire for progress, change and upheaval’.45 This link between the Com-
munist Party, the glorification of the Soviet Union and the intellectuals
led to another French peculiarity. A critical attitude towards the USSR
could easily be rejected, marginalized and designated as reactionary and
counter-revolutionary. According to Khilnani,
Contrary to the situation in Britain, where the much more immedi-

ately (and differently) felt effect of writers like Koestler and Orwell
made it perfectly reasonable, if by no means mandatory, to reject the
Soviet Union as a political model and yet continue to remain on the
Left, in France it was not until the 1970s that such a position became
intellectually and politically sustainable.46
The 15 years between 1945 and 1960 proved that France was able
to find a new social and political stability, which led to a rapid and
successful industrial transformation. French communist intellectuals,
however, insisted on ignoring profound social and economic changes.

Whereas critical theory in other advanced Western countries made an
effort to analyse the new developments of capitalism, French com-
munist intellectuals remained anchored in their traditional Soviet-type
Marxist interpretations of the world.47 Despite the dogmatism and
entrenchment of the communist intellectuals, however, new social and
economic characteristics emerged in post-war France, and this mod-
ernization influenced the theoretical debates and ideological currents.
According to Poster, it was a period of ‘profound reorientation and vital-
ity in social theory’,48 which influenced both Marxist and non-Marxist
intellectuals.
Additionally, the shifts in post-war theoretical debates were decisively
determined by the pre-war intellectual tradition and atmosphere. The
social and political conditions in France did not favour the flourish-
ing of Marxism.49 The acceptance of Marxism in France was belated,
and one of the main reasons for this slow emergence of Marxism was
that ‘the intellectual competitors of Marxism, Blanqui’s Jacobinism and
Proudhon’s syndicalism dominated the French worker’s movement well
into the twentieth century’.50 For Duvignaud, a resistance to Marxism
was put up ‘by the “intellectual class” that had been nourished for more
than a century on liberal ideas, and then upon the utopianisms of the
’48’.51 Admittedly, ‘the centralized and strongly bureaucratic University
system’ was ‘the hard core of this resistance’, since it had a dogmatic
attitude towards excluding radical and subversive philosophical ideas,
and as a consequence the ‘invasions of the great ideas, while they were
spreading widely in central Europe, were repulsed in France by the
chauvinism and traditionalism of official bodies, right up to the last
war’.52 A turning point for the spread of Marx’s ideas in France was
the ‘discovery’ of Hegel’s world and his assimilation by French intel-
lectuals and academics after the Second World War. The experience of
the war facilitated the Hegel renaissance, as the Hegelian conceptual
tools and insights appeared to supply a much more profound compre-
hension of the unfolding events and the most poignant aspects of this
unique historical conjuncture. It also challenged and discredited the
past philosophical strands that drew heavily on ‘analytical rationalism’,
by shifting the debates on key Hegelian ideas, such as the concepts of
alienation and the dialectic.53
Interest in Hegel and his importance to the French intellectuals was
evidenced in the titles of the DEA (Diplôme d’études approfondies)
dissertations written between 1947 and 1949 by three later leading intel-
lectual figures of French culture: Louis Althusser’s La Notion de contenu
dans la philosophie de G.W.F. Hegel; Jaques Martin’s La Notion d’individu
chez Hegel and Michel Foucault’s La Constitution d’un transcendental dans

‘la Phénoménologie de l’ esprit’ de Hegel.54 This rebirth of interest in Hegel,
and especially in his The Phenomenology of Spirit, was not the only impact
of the German philosophical tradition on the post-war French intel-
lectual atmosphere. In general, the French intellectual landscape was
dominated by ‘German philosophy’s three H’s – Hegel, Husserl, and
Heidegger.’55 In this context the philosophy of Hegel and its radical
interpretation supplied by Kojeve and Hyppolite facilitated the study
of Marx’s early writings and generated a genuine interest in his own
theorizing. It should be noted here that with the exception of his polit-
ical and historical writings and his Capital, which appeared in French
during the nineteenth century, the whole body of Marx’s writings was
translated into French mainly between 1927 and 1967. As Mark Poster
has stressed,
The Molitor translations began in 1927 with Marx’s doctoral disserta-

tion and The Holy Family. The German Ideology and the all-important
Paris Manuscripts of 1844, known in France as Economie politique et
philosophie, did not appear until 1937 and even then it was ignored
until after the Liberation. The Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
appeared a little earlier, in 1935, but the Grundrisse, which showed
the continuity of Marx’s thought from the 1844 Manuscripts to Capital
was not published in French until 1967.56
Such a belated introduction and translation of Marx’s writings in France

and the absence of basic Marxian texts had a double impact. First, Marx’s
thought could not be studied rigorously and properly until the close of
the Second World War,57 and, second, the fact that Marx’s texts were
delayed in coming to France could explain ‘the slow development of an
open Marxism in France’.58
The translation and publication of Marx’s early writings gave the
impression that the rediscovery of another Marx was possible and con-
cepts such as alienation and praxis came to the fore. The central issue
at stake was that the ‘1844 Manuscripts’ and the idea of alienation
were able to offer a new basis for a new reading and interpretation
of Marx. The newly discovered ‘Young Marx’, who dealt with ‘man’
and not with means and forces of production or economics, became
the centre of the debate that occupied Marxist thinkers. In this con-
text, new and radical readings of Marx were formulated in a parallel
way with the increasing interest in Marx’s thought itself.59 According to
Lichtheim, ‘Marxism and revisionism spread simultaneously, the former
in the academic world, the latter among Marxists.’60 This development
of Marxism in post-war France was also fostered by the foreign intel-

lectuals and refugees who were in exile, and due to their political
experiences they strongly questioned Marx’s use by both the Russian
regime and the European Social Democracy. This current of the foreign
intellectuals who fled to France after the end of the Second World War
included Cornelius Castoriadis. Arriving in France at the end of 1945,
the young Greek intellectual had to deal with the orthodoxy of the
French Communist Party and the ideological power that it exercised
over French political and intellectual developments. From this point of
view one could conceive of how difficult and pioneering Castoriadis’
attempts to criticize the Soviet system and orthodox Marxism were. He
embarked on his critique from a radical point of view and was automat-
ically pushed by the Stalinist intellectuals and the French Communist
Party to the margins of intellectual debate. As Khilnani has argued,
after the defeat of fascism, in an atmosphere thick with accusations

of collaboration and betrayal, anti-Fascism was most easily displayed
by support for the Soviet Union. In this context, the anti-Soviet and
revolutionary critique made by those such as Castoriadis and Lefort
could not gain much force.61
On the other hand, the Greek scholar was deeply influenced by the intel-
lectual currents that characterized post-war France. The rediscovery of
Hegel, the renewed interest in Marx, the focus on his early writings and
the impact of German philosophy constituted a new and unique expe-
rience for the young Greek at a time when he was forming the core of
his theoretical positions. It was a period of intense intellectual ferment
and he was actively involved in it. The relationship between Marx and
philosophy, or the issue about the philosophical foundations of Marx’s
thinking, was the subject of longstanding controversy and gave rise to
several interpretations of Marx’s work and, at times, to opposing Marxist
tendencies. Critical Marxist thinkers reopened the old questions posed
by George Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness and Karl Korsch’s
Marxism and Philosophy, and the philosophical content of Marxism was
located at the epicentre of the theoretical discussions. The Greek scholar
made his contribution to these debates within an intellectual atmo-
sphere that was marked by the emergence and interrelation of a variety
of scholarly currents, such as Hegelian Marxism, Heideggerian Marxism,
Freudo-Marxism, phenomenological Marxism and existentialism. The
influence of Lukács, Korsch and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s reading of
Marx as well as the Hegel renaissance, expressed principally by Jean
Hyppolite and Alexandre Kojève,62 should be considered in order to

comprehend Castoriadis’ milieu in France.
Castoriadis continued his studies in France and made an effort to
pursue a PhD thesis in philosophy, but he never managed to com-
plete it.63 Having Hegel in mind, the subject of his thesis was that
‘any attempt at a rationally constructed philosophical system leads to
blind alleys, to aporias and to antinomies’.64 In continuity with his
Greek political experience, Castoriadis’ new life in France was associated
from the outset with political activities. He joined the French section
of the Fourth International (the International Communist Party) and
later on his meeting with Claude Lefort led to the formation of a minor-
ity group within the party. Lefort vividly recalled his first meeting with
Castoriadis:
I first heard him lecture to the Party on the USSR in preparation for
the Third Congress. His analysis overwhelmed me. I was convinced
by him before he even reached his conclusion. I would have never
been able to articulate the economic foundation that he provided for
his conclusion. Castoriadis’s arguments seemed to me worthy of the
best Marx, but the Trotskyists deemed them heresy.65
In the summer of 1948 they left the PCI, criticizing the Trotskyist
explanation of Stalinism, and later on they ‘formed an independent
group and published the first issue of Socialisme Ou Barbarie in March,
1949’.66 Castoriadis wrote using pseudonyms such as Paul Cardan, Piere
Chaulieu, Jean Delvaux and Jean-Marc Coudray. As a group, Socialisme
Ou Barbarie had a ‘very limited appeal’67 and Castoriadis very eloquently
described this marginalization: ‘We were absolutely isolated. There was
a period when, after the outbreak of the Korean war, we were less than
a dozen in the group. And the audience was extremely limited, resid-
ual ultra-leftist groups.’68 Later on the situation started to change and
the political events and changes that took place after the death of Stalin
gave a new vigour to Socialisme Ou Barbarie. In Castoriadis’ words:
After 1953 with Stalin dead, the Berlin revolt, the Czechoslovakian
strikes in ’54, then Hungary and Poland in ’56, the atmosphere
started changing, and the review gained some audience-never very
important. At the time we were selling about 1,000 copies of the mag-
azine, which were read around. Then came the Algerian war, and the
stand we took against the Algerian war. There was a kind of renais-
sance amongst the student youth at that time. People started coming
and the group grew. Some time in 1958/59, in the whole of France,
including the provinces, we were about 100. By ’62, ’63, ’64 we could
hold public meetings in Paris with, say, 300 or 400 people. But all of
this, as you see, was extremely, limited.69
Yet, despite the isolation of the group, according to Hirsh, the journal
proved significant as the only vehicle for a systematic gauchiste cri-

tique of the communist movement during the height of the Cold
War. While many leftist intellectuals (with Sartre in the lead) buried
their qualms and sided with the Soviet Union against the capitalist
West, Socialisme Ou Barbarie continued a critique of both sides.70
The group Socialisme Ou Barbarie developed close relationships with the

‘Johnson-Forest Tendency’ (C. L. R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya) in
the USA and the British group and journal Solidarity (Maurice Brinton).
Some 40 issues of the journal were published before 1965, when the
cessation of publication was announced, and the group ceased to exist
in 1967. During this period, Castoriadis’ thought developed from a cri-
tique of orthodox Marxism to one of Marx’s thought itself. From 1971 to
1975 he served on the editorial board of the review Textures, and from
1976 to 1980 of the journal Libre, while in 1970 he started to study
and practise psychoanalysis. He also worked as a professional economist
at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development from
1948 to 1970 and later on as a psychoanalyst. He conducted a weekly
seminar at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales from 1980
to 1995. Not surprisingly, Castoriadis was characterized as ‘a prolific
essayist’71 since, with the exception of The Imaginary Institution of Soci-
ety (1975), his books are basically collections of essays, interviews and
seminars.72
‘Man is his visions’,73 as Octavio Paz put it. Needless to add that we
are our influences and the experiences that we have been through as
well. Equally, one could claim that the concrete historical circumstances,
the sociopolitical background and the intellectual milieu influenced
Castoriadis’ theoretical positions. The formation of his thought has to
be understood as a process of interaction with the sociohistorical reality
and as a result of the experiences that he went though. His early years
in Greece, the existential experience of the migration and the intellec-
tual milieu in France decisively formed his intellectual idiosyncrasy and
were reflected in his later theoretical contribution. More specifically,
the nature of his intellectual migration and his life experiences found
expression in the particular way in which he attempted to interpret and

criticize Marxism and Marx’s own thought. However, before criticizing
Marx he started by defending Marx’s original thought from its misuses
and distortions. By criticizing Trotsky’s ideas, contrasting them with
those of Marx, he made a remarkable effort to demystify the actual class
character of the USSR. His intellectual endeavour led him to question
Lenin and Leninism, and to explicate the crisis and decay of Marxism.
He also sought to identify Marx’s responsibility for this metamorphosis
of orthodox Marxism and its reactionary function. Let us now trace his
trajectory and theoretical itinerary from a critique of bureaucracy and
Marxism to a critique of Marx.
2
The Critique of Totalitarianism
Castoriadis’ political and theoretical trajectory started as an immanent

critique of Marxism, namely working with Marx and against the the-
oretical and practical consequences of orthodox Marxism. Defending
Marx’s thought from its vulgar interpretations and realizations, Trotsky’s
analysis of the class character of the USSR was considered to be unsat-
isfactory, and Trotsky’s positions and ideas were put into question. This
led Castoriadis to a reinvestigation of the Soviet social formation and
a critique of Lenin. In a parallel way, however, fundamental elements
of his critique on Trotsky, the USSR and Lenin later on became the
basis of his critique of Marx. According to Tormey and Townshend, the
critique developed on Marxism by Castoriadis ‘moved from the con-
crete analysis of the forms and modalities of Marxism as a governing
doctrine towards a critique of the theoretical and political premises of
Marx’s work itself’.1 The first section of this chapter focuses on the
effort made by Castoriadis and Lefort to criticize Trotsky’s ideas and
contrast them with Marx’s fundamental positions. The next section
discusses the logical implication of the above critique. Trotsky’s con-
tradictions and his inability to explain the phenomenon of Stalinism
led Castoriadis to undertake a more thorough and systematic critique of
bureaucracy and the Soviet regime. The section first presents the rela-
tively unknown exchange of letters between Castoriadis and Pannekoek
regarding the nature of the Russian Revolution and the class char-
acter of the Soviet Union, then it proceeds analytically to outline
Castoriadis’ positions with regard to the Stalinist phenomenon. The
chapter concludes by challenging Castoriadis’ viewpoints through a crit-
ical reading of his positions and by examining the limits and merits of
his approach.
26
The Critique of Totalitarianism 27
2.1 Castoriadis, Lefort and the questioning of Trotsky
The analysis of the political situation in Greece made by the Greek

Trotskyists raised Castoriadis’ doubts over the correctness and the
Marxist validity of the Trotskyist approach. Arriving in France, he joined
the French Trotskyist movement, whose theoretical elaborations rein-
forced the above doubts. His encounter with Claude Lefort disclosed
their common theses and concerns about the Trotskyist interpretation
of Stalinism, as well as the analysis of the class nature of the USSR
and the contradictions of the general Trotskyist policy. Very soon they
founded a tendency against what they regarded as the absurdities of the
Trotskyist tactic. As Castoriadis explained, it was not only the Russian
question but also the national policy and the political choices of the
Trotskyists, their supportive stance towards Tito during his break with
Cominform and the social struggles in France in 1947, which, in line
with their own theoretical development, led their tendency to strug-
gle against the official Trotskyist line. For them it had become clear
that Trotskyism was steadily moving away from revolutionary theory
and praxis.2 However, if ‘a passing awareness of the counterrevolu-
tionary character of Stalinism leads, most often, to Trotskyism’,3 then
where does the awareness of the reformist and contradictory positions
of Trotsky and Trotskyism lead? Since for Castoriadis ‘to ask the question
is to answer it’,4 his response to Trotskyist inconsistencies was lucid: he
went back to Marx.
One of the major points of Castoriadis’ criticism of the Trotskyist
groups concerned their appraisal of the Stalinist communist parties as
reformist parties. Castoriadis noted that this position was insufficient
and misleading, and it also made Trotskyists incapable of interpreting
both the domestic and the international political scene. On the other
hand, according to Castoriadis, Trotskyists led the working masses to
confusion by defending the USSR and considering it as a ‘degenerated
workers’ state’. Trotsky argued that the USSR was a ‘degenerated work-
ers’ state’ and, notwithstanding the Soviet regime’s degeneration, he
maintained that the Soviet Union was a contradictory and transitional
society ‘halfway between capitalism and socialism’.5 On this basis he
pointed out that although the Soviet bureaucracy ‘is something more
than a bureaucracy’, it is not a ruling class, but ‘it is in the full sense
of the word the sole privileged and commanding stratum in the Soviet
society’.6 From this point of view, Trotsky took the nature of the USSR
as a proletarian state and the structure of the Russian economy as social-
ist for granted. As he contended, ‘the nationalization of the land, the
means of the industrial production, transport and exchange, together

with the monopoly of foreign trade, constitute the basis of the Soviet
social structure’.7 In other words, Trotsky’s claim was that the relations
of distribution in the Soviet regime were not socialist, while the rela-
tions of production were, since the nationalization of the means of
production and Russian planning determined the socialist character of
production.
Castoriadis, from the very beginning of his life in France and more
specifically in 1946, wrote against the defence of the USSR and argued
that ‘the term “degenerated workers’ State”, employed in connection
with the USSR, should be considered and condemned’.8 He argued that
Trotsky’s notion of the ‘degenerated workers’ state’ was at fault. There
was nothing ‘workerist’ concerning the Soviet state, and the new post-
war regimes in Eastern Europe did not emanate from a proletarian
revolution. On this basis, Castoriadis did not hesitate in fiercely cri-
tiquing both the Trotskyist movement and the Fourth International, and
he maintained in 1949 that
Today the ‘Fourth International’ uses a spurious faithfulness to the

letter of Marxism as a substitute for an answer to the important ques-
tions of the day. Some vanguard workers are to be found, it is true, in
the ranks of the Trotskyist movement. But there they are constantly
twisted and demoralized, exhausted by an activism devoid of all seri-
ous political content, and, finally discarded. With the small amount
of strength it can muster, the Fourth International plays its comical
little role in this great tragedy of the working class’s mystification
when it puts forward its class-collaborationist slogans, like ‘Defense
of the Soviet Union’, for a Stalino-reformist government or in more
general terms, when it masks the reality of today behind the empty
formulas of yesterday.9
Castoriadis extended his questioning of Trotsky’s insights and disputed

the Marxist validity of Trotsky’s analysis. In Trotsky’s view, socialism was
identical with central planning, industrialization and nationalization of
the land, and the basic means of production. Castoriadis argued for ‘a
return to the genuine spirit of Marx’s analyses’, which would allow us
to demystify the abstract notions of ‘nationalization’ and ‘planning’,
bringing to the fore the actual class content of the Soviet production
relations.10 Trotsky failed to make an in-depth analysis of the USSR going
beyond the juridical forms of the relations of production. According to
Castoriadis’ view, it is a juridical formalism and entirely inaccurate to
claim that nationalization and planning constitute the socialist bases of

Soviet society. Bourgeois law, also, represents the social and production
relations as free and equal, covering them with their juridical forms:
ownership of capital, free disposition of the worker’s own labour power
and the labour-hiring contract. Yet this does not mean that the social
relations are free and equal.11
In this respect, Castoriadis argued that Trotsky’s analysis seems to be
similar to Proudhon’s positions when the latter had attempted to reply
to the question: What is property? It is worth remembering here that
Marx himself had responded to Proudhon that ‘the question of what
this is could only have been answered by a critical analysis of “political
economy”, embracing the totality of these property relations, consider-
ing not their legal aspect as relations of volition but their real form, that
is, as relations of production’.12 Similar to Proudhon, Trotsky does not
examine the Soviet relations of production, and their only difference lies
in the fact that while for Proudhon ‘property is theft’, for Trotsky, ‘state
property is socialism’. Castoriadis used Marx’s critique of Proudhon to
demonstrate that, unlike Trotsky, a Marxist analysis of the USSR could
not remain in the abstract sphere of the legal aspect of property rela-
tions, but requires an overall analysis of the relations of production.
Trotsky entangled the ensemble of production relations in the legal
concept of state property. This means that his positions regarding the
significance of statification and planning as evidence of the socialist
character of the USSR attributes to law a substance and function that
are independent of the Soviet social and economic reality. Instead of
espousing Marx’s critical method, Trotsky was led to an ‘abstract juridi-
cism’, thus reaching the point of ‘separat[ing] the economic from the
political’.13 According to Castoriadis, if we want to explain the clash
between economic reality and its juridical forms, we have to seek
in what can be called the double function of law and of every super-
structure. Law, like every ideological form in an exploitative society,
simultaneously plays the role of the adequate form of reality as well
as its mystified form. Although it is the adequate form of reality for
the dominant class, for whom it expresses its historical and social
interests, it is only an instrument for mystifying the rest of society.14
Accordingly, Trotsky was not able to see this double function of law
in the Soviet Union and perceive how state ownership disguises the
economic and social relations of Soviet society. A Marxist analysis of
the USSR shows that state ownership is determined by the relations of
production and that the statification and exploitation of the working

class by a new dominant class are not mutually exclusive.15 For this rea-
son the issue at stake ‘is not whether there is State control [étatisation],
but by whom and for whose profit this State control is unsaturated or
maintained’.16 The Soviet bureaucracy had become the ruling class in
Soviet society since it exercised political and economic power and man-
aged the production and distribution of the social product for its own
profit. Hence the nationalization of the means of production meant that
these means were at its collective disposal and the bureaucracy was enti-
tled to command production and workers in accordance with its own
vested interests.17 Trotsky identified statification with what Marx called
‘socialization of the means of production’, and as a result, having him-
self been part of the Soviet bureaucracy, he refused to acknowledge that
the statification of the Soviet economy and the rise of bureaucracy to
power as a ruling class were interconnected.
The nationalization of the means of production and land provided
the social basis for the ‘dictatorship of the bureaucracy’ and not for the
‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. For Castoriadis, the notion of ‘national-
ization’ utilized by Trotsky is just an abstract term and ‘inevitably a false
expression, for on the social plane every abstraction that is not known
as an abstraction is a mystification’.18 Given this, Castoriadis added that
‘Nationalization’ and ‘nationalized property’ are anti-Marxist and

antiscientific expressions. To nationalize means to give to the nation.
But what is the nation? The ‘nation’ is an abstraction; in reality,
the nation is torn by class antagonisms. To give to the nation really
means to give to the dominant class in this nation.19
In addition, for Castoriadis, another controversial issue in Trotsky’s ideas

was the fact that he separated the production of wealth from its dis-
tribution. Trotsky was of the opinion that production – that is, the
foundation of the Soviet economy and society – was socialist, while
distribution preserved a bourgeois character.20 Trotsky does acknowl-
edge that bureaucracy is a ‘privileged and commanding stratum’, but
he stresses that ‘the bureaucracy has not yet created social supports
for its dominion in the form of special types of property’.21 Conse-
quently, Trotsky argued that ‘its appropriation of a vast share of the
national income has the character of social parasitism’.22 According to
Castoriadis, Marx and Engels have repeatedly maintained that the eco-
nomic process cannot be artificially separated, since ‘the structure of
distribution is completely determined by the structure of production’.23
By separating distribution from production in his analysis of the Soviet

system, Trotsky disregarded Marx’s doctrine, according to which the
‘innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social edifice’, is to
be found in ‘the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions
of production to the immediate producers’.24 On this basis, Castoriadis
noted that ‘if therefore, the relations of distribution in Russia are not
socialist, the relations of production cannot be either. This is so pre-
cisely because distribution is not autonomous but rather subordinated
to production.’25
For Castoriadis, Trotsky remained captive to the state-centralist
bolshevik positions regarding the character of the Soviet economy. He
also espoused party patriotism and the authoritarian attitudes towards
the soviets and the social struggles against bolshevik authority. Trotsky
was not too keen on the idea of workers’ self-management and collec-
tive administration of the industrial enterprises. According to him the
specific content of the dictatorship of the proletariat was manifested
‘in the abolition of private property, in the means of production, in the
supremacy over the whole Soviet mechanism of the collective will of the
workers, and not at all in the form in which individual economic enter-
prises are administered’.26 For Papaioannou, Trotsky espoused centralist
and bureaucratic methods on the above issue, and as a result expressed
and defended deeply conservative and reactionary ideas. As Trotsky put
it, ‘no board of persons who do not know the given business can replace
one man who knows it. A board of lawyers will not replace one switch-
man. A board of patients will not replace the doctor.’27 With these
quite striking examples, which rather resemble Plato’s idea regarding
the ‘rule of the wise’, Trotsky advocated one-man management since
‘in the working class there are many forces, gifts and talents. They
must be brought out and displayed in rivalry. The one-man principle
in the administrative and technical sphere assists this.’28 For the Marxist
Trotsky, the main problem remained that ‘man strives to avoid labor.
Love for work is not at all an inborn characteristic: it is created by eco-
nomic pressure and social education. One may even say that man is a
fairly lazy animal.’29
For these reasons, Trotsky argued that ‘the only way to attract the
labor – power necessary for our economic problems is to introduce com-
pulsory labor service. The very principle of compulsory labor service is for
the Communist quite unquestionable. “He, who works not, neither shall
he eat.” And as all must eat, all are obliged to work.’30 Defending the
militarization of work and totalitarian state control over labour-power,
Trotsky did not hesitate to declare that the view that compulsory labour
is always unproductive ‘is the most pitiful and worthless Liberal preju-
dice’ and that ‘even the serf organization was in certain conditions a step
forward, and led to the increase in the productivity of labour’.31 On this
criterion, since compulsory labour could be productive and necessary
for the revolutionary dictatorship of a socialist society, Trotsky argued
that ‘the Labor State considers itself empowered to send every worker to
the place where his work is necessary’,32 as ‘the worker does not merely
bargain with the Soviet State: no, he is subordinated to the Soviet State,
under its orders in every direction – for it is his State’.33 Linked to this
were Trotsky’s views regarding the statification of syndicates and their
total subordination to the Soviet state.
Trotsky’s revolutionary rhetoric was coupled with bureaucratic atti-
tudes and authoritarian practices. His inconsistencies led to a series
of concessions and capitulations, both with Stalin himself and with
the Soviet bureaucracy. As Lefort put it, ‘Trotsky represented, between
1923 and 1927, the contradictions of Bolshevism’.34 Instead of analysing
the nature of Stalinism, bureaucracy and their implications, Trotsky
expressed and confirmed in practice the Leninist principles.35 Trotsky’s
inability to perceive the nature of bureaucracy was due to his own
origins. He was one of the creators, and at the same time a prod-
uct, of the bureaucratic tendencies of the Bolshevik Party. According to
Lefort, Trotsky ‘transferred on to economic categories (collectivization,
state planning) the fetishism that he had first professed with regard to
political forms (party, Soviets)’.36 Trotsky’s ‘metaphysics of nationalised
economy’37 was interwoven with his metaphysical defence of the party.
Constantly manoeuvring and making compromises within the circles
of the Central Committee, he rigidly expressed a fetishistic faith in the
Bolshevik Party. In his speech to the 13th Bolshevik Congress in May
1924, Trotsky stated categorically:
In the last instance the party is always right, because it is the only his-
toric instrument which the working class possesses for the solution of
its fundamental tasks. I have said already that nothing would be eas-
ier than to say before the Party that all these criticisms and all these
declarations, warnings and protests were mistaken from beginning to
end. I cannot say so, however, because comrades, I do not think so.
I know that one ought not to be right against the Party. One can be
right only with the Party and through the Party because history has
not created any other way for the realization of one’s rightness. The
English have the saying ‘My country, right or wrong.’ With much
greater justification we can say: ‘My Party, right or wrong.’38
In addition to the above, Castoriadis put particular stress upon Trotsky’s

personal responsibility for the repression of the Kronstadt Revolt and
the massacre of the revolutionary sailors and workers, as well as for his
way of dealing with the opposition within and outside the party or the
Petrograd strikes.39 As Castoriadis put it, ‘Trotsky . . . characterized the
Kronstadt rebels as “stool pigeons” and “hirelings of the French High
Command” ’40 and pioneered the extermination of what the bolshevik
leadership deemed to be their political adversaries: left-wing parties and
anarchists. From this point of view, the anarchist Voline’s testimony
clearly shows Trotsky’s anti-democratic policy, as well as his authoritar-
ian and brutal behaviour. They had met in New York before the outbreak
of the October Revolution (in April 1917) and Voline expressed his fears
and concerns to Trotsky: ‘You will begin to persecute us just as soon
as your power has been consolidated. And you will end by having us
shot down like partridges.’ Trotsky replied that he considered anarchists
as revolutionaries and that, like them, bolsheviks ‘are anarchists, in the
final analysis’ and ‘brothers in arms’ with anarchists. In December 1919,
Voline was wounded and arrested by the bolsheviks and the authori-
ties asked Trotsky’s view of how he should be handled. Trotsky’s answer
‘arrived snappily and tersely and plainly – also by telegram: “Shoot out
of hand – Trotsky” ’.41
Given this, it is hardly surprising that Trotsky and Trotskyists offered
no satisfactory or mass alternative to Stalinism. For all of the above rea-
sons, Trotsky was characterized by Papaioannou as a ‘theoretician of
totalitarianism’ and ‘more Stalinist than Stalin’.42 As Papaioannou has
emphatically stressed, Trotsky was living up to his label as the ‘patri-
arch of bureaucrats’, which was applied to him in a tragic irony by
Stalin.43 On the same wavelength, Lefort accused ‘Trotsky of being a
Stalin raté, fundamentally no less authoritarian and bureaucratic than
his adversary.’44 Unsurprisingly, Trotsky’s authoritarianism, concessions,
contradictions and compromises ended up in Stalin’s rule. As Rühle
phrased it, ‘all policy of compromise is a policy of bankruptcy. What
began as a mere compromise with the German Social Democracy found
its end in Hitler. What Lenin justified as a necessary compromise found
its end in Stalin.’45 For Castoriadis, both Lenin and Trotsky, by anni-
hilating any dissident voice, paved the way ‘for Stalin later to emerge
triumphant’.46 Similar to Leninism, Trotskyism disregarded the idea of
the autonomous action of the working class and its self-government,
and it proved to be a serious obstacle to a radical critique of tradi-
tional revolutionary organizations. On this point, Castoriadis’ critique
of Trotskyism is akin to Pannekoek’s views. In his letter to Castoriadis
(1953), Pannekoek argued that Trotsky is ‘the most able spokesman for
Bolshevism’ and that ‘by his revolutionary fervor Trotsky captivated all
the dissidents that Stalinism had thrown out of the communist par-
ties, and inoculating them with the bolshevik virus it rendered them
almost incapable of understanding the great tasks of the proletarian
revolution’.47 This relatively unknown exchange of letters between
Castoriadis and Pannekoek regarding the nature of the Russian Revolu-
tion and the Soviet experience constitutes a valuable, though neglected,
theoretical legacy within the radical tradition. It could act as a starting
point in the process of outlining and assessing Castoriadis’ appraisal of
the Soviet regime.
2.2 An exchange of letters between Castoriadis

and Pannekoek
Under the impact of Stalin’s death and the uprising in East Germany in
1953, Marxist and radical scholars took up in a more determined and
drastic manner a discussion carried out earlier regarding the nature of
Soviet society, the role of the Communist Party and the issue regard-
ing the crisis of Marxism. It was widely recognized that both Marxist
theory and practice were in crisis and the ruling ideology of Stalinism
was fiercely criticized. The institutionalization of Marxism reduced it
to a reformist and established ideology marked by fatalism, positivism
and technicism. Marxism had developed into a completed theory and a
closed theoretical system. In most cases the crisis of Marxism was identi-
fied with the crisis of the Soviet-type societies. According to Ernst Bloch,
‘crisis is an old term for a burden, for rejecting that burden’.48 His defi-
nition of crisis manages to conceptualize the vantage point from which
the Marxist scholars dealt with the crisis of Marxism. To a large extent
it was argued that Stalinism was a ‘burden’ that renounced and denied
fundamental Marxian positions. It also remained an obstacle in the path
of a radical social transformation of Western societies. It was a period
that sparked a profound reorientation of Marxist theory, and Stalinism
was seen as a determining factor in the crisis of Marxism, since it had
resulted in establishing a new authoritarian, repressive and exploitative
state – that is, the Soviet regime. This in turn implied remarkable efforts
to explicate the Stalinist phenomenon with a view to rejecting the bur-
den which, like a nightmare, had been haunting both Marxism and the
labour movement.
Against this background, in 1953 and 1954, Pannekoek and
Castoriadis, in a short exchange of letters, broached, along with the
organizational issue, the theme of the Russian Revolution and its class
character. In his letter of 8 November 1953, Pannekoek made it explicit
that, almost from the outset of the revolution, he ‘recognized in Russia
a nascent capitalism’.49 Considering that the Russian Revolution had a
powerful impact upon people’s consciousness, he argued that a more
profound and penetrating analysis of its nature was needed. In this line
of thought, Pannekoek maintained that the Russian Revolution was ‘the
last bourgeois revolution, though carried out by the working class’.50
According to him, a revolution can be named as ‘bourgeois’ when, by
overthrowing feudalism and monarchy, it contributes to the process of
industrial transformation and establishes new capitalist social relations.
As was the case with the English Revolution of 1647 and the French Rev-
olutions of 1789, or those of 1830, 1848 and 1871, workers, peasants
and artisans played a crucial role in the radical change of feudal soci-
ety. However, they continued to constitute the ruled and exploited class
since ‘the working class was not yet mature enough to govern itself’.51
In the same way, the Russian Revolution appeared to be a proletarian
revolution that was conducted through the collective militancy and
mass strikes of the working class. Gradually, however, and due to the fact
that the proletariat constituted a minority in the whole Russian popu-
lation, the Bolshevik Party managed to usurp the workers’ power and
suppress any autonomous revolutionary activity. As a result, ‘the bour-
geois character (in the largest sense of the term) became dominant and
took the form of state capitalism’.52 In support of his line of argument,
Pannekoek turned to the question and definition of the proletarian rev-
olution. By seeing the future proletarian revolution as a ‘process’ and
not as a ‘simple rebellion’, an ‘event’ or a military seizure of power, he
argued that the workers’ revolution is ‘much more vast and profound; it
is the accession of the mass of the people to the consciousness of their
existence and their character. It will not be a simple convulsion; it will
form the content of an entire period in the history of humanity.’53
In his reply published in Socialisme ou Barbarie in April 1954,
Castoriadis pinpointed their differences vis-à-vis the nature of the
Russian Revolution. According to Castoriadis, to consider it as a bour-
geois revolution amounts to a distortion of facts, ideas and language.54
Following Castoriadis’ view, the Russian Revolution was a proletarian
revolution as the working class had a crucial and dominant role in it.
The Russian proletariat had their own demands and developed their
own forms of struggle and organization. Castoriadis stresses that the
disagreement with Pannekoek is due to a different methodological
approach taken to the issue of bureaucracy. The degeneration of the
Russian Revolution resulted not in the restoration of the bourgeoisie but

in the emergence of a new exploiting stratum, the bureaucracy. In this
sense, and despite their similarities, the new Soviet regime is distinct
from capitalist societies.55 In his reply to Castoriadis, Pannekoek pointed
out that, in contradistinction to what happened in the English Revo-
lution, in Russia there was no strong bourgeois class. Consequently a
new ‘middle class’ emerged from the revolutionary avant-garde, manag-
ing the economy and administering the means of production.56 As a
general rule, according to Pannekoek, if the working classes are not
yet capable of exerting full control over production, then this will
inescapably lead to the dominance of a new managerial class. In Russia
the conditions were not sufficiently mature for the outbreak of a gen-
uine proletarian revolution. Thus the Bolshevik Party – a party which
was influenced by Marxism – was obliged to seize power, and this
resulted in Stalinist totalitarianism.57 However, this interpretation of
Stalinism by Castoriadis in his correspondence with Pannekoek would
remain incomplete and fragmentary, if there is no further elucidation
of Castoriadis’ contribution to the explication of the class nature of the
Soviet Union.
2.3 ‘Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR: Four Letters,

Four Lies’
Castoriadis’ statement, used as the heading of this section, character-

istically expresses his general perception regarding the Soviet regime.58
Indeed, as he pointed out, the USSR was a non-revolutionary ‘Union’
based on violence and terror, and an authoritarian state that pulver-
ized Soviets and workers’ councils. Nevertheless, he firmly believed
that the ‘Russian question was . . . the richest vein, the royal road to
the comprehension of the most important problems of contemporary
society.’59 For this reason he was deeply engaged in studying the ‘Russian
question’, although his theoretical attitude towards it was not stable
but passed through several stages. As indicated in the first section of
this chapter, starting his political and theoretical itinerary within the
Trotskyist movement, Castoriadis came to call Trotsky’s interpretation
of Stalinism, as well as his analysis of the class nature of the USSR, into
question. While Castoriadis was still living in Greece, he expressed a
strong interest in the phenomenon of bureaucracy by studying and writ-
ing on the thought of Max Weber.60 Later on, in France, the efforts that
he made to explicate the class nature of the USSR were initially linked
to his questioning of the Trotskyist theory of the Soviet regime.
Castoriadis argued not only against the defence of the USSR but also
against the designation of the Soviet regime as a degenerated workers’
state or state capitalism. By calling his attempt ‘a return to the gen-
uine spirit of Marx’s analyses’,61 he attempted to demystify the juridical
forms of Soviet society and to analyse the social and production rela-
tions of the system. Under the veil of state ownership and central
planning, he saw a new ruling and dominant class, which held polit-
ical power and exercised it for its own interest: the Soviet bureaucracy.
The Soviet regime, as Castoriadis maintained, ‘constitutes a new histor-
ical formation’,62 ‘a third historical solution’.63 It is ‘neither capitalist
nor socialist, nor even moving forward either one of these two forms’.64
Castoriadis refused to identify Stalinism with any version of capitalism,
private or state, and was of the opinion that the Soviet society and
economy ‘presents us with a new historical type. Its name is of little
importance once its substance is known.’65 Afterwards, and more specif-
ically in 1948 and in 1949, Castoriadis observed that modern societies
were characterized by ‘a need to concentrate the forces of production’
and that ‘a continual merger of capital and the State on a national
and international scale’66 had emerged in both the USA and the USSR,
though not without differences. In this world situation, the bureaucracy
appeared as a new social stratum and replaced the traditional bour-
geoisie. This social formation pre-existed ‘in embryonic form’, but now,
‘for the first time in history crystallized and established itself as the rul-
ing class in a whole series of countries’.67 Simultaneously, new economic
forms appeared that differed ‘significantly from traditional capitalism in
that they have superseded and broken radically with such traditional
capitalist forms as the private ownership of the means of production’.68
Following this line of thought, Castoriadis went on to claim that the
bureaucracy ‘was the social expression of these new economic forms’
and to challenge orthodox Marxist approaches by arguing that
As traditional forms of property and the bourgeoisie of the classical

period are pushed aside by State property and by the bureaucracy,
the main conflict within society gradually ceases to be the old one
between the owners of wealth and those without property and is
replaced by the conflict between directors and executants in the
process of production.69
Castoriadis acknowledged all of these global developments as hav-

ing some characteristics common to all industrial societies: the
fusion of state and economy, the concentration of capital and the
bureaucratization of societies. All of these trends were likely to lead

the two systems – the US and the Russian – to a convergence, in the
absence of the labour movement’s intervention. Such a unification of
the two systems ‘would result in a worldwide system of exploitation of
the laboring masses.’70 Based on these criteria, Castoriadis called these
systems ‘bureaucratic capitalism’ and noted that they constituted the
continuation of traditional capitalism. Later on, Castoriadis character-
ized the social regime of Russia as ‘total bureaucratic capitalism’ and the
Western developed countries as ‘fragmented bureaucratic capitalism’.71
According to Arato, Castoriadis utilized the concept of ‘bureaucratic
capitalism’ after 1948 for both Russia and Western countries in an
attempt to ‘save the Marxian philosophy of history that his first model
brought under threat’.72 Yet Castoriadis articulated his distinct approach
by criticizing the Marxist interpretations of the Soviet Union since ‘the
bureaucracy and the bureaucratic regime remain for them thoroughly
impossible as objects of thought’.73 Castoriadis’ position is that total
bureaucratic capitalism is not compatible with any reference to the exis-
tence and function of economic laws. Consequently, ‘conceptions that
see in Russia a kind of “state capitalism” and that claim that the “eco-
nomic laws of capitalism” continue to prevail, with a simple substitution
of the State for the “capitalist class”, are devoid of content’.74 Accord-
ing to Castoriadis, the emergence of bureaucratic capitalism cannot be
interpreted based only on an analysis of production and the economy.
In countries such as Russia and China the bureaucracy came to power
based on its political dominance and later on it created the material
relations of production. In this sense, these countries belong ‘to the
same social-historical universe as the “Western-style” countries, that of
bureaucratic capitalism’ not because ‘there would have been domination
of the capital’ but as a result of the penetration into them ‘of the social
imaginary significations of capitalism and of the corresponding insti-
tutional and organizational types (“Marxist” ideology, political party,
“progress”, “production”, and so on).’75
In contradistinction to ‘state capitalist’ theory, the approach taken by
Castoriadis is concerned with showing that ‘total bureaucratic capital-
ism’ is ‘neither a mere variant of traditional capitalism nor a moment
in the “organic” evolution of it. Belonging to the social-historical uni-
verse of capitalism, it also represents a rupture and a new historical
creation.’76 Given this line of analysis, Castoriadis stressed that ‘the
Russian regime belongs to the social-historical universe of capitalism
because the magma of social imaginary significations that animate its
institution and are realized in and through this institution is the very
same one that arises in history with and through capitalism’.77 To put it
in other words, for Castoriadis, both the Soviet Union and the Western
regimes shared and based their function on common ideas and signi-
fications, such as ‘the unlimited expansion of the forces of production;
the obsessive preoccupation with “development”, pseudorational “tech-
nical progress”, production, and “the economy”; “rationalization” and
control of all activities; the ever heightened division of tasks; organi-
zation as end in itself and so on’.78 Following Castoriadis’ view, the
‘junction point’ of these social imaginary significations could be traced
to the imaginary signification of ‘rational’ mastery, which is ‘central
in Marx’ and through which his thought ‘remains anchored in the
capitalist universe’.79 It is this latter point that plays a double role in
Castoriadis’ development of his thought as it provides the basis for
Castoriadis’ critique of Marx and correlates the Marxian doctrine with
the rise of bureaucracy in the USSR. What he appears to be arguing
is that the signification of ‘rational’ mastery ‘mediated by Marxism’s
transformation into an ideology and by the political organization of the
Party, rallies together, unifies, animates, and guides the bureaucracy as it
comes to dominate society, in the specific institution of its regime and
in the management of the latter’.80 On this basis, Castoriadis takes the
argument a step further and argues that ‘Capital is to be read in the light
of Russia, not Russia in the light of Capital.’81
In his attempt to explain Stalinism and the degeneration of the
Russian Revolution into the Stalinist system, Castoriadis opined that
the Bolshevik Party and its ideology played a very significant role in
the birth of the Soviet bureaucracy. ‘Contrary to the prevailing mythol-
ogy’, for Castoriadis, ‘it was not in 1927, or in 1923, or even in 1921
that the game was played and lost, but much earlier, during the period
from 1918 to 1920.’82 This period was marked by the establishment of
the Bolshevik Party in power, which went along with the suppression
of the proletarian struggles. It was also characterized by the struggle
between the Workers’ Opposition and the Bolshevik leadership. This
struggle reflected a similar struggle of the ‘two contradictory elements
of Marxism’, which ‘coexisted in a paradoxical fashion in Marxism gen-
erally and in its incarnation in Russia in particular’.83 The Workers’
Opposition expressed the radical aspect of Marxism by placing confi-
dence in the self-organization, self-emancipation and creativity of the
working class. On the other hand, ‘the triumph of the Leninist out-
look is the triumph of the other element of Marxism, which, to be sure,
had long since – and even in Marx himself – become the dominant
element in socialist thought and action’.84 At this point, Castoriadis
presented the continuity between some elements of Marx’s theoriz-

ing and Leninism, and utilized these elements to criticize Marx’s own
thought. He argued that the Bolshevik leaders remained hostage to ‘cap-
italist methods of “rationalization” and management as well as capitalist
forms of work “incentives” ’.85 In this respect, Castoriadis considered
that Leninism was imbued with Marx’s positivism, economistic and
developmental logic. He raised the difficult question of the relation-
ship between the Bolshevik leaders’ positions and the mature writings
of Marx, or ‘at least one side of Marx, which became the predominant
one in his mature writings’.86 The Bolsheviks put too much emphasis
upon the abolition of private property, the development of the produc-
tive forces and change in the economy. Yet they did not endeavour
to transform ‘the relations between people at work or the nature of
labour itself’.87 Castoriadis directly associated Bolshevisk policies with
the importance that Marx attributed to the development of the produc-
tive forces. Thus he came to conclude that ‘insofar as ideas play a role
in the development of history – and, in the final analysis, they play an
enormous role – the Bolshevik ideology (and with it, the Marxist ide-
ology lying behind it) was a decisive factor in the birth of the Russian
bureaucracy’.88
Castoriadis argued that the rejection of Stalinism – that is, the rejec-
tion of what ‘socialism’ had become in ‘Soviet’ Russia – necessitated or
entailed the rejection of central, even fundamental, aspects of Marxism
itself. He saw a close connection between Stalinism and Lenin’s the-
ory of organization, and he made the claim that ‘the true creator of
totalitarianism is Lenin’ since
It was Lenin himself who created the institution without which total-
itarianism is inconceivable and which is today falling into ruin: the
totalitarian party, the Leninist Party, which is, all rolled into one, ide-
ological Church, militant army, state Apparatus already in nuce when
it still is held ‘in a taxi carriage’, and factory where each has his place
in a strict hierarchy with a strict division of labour.89
Such a party also promotes totalitarian practices and keeps workers in

subjection. In his critique, Castoriadis held the opinion that the Leninist
Party was a capitalist model of organization divided into directors and
performers, rulers and ruled. Orthodoxy, iron discipline, blind obedi-
ence, and the obsession with power and force for the sake of force were
the elements that became dominant within the party-state mechanisms.
During the Stalinist period, all of these characteristics were carried to
the limit and, under Stalin, the Leninist project ‘attained its extreme
and demented form’.90 In a critical reading of Hannah Arendt’s work
on the issue of totalitarianism, Castoriadis stressed what, in his view,
were the most important limitations of her analysis. Her definition of
the ‘classical’ form of totalitarianism, despite its merits, could not be
equally applied to explain the course of the Soviet regime after the
death of Stalin. The weakness of her analysis lies in ‘the exclusive con-
centration on Stalin’s absolute power and/or the similarities with Nazi
totalitarianism’.91 According to Castoriadis, the failure of Stalinist total-
itarianism after 1953 was inseparably interconnected with the failure of
the Bolshevik Party. This meant that the Stalinist regime was ‘unable
to reproduce itself’ and, at the same time, it proved unable to ‘produce
a Stalin the Second’ and construct ‘a delirious reality’.92 The Stalinist
system, especially after the fall of Khrushchev in 1964, appeared to be
incapable of introducing substantial economic and social reforms, and
the party proved unable to self-reform due to three determining fac-
tors. First, this process of self-reform would imply ‘a self-liquidation of
huge parts of the established bureaucracy’. Second, the party bureau-
crats were devoid of the new ‘required ideas’. And, third, Russian
society was lacking the ‘new cadres’ that were urgently needed to fight
against the old bureaucracy, and implement rapid and effective reform
policies.93
To preserve a link with his former analysis of total bureaucratic capital-
ism, Castoriadis opined that the Soviet regime could be comprehended
as a combination of three substantial factors: the existence of capitalism
and its imaginary significations of instrumental rationality within pro-
duction, the totalitarian logic expressed by the Leninist concept of the
party, and the strong residual influences coming from the Tsarist period
(attitudes, mentalities, etc.). In this respect he called the Russian regime
a ‘total and totalitarian bureaucratic capitalism’.94 Finally, most likely
under the influence of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, in a delirium
of anti-Sovietism that echoed the US interpretations of the USSR during
the Cold War period, Castoriadis maintained that a ‘military subsociety’
had emerged within the bureaucratic Soviet society. This constituted
a new social and historical formation: a stratocracy. As Castoriadis
put it,
This military sub-society is the only really live force in Russia: the only
animated and the only effective sector of Russian society. In Russia,
nothing ever happens – except new military developments, and
‘moves’ in international politics. This military sub-society exists in
symbiosis – rather, perhaps, in commensality – with a Party which,

for all social and historical purposes (except repression) is a living
corpse.95
Based on its military superiority, the Soviet regime presented a deadly

threat to Western societies. Hence Castoriadis drew a distinction
between the Russian stratocracy and ‘classical’ totalitarianism, and
argued that the Russian regime is ‘an original creation, a new historical
animal’.96 Under the new circumstances created by glasnost and pere-
stroika, however, Castoriadis was led to reconsider his later positions.
In his new estimation, the new economic, technological and interna-
tional developments made it clear that this constant evolution towards
‘stratocracy’ was ‘untenable in the long run’.97 Thus a ‘reformist’ group,
under the leadership of ‘an uncommonly capable leader’ (Gorbachev),
came to power, bringing about unexpected and profound changes.
2.4 Keeping the question open
Starting from the ‘heresy of Marxist reality’,98 the challenge of the

atrocious reality of Stalinist regimes, critical theory needs to reappreci-
ate fundamental critical concepts and theoretical categories. Dialectical
reason confirms its substance through critical assessment and the elimi-
nation of metaphysical presuppositions. It calls for the eradication of all
mystifications and attempts to make clear what remains hidden under
the appearance of the term ‘Stalinism’ and the ‘surface’ of the alleged
‘actual existing socialism’. It focuses on human practice, deciphers the
contradictions of human actions, and reveals the social content of forms
and concepts. From this perspective, Castoriadis took great pains to
understand how a workers’ revolution had degenerated and given birth
to a bureaucratic regime. He endeavoured to explicate the nature of
the Soviet social formation by starting to explain the role and rise of
the Russian bureaucracy. In doing so he designated the Soviet system
by using different terms: ‘a new historical formation’, ‘a third his-
torical solution’, ‘bureaucratic society’, ‘total bureaucratic capitalism’,
‘total and totalitarian bureaucratic capitalism’ and ‘stratocracy’. All of
these different characterizations not only show his intellectual oscilla-
tions but also raise both interesting and problematic points. Needless
to say, as the final outcome and the collapse of the Soviet regime have
demonstrated, how unwise and unfortunate was Castoriadis’ appraisal
of the former USSR as a military and stratocratic society. His posi-
tions were thrown into question and came under attack, which placed
‘Castoriadis’s demonstration among the crudest speculations of an obso-

lete Kremlinology having more to do with the demonology of centuries
past than with the modern study of social and political phenomena’.99
Given the historical and political context of the 1970s and 1980s,
Castoriadis’ views were distorted and misused by the ‘New Philoso-
phers’ and the ‘Stalinists of anti-communism’ who emerged in France
throughout this period.100
The same ambivalence is found in Castoriadis’ use of the term ‘total
bureaucratic capitalism’ or ‘total and totalitarian bureaucratic capi-
talism’. In this case, both his Marxist origins and the rupture with
Marxism, as well as Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism and Weber’s
perception of the increasing rationalization and bureaucratization of
modern social and economic life, are combined into one expression.
At times, Castoriadis’ positions echo Burnham’s and Rizzi’s analyses in
The Managerial Revolution and Bureaucratization of the World. The attempt
made by Castoriadis to draw a marked distinction between his theo-
rizing and the economistic positions of traditional Marxism led him,
primarily, to espouse views similar to Pollock’s approach concerning the
‘primacy of the political over the economic’.101 Castoriadis constructed
two ‘ideal types’ that belonged to the same system of ‘bureaucratic
capitalism’, describing the USSR as ‘total bureaucratic capitalism’ and
Western societies as ‘fragmented bureaucratic capitalism’. This kind of
ideal-typical analysis emphasized the role of the political structures
and overlooked the intrinsic interrelatedness between the political and
the economic. According to Castoriadis, the traditional capitalist class
was replaced by the state and bureaucracy, which were seen as having
acquired an independent logic of their own. Castoriadis reversed the
base-superstructure metaphor, but he continued to analyse society in
terms of structures, this time ascribing much more importance to the
autonomy of the political. By doing so, in his analysis, the ‘economic’
became ‘a historical invariable, which may be part of various political
forms’.102
In Castoriadis’ analysis, bureaucracy becomes an ahistorical category
that fails to comprehend concrete social characteristics and relations.
It acts as a presupposed conceptualization that neglects the social con-
tent and contradictory constitution of the Soviet reality and turns to
become ‘void, being wholly indefinite’.103 His term is missing the social
constitution of the Soviet system and obscures certain aspects of its real-
ity. It does not explain the concrete society but leads to transhistorical
objectivity. Castoriadis’ application of political categories lacked any his-
torical specificity. As a result, he dealt with them as eternal categories
that possessed no immanent historical dynamic. Bureaucracy was con-

sidered in a historically indeterminate and static fashion. This in turn
implied that Castoriadis’ ideal-typical analysis failed to follow the social
transformations of Soviet society. Hence he was compelled to add to his
previous approach a parallel emphasis placed upon the ‘the primacy of
the ideological’, or, in Castoriadis’ words, the primacy of the social imag-
inary significations. This led Castoriadis to argue that the Soviet regime,
though it was not capitalist, belonged to the social-historical universe of
capitalism due to similar ideas that it shared with Western societies.
Social imaginary significations such as the concepts of progress, pro-
duction, economy, development, technology and rationality were seen
by Castoriadis as motive forces of both the Soviet and Western soci-
eties and were posited in a transhistorical manner. They were accepted
and used uncritically and as if they were not derived from antagonis-
tic human social relations. They were not related to class struggle and
consequently were converted into reified and ideological categories that
were perceived ahistorically. As Horkheimer put it, ‘the critical theory is
indeed incompatible with the idealist belief that any theory is indepen-
dent of men and even has a growth of its own’.104 Castoriadis reduced
human relations to imaginary significations and started his analysis
from them as given premises, deriving social relations from hypothe-
sized political structures and abstract ideas. His social imaginaries appear
to exist above Soviet society and turn out to be hypostatized as endur-
ing structures that set the framework for the bureaucratization of the
world whatever the distinctive economic and social relations. His con-
cepts appear to draw inescapable lines, operating within the bounds of
predetermined possibilities. Thus the abstract generality, lack of concrete
application and ahistorical character of Castoriadis’ ‘social imaginary
significations’ not only avoided the specific economic and social struc-
ture of Stalinism but also pointed to the erroneous conclusions that the
US and the Russian systems would objectively lead to a convergence,
or that the Russian ‘stratocracy’ constituted a deadly threat to Western
societies.
In this sense, and turning to the strengths of his argument, the most
significant contribution made by Castoriadis is related to his initial
efforts to criticize the Soviet bureaucracy by using Marxian concepts and
categories. Though ‘the terminological question of what to call Russia is
not satisfactorily resolved by referring to it as a “new social form”, or
as a “bureaucratic society” ’,105 Castoriadis’ analysis emphasized the dis-
tinctiveness of the Stalinist system as a new social formation. Moreover,
he shed light on intentionally neglected events and periods of Soviet
history. Castoriadis underscored how the history of the Russian Revo-

lution contained suppressed radical possibilities and alternatives which
had been obscured by the official propaganda and Soviet power. He rec-
ognized that the workers’ councils, the organization of the councils, are
forms of working-class self-determination that could lead not only to
the overthrow of capitalism but also to the establishment of a new soci-
ety of free and equal associated producers. Linked to this idea of the
social revolution by means of council organization is undoubtedly his
critique of the Bolshevik Party. He did so, apparently, on the grounds
that Stalinism should not be made a scapegoat for the degeneration of
the Russian Revolution. Hence he drew our attention to the fact that
any endeavour to trace the origin of the Soviet bureaucracy by focusing
exclusively on the Stalinist period avoids exploring the Leninist Party’s
function and its role as a fundamental factor in the development of the
bureaucratic class.
Overall, Castoriadis theorized the Soviet regime by suggesting a dual-
istic context of interpretation and analysis. At one extreme lay his effort
to conceptualize Soviet society by fitting it into model-building abstrac-
tions. In this way the historical development is construed by means of
generally applicable categories. His effort to generalize in an abstract
fashion or supply a summary of the general characteristics of this new
form of domination had undergone a number of conceptual turns at the
expense of capturing the concrete social relations of the Soviet society.
At the other extreme there has always been a tendency in Castoriadis’
theorizing to seek an understanding of the Soviet regime which is
premised upon an analysis of social contradictions, radical praxis and
struggle. In the latter case the Soviet-type societies are examined from
the perspective of crisis and the emphasis is shifted to action, practice
and the role of subjectivity. Despite his limitations, then, Castoriadis’
contribution to the explication of Stalinism amounts to a significant
point of reference for putting ‘the negative to work’106 and keeping the
question of Stalinism open. This approach is more evidenced in his
study of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, where his critique was devel-
oped from the standpoint of revolt and rupture, and was in line with
Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the Hungarian events. It also contributed
decisively to Castoriadis’ rejection of orthodox Marxism and his endeav-
our to investigate the theoretical and political foundations of the crisis
of Marxism.
3
Subversive Praxis, Open Crisis
and Critique
The revolts in Eastern Europe and more specifically the Hungarian

Uprising of 1956 offered a practical critique of the Soviet-type regimes
and acted as a fire alarm for the forthcoming demise of Eastern European
societies. The death of Stalin and the class struggles in Eastern Europe
against the state bureaucracies evoked a debate vis-à-vis the crisis of
Marxism opened up in 1898 by Masaryk, in which both orthodox
and critical trends of Marxism participated. Dealing with the crisis of
Marxism, Castoriadis moved from a critique of orthodox Marxism to
articulate his critical approach to Marx’s own thought. He sought the
reasons which caused this crisis – the factors which were responsi-
ble for the petrification and decay of Marxism. The degeneration of
Marxism and the loss of its radical character were attributed to its trans-
formation into a semi-religious dogma and a closed theoretical system.
Castoriadis dealt with the questions regarding the crisis of Marxism long
before Althusser’s announcement of the crisis in 1977. Later on, and
more specifically in 1978, Castoriadis contributed once again to the cri-
sis of Marxism debate through his response to Althusser. This chapter
focuses on Castoriadis’ engagement with the crisis of Marxism by link-
ing the two more remarkable open manifestations of the crisis – that is,
the political-practical rupture of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 with
Althusser’s academic-theoretical announcement of the crisis 17 years
later. It begins by bringing together Castoriadis’ and Arendt’s analy-
sis of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Afterwards, Castoriadis’ critical
alternative approach to the crisis of Marxism is located within the
Marxist theoretical discussions about the issue. Following an outline of
Althusser’s attempt to formulate the fundamental causes for what he
saw as an overt eruption of the crisis of Marxism, the chapter goes on
to present Castoriadis’ critique and investigates the grounds on which
46
Subversive Praxis, Open Crisis and Critique 47
it was put forward. Based on his argumentation, it will be considered

why Eurocommunism and leftist social democracy failed to renew both
Marxism and the anti-capitalist tradition and were led to become part of
the systemic neoliberal crisis. The chapter concludes with an assessment
of the implications of Castoriadis’ arguments for the renewal of radical
politics today.
3.1 Castoriadis, Arendt and the Hungarian Uprising of 1956
The Hungarian Uprising constituted a turning point in the debates

regarding the class character of Soviet-type societies. Its subversive and
radical character triggered political and theoretical developments that
had a catalytic effect on the future of these societies and the Western
Left. During the Cold War period and its theory of the two camps, the
Hungarian tragedy posed difficult and poignant questions about social-
ism and its content. In the period we are dealing with, reason was, once
again in human history, ‘a poor ally of reaction’,1 which in all of its
appearances – in both Western and Eastern Europe – denied ‘reason its
historical role . . . of provoking insubordination and destroying horrors’2
and imposed conformism, formalism and quietism. For the West, the
Hungarian Uprising was a ‘national’ and ‘anti-communist uprising’ that
revealed the totalitarian nature of the regime and the despotic role of the
USSR. For the latter and its satellite countries, or the orthodox Marxism
and communist parties in the West, it was a ‘counter-revolution’, the
work of fascist and conservative elements that sought the overthrow
of socialism. Unsurprisingly the Hungarian Uprising became a taboo
for the vast majority of the communist movement and in most cases
it fell into total oblivion. Stalin was dead but his shadow was still
omnipresent. The function of critical thought was disdained, and leftist
and Marxist scholars, denied their mission, lost their own foundations.
They lost their reason and conscience.3 Within this political and intel-
lectual milieu, it was Castoriadis and the Socialisme ou Barbarie group
along with Hannah Arendt who saved the honour of critical and radical
thought.4
The resistance of their reason and conscience was the basis that
enabled Castoriadis and Arendt not to reconcile themselves with the
so-called ‘Marxist social reality’, not to base their critical analysis on
assumptions and presuppositions, and to take nothing for granted. The
consequence of Castoriadis’ dealing with the Hungarian Uprising in
this way was to bring to the surface the postulation for the unity of
theory and practice. He was always of the opinion that the crisis, the
inconsistencies and the contradictions in orthodox Marxist thought

could not be overcome separately from the social reality of orthodox
Marxism. Although Castoriadis had undergone a number of theoret-
ical and conceptual turns as far as his evaluation of the Soviet-type
societies is concerned, the Hungarian Uprising was seen by him as con-
firmation of his elaborations since 1945. For Arendt, Stalin’s death and
the subsequent de-Stalinization period sparked off the succession cri-
sis that destabilized the regimes, culminating in the open rebellions
in Poland and Hungary. Arendt considered the failure of the Stalinist
regimes to find a solution to the succession problem as one of the cru-
cial factors in the explosion of the Hungarian Uprising. In this respect,
as she argued, ‘from the viewpoint of totalitarian imperialism, destalin-
ization was a major mistake’.5 For Castoriadis, on the other hand, the
Hungarian Uprising of 1956 had been ‘the only total revolution against
total bureaucratic capitalism’.6 It was an open manifestation of a long-
standing and, at times, invisible political and economic crisis. Economic
inefficiency and disorganization in combination with unbearable polit-
ical repression reached the zero point, and this point became the point
of social explosion and radical change. In Castoriadis’ words,
The total bureaucratic capitalism of the East is full of contradictions

and torn by permanent social conflict. Contradictions and conflict
recurrently reach acute levels, and the system heads toward an open
crisis.7
In fact, the above account may serve to reveal the perspective in terms
of which Castoriadis views the social character of the societies in Eastern
Europe. There has always been a tension at the heart of his approach,
a contradiction which runs through his theorizing. On the one hand,
his theoretical effort was dedicated to the construction of a Weberian
ideal-type discourse, a new mode of domination – that is, the fitting
of the Eastern societies to the category of ‘total bureaucratic capital-
ism’ as a new paradigm of rule. These societies are interpreted on the
basis of successive new patterns of domination, which found the most
extreme expression in Castoriadis’ ideological concept of ‘stratocracy’.
The use of abstract conceptual frameworks replaced the historically spe-
cific analysis of economic and political relations, and it was abstracted
from particular historical and social tendencies or the complexity of
class antagonism. On the other hand, in some cases, Castoriadis empha-
sizes the role of social conflict and contradictions that are immanent in
these societies. By following the movement of contradictions, then, he
manages to conceptualize them as the driving force of the Hungarian

events of 1956. Thus the distinctiveness of Castoriadis’ analysis of the
Hungarian Uprising lies in his endeavour to focus on the social con-
tradictions and the revolutionary practice of the Hungarian people. He
placed much more emphasis upon social contradictions and the role of
subjectivity, and this entailed the open crisis of Hungarian society being
considered as a result of the strength of class struggle and of a range of
cross-cutting historical and social developments.
Castoriadis’ emphasis on radical praxis, struggle and activity directed
attention to discontinuities of history and to a reading of the past as a
living past which is not separate from the present. This way of thinking
stressed the unpredictability and openness of history and enabled him
to search for the meaning and the lessons taken from the Hungarian
Uprising. As Fehér and Heller phrased it, the Hungarian events amount
to a ‘symbol that will promote the process of “learning from history” ’.8
In this respect, Castoriadis endeavoured to break the silence imposed by
the European Left upon the Hungarian events,9 a silence which, in a sim-
ilar way, had overshadowed the Kronstadt Rebellion and the unknown
aspects of the radical tradition of the Russian Revolution. He sought the
essence, significance and implications of the Hungarian events, find-
ing in them ‘a new point of departure, a new source, which forces us
to reflect anew the problem of politics – that is, of the total institu-
tion of society’.10 In a similar way, Arendt argued that ‘events, past and
present . . . are the true, the only reliable teachers of political scientists, as
they are the most trustworthy source of information for those engaged
in politics’.11 History is not evaluated according to abstract and arbi-
trary theoretical principles, and radical praxis is not developed from
pure ideas. Rather, theory is produced from social and historical expe-
rience as it is unfolded in and through the concrete historical activity
of people. As Castoriadis put it, ‘both the project and the ideas have
their origin in actual history, in the creative activity of people in mod-
ern society. The revolutionary project is not a logical inference from
a correct theory.’12 Theory is not separated from practice and political
ideas are not fixed in advance or outside class struggle. They claim no
infallibility but prove themselves in practical-critical activity, ‘through
the actual school of experience’.13
While the role played by the communists in and throughout the rev-
olutionary process was passed over in silence by Castoriadis, Arendt
did acknowledge that the rebellion was initiated by the Hungarian
communists and then was spread across the whole population.14 For
Arendt, the revolution was made not by the ‘underprivileged’ but by
the ‘overprivileged’ of Hungarian society. It started with the younger

generation, the university students and intellectuals, whose motive was
not ‘material misery, but exclusively Freedom and Truth’.15 As Karl
Korsch has stated, ‘Socialism, both in its ends and in its means, is a
struggle to realize freedom.’16 The demands for freedom of thought,
speech, press and association challenged the established patterns of
power, and the critical-practical activity of the insurgents ruptured the
dominant mode of social relations. Through their mass demonstrations,
assemblies, councils and general strike, the social actors of the uprising
underwent a ‘process of self-education’ and ‘the whole country had been
transformed into one collective moment of civil disobedience’.17 The spirit
of negativity and destructive critique was manifested against the tradi-
tional forms of political organization. There was neither vanguard party
nor leaders who organized the revolution. There was no ideology that
posited itself in advance as hegemonic and official truth. As Benjamin
put it, ‘if it is the misfortune of the workers’ rebellions of old that no
theory of revolution directs their course, it is also this absence of the-
ory that, from another perspective, makes possible their spontaneous
energy and the enthusiasm with which they set about establishing
a new society’.18 The spontaneous and independent initiatives of the
Hungarian people were not based upon complete theoretical systems
and predecided models and structures of political action. The radical
character and anti-authoritarian spirit of their rebellion had all the char-
acteristics of a ‘Luxemburgist revolution’, which ‘made itself and did not
let anyone make it’.19
In this process of revolutionary self-making, the insurgents with their
actions were led to a rethinking of the notion of labour and radi-
cally questioned the nature of time. They rejected the traditional and
institutionalized forms of ‘production and work’, and fought for the
‘abolition of work norms’ by demanding the democratization of work
production and the establishment of direct self-management.20 By strug-
gling against the orthodox Marxist and Leninist-Stalinist perceptions
regarding the educational role of factory and labour, they broke ‘social-
ist Taylorism’ as a form of economic organization. They did not only
demand an end to the exploitative wage policy and the implementation
of a new economic rationality. Most importantly, their radical politi-
cal activity was ‘a most humane outburst of hatred against alienated
labour’.21 Rupturing the dominant economic logic, they opened up a
space towards the creation of a different image of social relations in
which the notion of time is perceived as an entirely distinct dimension
and value. The logic of ‘socialist Taylorism’ produced a conception of
time very similar to, in fact a copy of, the capitalist notion of time.
The latter was eloquently phrased in the words of Alexis de Tocqueville:
‘twelve years in America counts for as much as half a century in
Europe’.22 Both ‘socialist’ and US Taylorism were united in a common
conception of time, which is the time of capitalist technology, industry,
deification of abstract labour and quantity. It is a notion of time driven
by a transhistorical and metaphysical faith in progress and instrumental
rationality that always prioritize functionality, velocity and efficiency.
By contrast, for both Castoriadis and Arendt, the insurgents in the
Hungarian Uprising produced their own temporality of insubordina-
tion that defied the bourgeois linear conception of time. This was a
time of unity, solidarity, fraternity and struggle that interrupted ‘auto-
matic occurrences and conscious or unconscious repetitions’, or forms
of opportunistic and authoritarian policies.23 According to Arendt, ‘the
twelve days of the revolution contained more history than the twelve
years since the Red Army had “liberated” the country from the Nazi
domination’.24 In the same vein, Castoriadis vividly articulated the alter-
native conception of time put forward by the Hungarian explosion:
‘these events lasted only a few weeks. I hold that these weeks – like
the few weeks of the Paris Commune – are, for us, no less important and
no less meaningful than three thousand years of Egyptian pharaonic
history.’25
From the Paris Commune of 1871 to the workers’ councils in the
Russian Revolution of 1917, from the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to the
Hungarian Uprising of 1956, the time of revolt and social emancipation
confirmed in practice that there is a ‘unity of the revolutionary project’,
a ‘historical inheritance and continuity’26 of the revolutionary tradition
of the exploited and oppressed. The radical activity of the Hungarian
people broke up the ‘repetitious cycles of social life’ and led to a ‘sud-
den opening of history’.27 It was openness inherent in the move of the
contradictions embedded in the character of the Hungarian Uprising.
The open crisis constituted a turning point, a moment of historical dis-
continuity full of uncertainty and unpredictability that demystified the
instability of the dominant social relations and revealed the radical alter-
natives available. This extension of collective disobedience unfolded the
dialectics of order and chaos as expressed formerly in the words of Rosa
Luxemburg: ‘the apparent “order” must be changed to a chaos, and the
apparently “anarchistic” chaos must be changed into a new order’.28
The Hungarian Uprising implied the destructive critique of the divi-
sion of society into a political and economic sphere and in this sense
it was a ‘disorder, to be sure, but disorder of the right sort’.29 Through
its anti-authoritarianism it ‘produced enormous chaos’30 by seeking to

overcome the divorce of labour and the means of production and the
logic of separation between the people and an alien, external determi-
nation of their political and labour activity. Taken in this way, then,
there was ‘no chaos [that] resulted from the actions of people without
leadership and without previously formulated program’.31 The sunburst
of the Hungarian Uprising was unfolded in and through ‘the univer-
sal politicization of society’32 in search of a genuine social change and
the ‘establishment of a new order’.33 The politicization of social and
labour relations involved a turning towards a different conception and
reorganization of the economic and political sphere. This creative disor-
der opened up the possibility of creating radically new social relations
by spontaneously generating new methods and forms of organization,
namely the workers’ councils.
The open crisis as the result of the intensification of social struggles led
to a rupture of the dominant pattern of class relations via the emergence
of the council system. For Arendt, the formation and expansion of the
councils initiated ‘a new body politic’,34 which disclosed the opposition
between the parties and the councils, the representative democracy and
the democracy of the councils. The Hungarian councils reincarnated the
‘lost treasure’ of a longstanding revolutionary tradition and revealed,
once again, one of the regime’s main antitheses: ‘representation versus
action and participation’.35 The formation of the councils and the active
participation of the people brought together critical thinking and radi-
cal political action through the inner and reciprocal mediation of theory
and practice. Arendt viewed the councils as the product of the free and
autonomous political activity of the Hungarian people, which consti-
tuted the only radical and democratic alternative to the party system.
That is why councils and the council system have been permanently
refracted from both the right-wing and left-wing party bureaucracies or
have been intentionally disregarded by scholars, academics and politi-
cal analysts.36 Being the outcome of a genuine revolution experience,
the councils turned into ‘new political institutions’37 that substanti-
ated and widened the meaning of political freedom. As Arendt put
it, political freedom ‘means the right “to be a participator in govern-
ment”, or it means nothing’.38 Arendt expounds her views pertaining
to the role of the various forms of councils that emerged during the
Hungarian Uprising by making a distinction between the revolution-
ary councils and the workers’ councils. The first had to play a critical
political role, while the latter were responsible for the administration
of economic life. In her interpretation of the function of the councils,
Arendt separated the political and the economic. She ascribed much
more importance to the political functions of the councils, viewing
them as a radical and spontaneous answer to political despotism and
the authoritarianism of the regime.39 On the other hand, much less
emphasis was placed upon the workers’ councils, which were consid-
ered as people’s reaction to the bureaucratically controlled trade unions.
She questioned the capacity of the workers’ councils for economic self-
management, and her views about a potential implementation of the
council system to the reorganization of the economic sphere remained
unclear. Thus she did not understand the political and the economic
as constituting two moments of one process, as being two aspects of a
contradictory unity. For this reason, she failed to provide a satisfactory
answer to the thorny question of ‘who is to conduct the “administration
of things in the public interest”, such as the economy, or how it is to be
conducted’.40
Castoriadis dedicated a large part of his endeavour to theorizing the
Hungarian experience to provide a thoughtful analysis of the creation
and function of the workers’ councils. His approach led to significant
theoretical and political implications, which have wider resonance and
tally with analogous observations made by Arendt. In this respect, for
Castoriadis, the formation of the workers’ councils and their struggle
for self-management expressed the ‘positive content’41 of the Hungarian
Uprising. The radical activity of the Hungarian people through the form
of councilist organization created ‘new, positive truths’42 in the sense
of positing the council system as the form of social organization for an
autonomous society of free and equal associated producers. Viewing the
revolutionary transformation of a society as a constantly moving process
and not as an apocalyptic event, placed at the core of his positions the
notion that revolution is ‘self-organization of the people’, ‘explicit self-
institution of society’.43 Yet self-organization and self-institution are not
posited in a static fashion. They are perceived as part of the conscious
and always in motion procedure that amounts to the critical and practi-
cal self-education of the people. In Castoriadis’ words, ‘self-organization
is here self-organizing, and consciousness is becoming-conscious; both are
processes, not states’.44
Castoriadis is particularly concerned with showing the importance
and the deeper substance of the workers’ councils. As he emphatically
argued,
Their decisive importance lies in a) the establishment of direct democ-

racy – in other terms, of true political equality (equality as to power); b)
their rootedness in existing concrete collectivities (which need not be

only the ‘factories’); and c) their demands relative to self-management
and the abolition of work norms.45
It becomes evident form the above that in contradistinction to Arendt’s

severance between the political and economic function of the coun-
cils, Castoriadis viewed the councils as the building up and articulation
of a social and historical experience that unmasked the mystifications
of social life. The council-like organizations abolished in practice the
divisions between classes, rulers and ruled, representatives and repre-
sented. The councilist organization overcame the separation between
the political and economic spheres by seeing them as being comple-
mentary aspects of a contradictory unity that does not conceal the
differences between the sections of society. In Castoriadis’ view, the
workers’ councils abolished the ‘division between a “sphere of politics”,
or of “government,” and a “sphere of everyday life” as essentially and
antagonistically separated’.46 Of course, councils and open assemblies as
mass and autonomous forms of social organization are not a ‘panacea’
that could ensure a smooth and unproblematic radical transformation
of society. However, if, in this process of the unfolding of the revolution-
ary project and the self-institution of society, the issue at stake is to take
the political back to society, politicize the labour social relations and
transcend the state and party forms of organization, then the council
form ‘makes this development possible’.47
In his letter to the members of the French Communist Party,
Castoriadis addressed a fundamental question regarding the meaning
of socialism: What is socialism? Does socialism amount to a society
where a mechanism of bureaucrats administers factories and produc-
tion? Or, on the contrary, does socialism imply a society in which the
economy is being managed by the workers’ councils, as the Hungarian
workers are demanding and struggling for?48 The Hungarian Uprising
and the forms of councilist organization were treated with contempt
and disdain by the Left and the orthodox Marxist parties and intellec-
tuals. They learned nothing from the Hungarian tragedy and stood on
the side of the military intervention that crushed the rebellion. Their
‘depressing and humiliating’49 stance, their brutality and cynicism, were
another nail in the coffin of what was perceived to be the idea of
socialism through the twentieth century. In this climate, Castoriadis
and Arendt managed to grasp the essence of the Hungarian Uprising,
to disclose its different temporality and reveal the potential for cre-
ating an alternative subjectivity. Thinking critically against a world of
untruth, Castoriadis and Arendt were met with hostility or were system-
atically overlooked. As Primo Levi would assert, ‘uncomfortable truths
travel with difficulty’.50 It is not accidental that for the political theo-
rists who are engaged with Arendt’s thought, her study of the Hungarian
Uprising or her references to the council system have been regarded as
‘something of an embarrassment’ and have ‘upset most readers’.51 In a
similar vein, Castoriadis’ penetrating analysis of the Hungarian Upris-
ing has been disregarded by his commentators in such a way that the
radical and political implications of his views regarding the democracy
of councils based upon the Hungarian experience were concealed. The
Hungarian events ended up in the loss of the Left’s credibility and moral
integrity. As a result, they aggravated the unreliability of leftist ideas
and the crisis of Marxism. Castoriadis dealt insistently with the decay of
Marxism and his contribution to the debates has been significant and
valuable.
3.2 Castoriadis and the crisis of Marxism debate
The question regarding the crisis of Marxism occupied many Marxist

scholars after 1898, when Masaryk spoke for the first time about the
philosophical and scientific crisis of Marxism, representing the ortho-
dox Marxism of the Second International.52 Masaryk sought to explore
the philosophical and sociological foundations of Marxism in order to
show the inadequacy of Marxist theory and policy. Paradoxically, how-
ever, he was not able to distinguish Marx from Marxism; on the contrary,
in his survey, Marx was identified with Marxism.53 By thus criticiz-
ing what he believed to be the fundamental theoretical principles of
Marxism – that is, its political tactics and sociological bases, the labour
theory of value and historical materialism – he came to the conclusion
that ‘Marxism is undergoing an internal crisis, not only theoretically,
but also in practical politics.’54 Masaryk was familiar with the discus-
sions that were taking place within the social democratic parties of his
time, mainly in Germany and Austria. Widely known as ‘the revision-
ist debate’, this theoretical and political conflict is regarded as having
generated the first crisis of Marxism.55 ‘Revisionism’ was expressed pub-
licly by Eduard Bernstein and could be seen as an attempt at a social
democratic and ‘Right’ response to the question concerning the crisis of
Marxism. Revisionism questioned Marxism’s teleological aspects about
the inevitable collapse of capitalism, the unavoidable character of the
proletarian revolution and its historical necessity. Bernstein saw parlia-
mentary democracy and reforms as the appropriate means for achieving
the socialist transformation of capitalist society. He also put particu-

lar emphasis on the continuity between the ends of socialism and the
means to achieve them, rejecting any predetermined final ‘socialist goal’
and renouncing any elements of Utopianism that were present in the
working-class movement.56
The ‘Left’ Marxist response to the question of the crisis of Marxism
came from Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Korsch. In her article ‘Stagnation
and Progress of Marxism’ (1903), Luxemburg vividly expressed her
deep concern about the conditions in which Marxism found itself just
20 years after the death of Marx, and questioned its potentiality for
further development and intellectual creativity.57 Going a little further,
she acknowledged that ‘it is undeniable that Marx has had a somewhat
restrictive influence upon the free development of theory in the case of
many of his pupils’.58 But who was to be blamed for this stagnation in
the development of Marxist theory? For Luxemburg, Marx has provided
us with more than enough theoretical tools for the practical needs of
class struggle. The reason we have not made any advance upon Marx’s
theoretical principles lies in our inability properly to utilize Marx’s
intellectual legacy.59 On the other hand, Karl Korsch made the most
substantial ‘Left’ Marxist contribution to this discussion. Having been
deeply concerned over the atrophy of Marxist theory, he raised some
intriguing questions with a view to touching upon the political and
philosophical reasons for the crisis of Marxism. He questioned the rela-
tionship between Marxism and the working-class movement and the
role that Marxism had to play in the light of the rise of both Stalinism
and fascism. He also objected to the reduction of Marx’s theory to some
scientific, objective and ‘iron laws’ and attempted to analyse the crisis of
Marxism in detail. He was of the opinion that the crisis had two sides: an
external one, which emerged ‘in the complete collapse of the dominant
position – partially illusory, but also partially real – that Marxism held
during the pre-World War I era in the European working-class move-
ment’; and an internal one, which consisted in ‘the transformation of
Marxist theory and practice, a transformation which is most immedi-
ately apparent in Marxists’ altered position vis-à-vis their own national
state as well as with respect to the bourgeois system of national states
as a whole.’60 More specifically, Korsch argued that after 1850 the dras-
tic changes both in capitalism and in the labour movement ‘prevented
the further development of a living Marxist theory within the unfold-
ing praxis of the workers’ movement’.61 Hence throughout the second
half of the nineteenth century the theory was separated from the prac-
tice of the working-class movement and stopped expressing the existing
social relations and struggles; rather, it reflected the class conflict as it

had emerged by the year 1850. According to Korsch, both Marx and
Engels based their critique and analysis of capitalism on a proletarian
experience that was derived from a past historical era and had been
formulated theoretically by the utopian socialists. Later on, however,
they espoused and used the content of this experience for their own
analyses without modifying or adapting it to the altered conditions of
capitalism.62
Analogous endeavours to respond to the above question were made
by the Frankfurt School. ‘Critical theory’ could be seen as an attempt to
put into question the most controversial elements of orthodox Marxism.
Having acknowledged that Marxism had been transformed into a close,
sterile and fossilized ideology which played a reactionary and legiti-
mating role for Bolshevik and social democratic policies, the institute
attempted to revitalize Marxist theory by making an effort to recon-
struct some of its most problematic points. Kellner has argued that ‘the
failures of the European revolutions in the early 1920s, accompanied by
the emergence of fascism, produced a “crisis of Marxism” ’.63 Nonethe-
less, critical theorists did not deal directly with the crisis of Marxism
and did not proceed to examine each of these problematic dimensions
in more detail or in a more radical way.64 As a result, for certain his-
torical reasons as well as from choice, they did not draw the logical
conclusions – that is, the radical theoretical and political implications
of the questions that they had addressed. Hence, one could say that
despite their considerable theoretical contribution, they offered no the-
oretical and political alternative so that the crisis of Marxism could be
transcended.65
The question concerning the crisis of Marxism remained open to fur-
ther discussion after the end of the Second World War. In this respect the
historical, political and intellectual context during the 1950s and 1960s
enabled Castoriadis to revive a discussion carried out earlier by both
orthodox and critical Marxists.66 Castoriadis used the phrases ‘degen-
eration’, ‘decay’, ‘petrification’, ‘downfall’ or ‘corruption’ in order to
portray the crisis of Marxism. The conclusions that Castoriadis reached
in relation to the factors that led to the ‘decay of Marxism’ were drawn
from Marxism’s historical praxis and were epitomized in his The Imagi-
nary Institution of Society. For Castoriadis, the crisis of Marxism was due
to the loss of its initial revolutionary element, as could be partially found
in Marx’s works. It is this revolutionary element which understands our
social world as being made by human actions. Human beings them-
selves are responsible for their own history. They are capable of radically
changing the world in and through a process of self-organization and

self-emancipation that gets its own inspiration from the Paris Commune
and the soviets in the Russian Revolution. This radical aspect of Marxism
grasps communism as a constant movement that negates the class-
divided capitalist reality and at the same time resists the use of a
completed dialectics that leads to a closed and fixed synthesis.67
Linked to this was the fact that Marxism took up the form of a sys-
tem and was reduced to a mere ideology, a process which involved its
further degeneration. According to Castoriadis, this transformation of
Marxism took place on three levels: first, it served the interests of the
ruling class in the Soviet type societies and became its ideological justi-
fication and its official dogma; second, it has also served as an ideology
and as a dogmatic set of guidelines for the large number of sects and
minor political groups that claim to represent authentic Marxism; and
finally, Castoriadis argued, Marxism had been transformed into an ide-
ology as it had lost its vitality and ability for further development. It is
‘no longer, even as a simple theory, a living theory’.68 By abandoning
its radical and revolutionary origins, Marxism was reduced to a ‘closed
theoretical system’ and this ‘finished theory’ was the final outcome of
a ‘pseudo-scientific objectivism’ combined with a ‘rationalist philoso-
phy’ that both coexisted in the thought of Marx.69 Posing as a complete
theory, Marxism represented and continued the capitalist culture and
the positivism that dominated science at the end of the nineteenth
century. The concept of Marxism as science was overemphasized at
the expense of its critical and revolutionary elements. Both nature and
history were seen as being governed by rational laws independent of
autonomous human actions. In Castoriadis’ view, under the influence
of Hegelianism, Marx’s philosophy of history is an ‘objectivist rational-
ism’ which considered both past history and history to come as rational.
Castoriadis noted that for Marx ‘there is . . . a reason to be found imma-
nent in things’.70 According to this logic, this rationality embodied in
history could be studied and discovered only by those who possess the
true and objective knowledge of history. This in turn implied a political
perception that considered the specialists of the Leninist Party, the ‘tech-
nicians of this rationality’,71 to be the subject of the knowledge. Critical
theoretical activity was transformed into an absolute, and signified the
‘return to the contemplative and the speculative as the dominant mode
for solving the problems posed to humanity’.72 This understanding of
Marxism amounted to a separation of theory and practice and the repro-
duction of the dualism between subject and structure. Marxism was thus
reduced to a fixed set of principles, a dogmatic doctrine that applies itself
to reality from outside as the objectivity that grasps the laws of social
development. In doing so, it reconstituted the dualism between thought
and social practice and excluded subjectivity and radical praxis ‘by mak-
ing people comply in advance to its schemata’ and ‘by submitting them
to its categories’.73 Seen from this perspective, the social reality is under-
stood by Marxism as a given and ‘static world’, a social world that is
constructed on the basis of eternal, stable relations and objective laws.
As a result, politics was transformed into ‘technique and bureaucratic
manipulation’.74
Within this logic, Marxism ceased to be a negative and destructive
critique of capitalism and sought to explain the economic laws that
construe the reproduction of capitalism. Historical materialism endeav-
oured to establish causal interconnections between social and economic
phenomena, leading to a dogmatic and teleological conception of his-
tory. By extension, historical development, social change and transition
from one mode of production to another were interpreted by means
of the ‘state of technique’ and its own evolution.75 In this line of
thought, the development of the productive forces is ‘progress’ and con-
trols the other spheres of society. For Castoriadis, Marx was enslaved by
capitalist culture. For this reason, Marxism transformed human praxis
into industrial practice and refused to see history as the product of
human activity. Marx’s stress on the development of the productive
forces smoothed the way for orthodox Marxism to underestimate or
neglect the class struggle. The self-emancipation of the working class
as part of the idea of human emancipation disappeared. The ‘laws of
the development of societies’ became a determinant element in the pro-
cess of the liberation of man. Marxism prioritized the development of
the productive forces, ‘industrialization’, the ‘rationalization of produc-
tion’, ‘sovereignty of the economic’, ‘quantification’ and a ‘plan that
treats men and their activities as measurable variables’.76 The ultimate
and more extreme implication of this metamorphosis of Marxism was
the emergence of Stalinism. Stalin could speak of the laws of the devel-
opment of societies and use the development of the productive forces
to explain the passage from one social system to another. What remains
to be answered, according to Castoriadis, is ‘how Marxists could have
been Stalinists’. Castoriadis preferred to reply by asking another ques-
tion in order to demonstrate the relationship between Marx and Soviet
Marxism: ‘If the bosses are progressive, on the condition that they build
factories, how could the commissars who build just as many and even
more of them not be so as well?’77 Castoriadis argued that the closed
system of Marxism constituted part of the capitalist culture and went
so far as to reject not only orthodox Marxism but all Marxism and
Marx. Nonetheless, he came back to the question regarding the crisis of
Marxism in 1978, when the crisis of Marxism was publicly announced
by Louis Althusser and was widely discussed in Marxist academic and
political circles.
3.3 Louis Althusser: ‘At Last the Crisis of Marxism

has Exploded!’
Althusser delivered a speech at a conference in Venice organized by the

Italian political group Il Manifesto on 13 November 1977. His statement
sparked off an intense debate. From the outset, he argued that over
the previous century the expression ‘crisis of Marxism’ had conveyed
negative connotations and was employed by the political and ideologi-
cal enemies of the international working-class movement.78 Apparently,
Althusser neglected the previous Marxist discussions and analyses on
the same issue as it appears paradoxical to include Luxemburg, Korsch,
Trotsky or Plechanov among the opponents of Marxism. He drew a
marked line between Marxism and the struggles of the mass movement
of the people (e.g. in May 1968) and argued that it was the radical ini-
tiatives of the latter that posed difficult questions to Marxism and made
the crisis an ‘open one’ and ‘visible to everyone’.79 Having acknowl-
edged that Marxism had been through several crises in its history and
had managed to survive (e.g. the ‘bankruptcy’ of the Second Interna-
tional), Althusser stated that ‘today Marxism is once again in crisis’80
and expressed the view that ‘at last the crisis of Marxism has exploded!
At last it is in full view! At last something vital and alive can be liberated
by this crisis and in this crisis.’81 It is this opportunity for the renewal
of Marxist theory that enabled Althusser to undertake the challenge of
elucidating the ‘character, meaning and implications of the crisis’.82
Althusser’s definition of the crisis of Marxism conveys a very precise
meaning and ‘concerns the difficulties, contradictions and dilemmas in
which the revolutionary organizations of struggle based on the Marxist
tradition are now involved’.83 From his definition, it appears that he
identified Marxism with the politics of the communist parties and
the crisis, by extension, came out, first, as a political crisis, a crisis
of their identity that implied a drop in their membership and vot-
ers. Conversely, the fall of their constituency accelerated this crisis of
identity. Altvater and Kallscheuer read Althusser’s theoretical effort as
an agonized attempt to avert the split between party and masses that
could possibly ensue from the participation of the Communist Party in
the government and state apparatus, its conversion into a governing

party.84 On a deeper level, however, what was at stake was related to
the existence and survival of Communist Party politics itself. The newly
emerged social movements and the autonomous radical initiatives of
the people challenged the unity, practice and strategy of the interna-
tional communist movement. More importantly, they criticized, or at
times rejected, the traditional forms of political organizations: trade
unions and political parties.
Althusser unfolds his argument by associating the ‘expression’, ‘aggra-
vation’ and ‘emergence’ of the crisis of Marxism with the development
and tragic outcome of the Russian Revolution. The crisis was expressed
as incomparability between the initial attraction of the Russian Rev-
olution, its revolutionary promises and the later construction of the
Stalinist regime. The soviet model ceased to constitute a radical and
attractive point of reference for the anti-capitalist movement. To a con-
siderable degree, the crisis deepened due to the fact that Marxism did
not provide a reasonable and valid Marxist interpretation concerning
the actual class nature of the Soviet system.85 On the same wavelength,
Poulantzas argued that the crisis of Marxism was caused by the ongoing
critique of the Western European communist parties against the Soviet
regime owing to the lack of human rights and freedom of the latter.
This contradiction aggravated the division of the labour movement and
made it clear that we do not have a ‘Marxist explanation’, a ‘satisfac-
tory account’ of the social nature of the societies in Eastern Europe.86
Sweezy, also, came to the conclusion that ‘the crisis of Marxian the-
ory’ could not be overcome unless we solve the enigma of so-called
‘actually existing socialism’ based upon the hypothesis that ‘proletarian
revolution can give rise to a new form of society, neither capitalist
nor socialist’.87 By seeing the crisis of Marxism through the perspec-
tive of the Russian question, Althusser sought to give some historical
and theoretical depth to his analysis. As he argued, the crisis that
exploded in 1977 ‘emerged in the thirties’ and it was Stalin who ‘pro-
voked’ it, but at the same time ‘he blocked it and prevented it from
exploding’.88
Humanist Marxists of Eastern Europe, mainly represented by
the Czech philosopher Karel Kosik, the Polish philosopher Leszek
Kolakowski, the Budapest School and the ‘Praxis’ group in the former
Yugoslavia, also recognized that both Marxist theory and practice were
in crisis; they criticized the ruling ideology of Stalinism and attempted
to question some fundamental principles of orthodox Marxism.89 Yet,
in most cases, they identified the crisis of Marxism with the crisis of
the Soviet-type societies.90 They also sought to analyse the crisis by

tending to oscillate endlessly between their attempt to articulate their
arguments and to avoid conflict with the regime.91 However, unlike
these writers, Althusser took great pains not to use Stalin and the period
of Stalinism as a scapegoat with a view to explaining the atrophy of
Marxist theory. Without making a clear distinction between Marx and
Marxism, Althusser sought the underlying causes of the crisis in the
contradictions that pre-existed in Marxism. At the core of Althusser’s
approach lay an apparently simple proposition. Marx, Lenin, Gramsci
and Mao were ‘only men’, men whose writings were ‘exposed to the
mistakes, to the constant need for correction and to the errors bound
up with all research’.92 Assuming this to be the case, Althusser main-
tained that there is no pure theoretical tradition that has been falsified
by Stalin, there is no ‘pure heritage’.93 Marxism is not a completed and
perfect system of principles, but it contains ‘difficulties, contradictions
and gaps’. Marxism has been marked by the dominant ideology, and
its own formation and development has been affected by capitalist
culture.94
On this issue, Althusser provided three examples in order to pin-
point the major theoretical gaps within Marxism. The first concerned
Marx’s theory of exploitation, which according to Althusser’s estima-
tion amounted to an ‘arithmetical presentation of surplus value’ and
thus led to a very ‘restrictive conception of exploitation’.95 This focus
upon the quantitative aspect of exploitation resulted in disregarding the
conditions of labour and exploitation. It thus reproduced the division
between economic and political struggles, narrowing and weakening
the class struggle as a whole. Second and contrary to Poulantzas, who
categorically asserted that ‘creative Marxism has advanced satisfacto-
rily’ with regard to the issue of state theory,96 Althusser argued that we
lack an adequate Marxist theory of the state. This weakness hinders our
understanding of the Eastern European societies and prevents the com-
munist parties in the West from unfolding a new strategy of conquest or
participation in government and state power.97 And, third, according
to Althusser, Marxism has no ‘real theory of class struggle organiza-
tions, especially of political parties and trade unions’.98 This difficulty
complicates the relationship between the party and the state or the
mass movement. Despite the above inadequacies, however, Althusser
remained confident that the crisis of Marxism could be used in a
positive and fruitful manner so as to open up new horizons and trans-
form creatively both the theory and the practice of the working-class
movement.99
3.4 Castoriadis versus Althusser
The views expressed by Althusser vis-a-vis the crisis of Marxism came

under strong attack from Castoriadis, who replied to Althusser in an
article first published in Libre in 1978.100 Castoriadis spoke of ‘Althusser’s
crises’ and argued that the French philosopher Louis Althusser was
clearly reproducing the ‘Stalinist and neo-Stalinist industry of mystifica-
tion’ by producing theoretically a ‘patchwork’ and using a ‘language of
caoutchouc’, where the final outcome was distorted because of the fact
that his premises were full of elements of truth, half-truths or down-
right lies.101 In his article, Castoriadis pointed out that both Althusser
and Eurocommunism have been identified with the dominant meth-
ods used in capitalist countries: every position could be accepted as
long as it has been inverted and transformed into an insignificant one.
Althusser’s method – that is, plagiarism and inversion – has had a politi-
cal goal and he is intentionally aiming to cause confusion and to weaken
Marx’s and Marxism’s revolutionary critique without changing the sub-
stantial core of his traditional Marxism.102 For Castoriadis, it is obvious
that Althusser, having been an ‘ideological functionary’, has never con-
ceived Marx’s revolutionary element: the profundity and the boldness
of his thought as well as the radical and ruthless critique of every estab-
lished authority and thought.103 Ultimately, Althusser’s operation has
had existential dimensions. He sought to preserve and renew Marxism
as he would be unable to exist without it. His main concern is to main-
tain the French Communist Party’s leading role and to justify his own
existence.104
On this basis, Castoriadis attempted to evaluate Althusser’s views con-
cerning the crisis of Marxism, to unpick his patchwork. First, he made an
argument against Althusser’s claim that Marxism had survived and was
led to a renewal after the crisis and collapse of the Second International.
But which Marxism had survived? In which direction had its ideology
been modified? To what extent had its organizations and practices been
renewed? It is clear that Althusser was referring to the imposition of the
‘Leninist model’ on an international scale. According to Castoriadis, this
simply meant a bureaucratic-totalitarian model of organization along
with the admission of the Russian Party’s dominance over the inter-
national communist movement. This led to the Bolshevization of the
communist parties and for the first time in the history of the labour
movement, the imposition of a ‘theoretical and practical orthodoxy’.105
Althusser very skilfully presented Marxism and the labour movement as
being identical and at the same time tended to neglect the non-Marxist
currents and struggles of the radical movement. Castoriadis broaches

here a theme of great interest and importance for the evolution of the
anti-capitalism movement, which in a manner echoes Korsch’s positions
in his dealing with the defects of Lenin’s critique of Bernstein’s ideas. For
Korsch, Lenin’s attack against social democratic revisionism, despite its
merit, was rooted in ideological presuppositions. At the heart of Lenin’s
critique lay the assumption that the revolutionary spirit of the labour
movement could be reassured ‘not in its actual economic and social class
content, but expressly only in the leadership of this struggle by way of
the revolutionary PARTY guided by a correct Marxist theory’.106 In the
same vein, Pannekoek noted that ‘the very expression “revolutionary
party” is a contradiction in terms’.107
Second, when Althusser spoke of the crisis of Marxism, he obviously
meant ‘Althusser’s Marxism’, the Marxism of the bureaucratic-Stalinist
communist parties of Western Europe, which, by the way, were still
considered by Althusser as ‘revolutionary organizations of class strug-
gle’. In this sense, as Castoriadis argued, it was difficult for Althusser to
realize why no Marxist explanation of the class character of the Soviet
system had been provided by these parties.108 Castoriadis maintained
that because of his being an ‘ideological functionary’ of the party (with
all of its material and existential dimensions), Althusser was unable to
give a satisfactory Marxist answer to the following questions: Who has
benefited from the mystification of the Soviet regime? Which interests,
actual social conditions and positions have the lies of the communist
parties and their ideologists concealed? Why has Althusser overlooked
the fact that Marx’s ‘limits and contradictions’ have not prevented
Marxists, having been inspired by the best and most revolutionary ele-
ments of Marx, from analysing the Soviet regime and revealing that it is
an exploitative, repressive society ruled by a dominant class, the Soviet
bureaucracy? Above all, however, Althusser, by attributing to Stalin the
blockage of the crisis in the 1930s, not only utilized the explanation
of the ‘personality cult’ in a ‘comic’ manner but made no reference to
social and historical factors (e.g. class struggle) which could resolve the
‘Russian enigma’. Unsurprisingly, in Althusser’s text there is no indica-
tion of an extensive analysis of the concept of bureaucracy. In this way,
for Castoriadis, it is no coincidence that the concept of class struggle or
any sociohistorical factors are lacking from Althusser’s theorizing.109
From Castoriadis’ point of view, Althusser did not want to see that
responsibility for what occurred in Russia lies not with the gaps in
Marx’s theory of the state but with the role that the Bolshevik Party
had played as a means of suppression of the autonomous struggle of the
Russian labour movement (soviets, workers’ councils and factory com-

mittees). Behind Althusser’s concern regarding the issues about state
theory, one could see his attempt to veil the reactionary function of
the bureaucratic and hierarchically organized party which claims to
possess the absolute truth. According to Castoriadis, the real problem
for the ‘science of historical materialism’ derives from the fact that
it is not able to perceive that a ruling class could emanate from out-
side the ‘production relations’ – that is, from a dominant, ruling party.
In this respect, one has to put the blame not on Marx’s theoretical
gaps or simply its infection by the dominant ideology, but on the ‘posi-
tive’ elements of Marx’s theory and their correlation with the ‘capitalist
imaginary significations’: the adoration of capitalist ‘rationalism’, of
technique and organization, the faith in the iron laws of history that
imply the inevitability of socialism, just to mention some of them.110
In Castoriadis’ view, all of these points amount to a large part of the
theory and practice of Marxism and have not only provoked its crisis
but also rendered Marxism as the ‘most formidable obstacle that any
endeavour which aims at reconstructing the revolutionary movement
has to overcome’.111 Hence, for Castoriadis, it is not surprising that
Althusser wants this Marxism to be preserved as a designation fetish,
while in reality he is treating Marx as a dead dog.112
The line developed by Castoriadis both in his analysis of the degra-
dation of Marxist theory and in the critique of Althusser’s positions
addresses significant issues and has considerable political implications.
Castoriadis’ discussion of the crisis and decay of Marxism went in paral-
lel with his critical endeavour to reveal contradictions and inadequacies
that could be traced to Marx’s theorizing. Yet he went back to Marx
not to liberate him from these inconsistencies, which are admittedly
present in his writings, but to flee from Marx, to go beyond his the-
orizing. The main props of his critical endeavour derived from his
intention to use his analysis of the crisis of Marxism to announce
the death of Marxism, to show that Marxism ‘is dead as theory’.113
At times, and despite his claims to the contrary, Castoriadis followed the
orthodox Marxist interpretations of Marx, reproducing the schemata of
traditional Marxism – that is to say, the base-superstructure metaphor,
along with its determinism and fatalism. Also, there is a case to be
made for Castoriadis’ kinship with Althusser’s dealing with critical
Marxism. First, Castoriadis’ reading of the crisis of Marxism remained
anchored in the traditional Marxist reading of Marx through the base-
superstructure metaphor from Marx’s Preface to A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy (1859).114 Second, his analytical framework
strongly resembled the uncritical presuppositions of revisionist debate

or Althusser’s interpretative method, especially when Castoriadis iden-
tified Marx and Marxism. Castoriadis also intentionally neglected other
critical traditions and currents of Marxism. Likewise, he overlooked the
theoretical development of critical Marxism as he was more interested
in announcing that Marxism has come to an end and no longer exists as
a living and creative theory. But, in response to his claims, one could ask
by using Brian Singer’s words: ‘Is not Castoriadis – at least until 1964 –
an example of Marxism’s potential creativity?’115 Similar to traditional
Marxism, Capital was understood as a text on economics that provided
an alternative, problematic and misleading economic theory that bears
great responsibility for the petrification and tragic failure of Marxism.
Misjudging Marx’s critical theoretical activity, Castoriadis failed to grasp
Marx’s dialectic method as ‘a critical explication of economic categories’
and a ‘critique of economics’ in order to destroy ‘the categorical basis of
academic economics’.116
Castoriadis added a further dimension to his analysis of the down-
fall of Marxism when he maintained that Marxism’s degeneration and
loss of its revolutionary element reflected the ‘fate of the revolutionary
movement in capitalist society up to now’.117 The reduction of Marxism
to a simple ideology involved its integration into capitalist society. This
in turn led Castoriadis to the point of extending his own fatalism by
assuming the domination of capital and emphasizing the duration and
stability of capitalist social relations. As he put it,
capitalism has been able to maintain and even to strengthen itself

as a social system . . . We cannot conceive of a society in which, in the
long run, the power of the dominant classes is affirmed and in which,
simultaneously, a revolutionary theory lives and develops. The evo-
lution of Marxism is indissociable from the evolution of the society
in which it has existed.118
In Castoriadis’ understanding as indicated in the above passage, capi-

tal is powerful and dominant. It is taken as the subject, the determining
factor that subordinates and assimilates any oppositional power. The
emphasis here is placed on the domination of capitalism rather than the
struggle of the oppressed. Marxism, thus, is understood by Castoriadis as
a theory that represents the victims of oppression, as a theory of capital-
ist oppression and not as a theory of the fragility and the contradictions
of that oppression.119 Additionally and despite their different perspec-
tives, both Castoriadis and Althusser perceived Marxism as a theory of
society and not as a theory of contradiction, a theory against society.120

In this sense, Marxism was understood as a theory aiming at providing
an interpretation of the objective laws of capitalist society rather than a
theory that intends the destruction of capitalist society. Marxism, then,
is reduced into a theory of capitalist domination and analysis of the
structures, and not a theory of struggle against capitalism. As a result,
Marxism is confined to the study of the function and reproduction of
structures and ‘their crisis becomes its crisis’.121
At times, however, Castoriadis’ theoretical approach to the crisis of
Marxism echoes the most radical elements of critical theory, which
constitute a sharp break with the dogmatism of the Second and Third
International. Castoriadis contributed well in rejecting the burdens of
traditional Marxism and furnishing counterpoints for the rebirth of rad-
ical theory and praxis. From the outset, Castoriadis underscored the fact
that as soon as Marxism had been institutionalized and became a sci-
entific Weltanschauung, its revolutionary spirit withered away. Through
its reduction to a reformist and established ideology, Marxism was led
to its own self-refutation and abolition. It became a closed theoreti-
cal system, a never formulated dogma. Nobody knew what Marxism
really meant. Determinism, teleology and positivism derived from this
perception of Marxism as a complete and perfect system, a finished
theory. This idea entailed the abandonment of negative and ques-
tioning thought and the establishment of new forms of authority.
The systematization of Marxism meant its own rapid deformation and
further reification. On a second level, Castoriadis contributed to the
questioning of the identification of orthodox Marxism with the rev-
olutionary movement as a mystification. He fiercely challenged the
dogmatic presuppositions that take as natural and for granted the
prevalent position and hegemony of Marxism within the anti-capitalist
movement. This pre-established relationship between the Marxist doc-
trine and the radical movement should not be perceived as endur-
ing and timeless. Yet Castoriadis failed or refused to understand that
revolutionary theory and praxis need the ‘warm streams’122 of criti-
cal Marxism and Marx to the same extent as they need the ‘warm
streams’ of anarchism, radical feminism and ecology, autonomism or
any other tendency of the mass movement that could enrich our
struggles for the revolutionary transformation of capitalism. As Clarke
has nicely put it, ‘whether or not Marx’s name is attached to such
a movement is neither here nor there. What matters is that we
should take full advantage of the insights that Marx’s work has to
offer.’123
Castoriadis also underlined the responsibility of Leninism both as

an ideology and as a political practice for the ‘canonization’, crisis
and decay of Marxism. In opposition to Marx’s critical principles, the
Leninist model of the party, as the only exemplary form of organiza-
tion of class struggle, fetishized, sterilized and preserved Marxism as
a codified set of ‘holy canons’. Castoriadis considered that both the
Bolshevik Party and ideology precipitated the several metamorphoses
of Marxism. Although there was a gulf between Lenin and Leninism,
between Lenin’s thought and Stalinism, the degeneration of Marxism
became worse during Lenin’s period, when not only was Marx’s work
used to justify Lenin’s policy and tactics, but also basic Marxian premises
were entirely inverted. Beyond this, the fragmentation of the inter-
national communist movement and the various splits of the Leninist
parties created different versions of traditional Marxism, which were
fighting each other for the right to claim the representation of authentic
and orthodox Marxism. As Castoriadis characteristically noted in a later
article, ‘orthodoxy requires guardians of orthodoxy; that is, a church or
a party machine. A church committed to orthodoxy needs an Inquisi-
tion, and heretics must be burned – or sent to the Gulag.’124 Last but not
least, Castoriadis ascribed to this Leninist metaphysics of the party one
of the major causes of the tragic outcome of the Russian Revolution.
Soviet Marxism and Soviet-type societies were seen by Castoriadis as
determining factors in the crisis of Marxism. The success of the Russian
Revolution was basically a Pyrrhic victory, since it was not the state but
Marxism itself that withered away. Castoriadis repeatedly reminded us of
the significance that an understanding and comprehension of the char-
acter of the Soviet regime has for contemporary revolutionary struggles.
In his words, the ‘Russian question was and remains the touchstone of
the theoretical and practical attitudes that call for revolution’.125
Evidently, a simply theoretical reflection upon Castoriadis’ critique
of Althusser and its contribution to the crisis of Marxism issue can-
not fully reveal the new possibilities that stand before critical theory
for the reunity of thought and action. It would not be possible to
resolve the theoretical mysteries of this controversy in the direction
of radical and anti-capitalist theory-practice based exclusively upon the
battle of ideas and independently of social reality and the struggles for
social emancipation. In this respect, the intensification of contempo-
rary class struggles all over the world could shed light on the crisis of
Marxism debate and underline its relevance to emancipatory politics
today. The most recent movements of squares or the Occupy move-
ment, for instance, or the rebellions in the Arab world and social
explosions or uprisings that have erupted across the continents, have

challenged the culture, theory and practice of the international anti-
capitalist movement. The development of non-party forms of struggle
and the multiplicity of the emerging global resistance have posed sig-
nificant political and theoretical questions in respect to the content,
form, organization and efficacy of the radical movement in times of
severe neoliberal crisis. They also imply a radical transformation of our
mental conceptions of the world, a resignification of words and revo-
lutionary ideas, which could lead to theoretical and practical openings,
strengthening the emancipatory movement and its potential to move
from revolt to self-organization and self-institution of society.
Castoriadis participated in the ‘crisis of Marxism’ debate and argued
that, both in its theoretical claims and in its historical reality, Marxism
had been converted into an ideology which was used to veil and mys-
tify concrete social relations. Having directed his critique against this
ideological and reactionary function of orthodox Marxism, he came to
understand that if one wanted to elucidate the foundations and the
crisis of Marxism, it was necessary to seek Marx’s relationship with
Marxism. Castoriadis’ passage from the critique of Marxism to the
critique of Marx prompted a reappreciation of fundamental critical con-
cepts and theoretical categories and enabled him to readdress critical
issues from a radical perspective and at the same time to draw fruit-
ful conclusions. In contrast with the conventional ways of dealing with
Marx’s thinking, he addressed as necessary the task of exploring con-
crete aspects of Marx’s writings as responsible for what Marxism became
in both theory and practice. As a consequence, Castoriadis moved from
a restricted to a more general critique of Marx. Thus his analysis of the
crisis of Marxism took the form of both a critique of Marxism and a
critical confrontation with Marx’s own thought.
4
Marx in Question
To what extent have Marx’s ideas been responsible for the ongoing cri-
sis, both of Marxism and the labour movement? Was there something
in Marx’s argument that facilitated the petrification of Marxism, blocked
the flourishing and eroded the effectiveness of the anti-capitalist strug-
gles? This chapter examines how Castoriadis shifted from a critique
of totalitarianism and his analysis regarding the crisis of Marxism to
a critique of Marx’s own thought in an attempt to trace its meta-
physical and problematic elements, which could be regarded as an
obstacle to radical theory and practice. First, Castoriadis’ critique of
Marx is placed in comparative perspective with the analogous cri-
tiques of Marx formulated by two other Greek philosophers – Kostas
Axelos (1924–2010) and Kostas Papaioannou (1925–1981) – with whom
Castoriadis had not only biographical but also theoretical affinities.
The section brings together and examines Castoriadis’, Axelos’ and
Papaioannou’s critique of Marx so as to outline the common basis
of their critical confrontation with the Marxian theorizing and at the
same time to shed light on Castoriadis’ intellectual debts and ori-
gins. The next section expands on Castoriadis’ critique of Marx and
presents his argumentation. Finally, the last two sections supply an
anti-critique of Castoriadis’ intellectual endeavour. They pinpoint the
limitations of Castoriadis’ critique, identify his contradictions, and
question the purpose and the direction of his effort. The last part of
the chapter juxtaposes Castoriadis’ reading and critique of Marx with
other critical interpretations of Marx and sets out his critique in a
broader critical and radical perspective. It concludes by exploring why
Castoriadis’ attitude towards Marx gave rise to misunderstandings and
misappropriations.
70
Marx in Question 71
4.1 Castoriadis, Axelos and Papaioannou:

Distinctiveness and the common basis of
their critique of Marx
During the 1950s and 1960s, Castoriadis, Axelos and Papaioannou

attempted to reopen a dialogue with the original thought of Marx,
aiming to develop a direct critique of his theorizing.1 Seeking the philo-
sophic core of Marx’s thought, they made an effort at the same time
to grasp its origin, structure and development, with a view to find-
ing the philosophical intuition, the thread, that penetrates the whole
of Marx’s writings. It should be noted, however, that the critique of
Marx provided by the three thinkers did not represent any ‘national’ or
‘Marxist’ school of thought. They neither formed a distinct group nor
represented any kind of ‘Greek Marxism’. Unlike the Frankfurt School
or the Budapest School or the Praxis group in the former Yugoslavia,
Castoriadis, Axelos and Papaioannou shared a common basis in their cri-
tique of Marx, but in no sense did they ever constitute a group or work
collectively. They all have their own theoretical objectives and their
own political intentions. Needless to say, one can neither see the three
approaches and contributions as identical nor overlook their dispari-
ties. And these differences do affect the content of their critique. What
brings the three Greeks together and renders them comparable despite
their distinctive arguments is their common formative experience in
both Greece and France, as well as their theoretical resemblance with
regard to their critique of orthodox Marxism. Also, there is a common
foundation in their critique of Marx emphasizing key concepts, which
overlapped considerably. They all shared certain common assumptions
and arrived, from different perspectives, at similar conclusions. The for-
mative and existential experience of the Greek intellectuals, as well as
their personal relations and theoretical exchanges, was a determinant
factor for the way in which Castoriadis approached the thought of
Marx and formulated his later theoretical elaborations. In this sense,
Castoriadis’, Axelos’ and Papaioannou’s critique of Marx conveys a very
precise meaning and it is united in two key elements: a) their cri-
tique of Marx’s deification of the concept of technique, which more
or less penetrates his whole work and generates Marx’s determinism,
positivism and technicist eschatology; and b) the Greek scholars saw
Marx as a spokesman of Western humanism and civilization, and crit-
icized him through the prism of classical Greek humanism as being
deeply immersed in capitalist imaginary significations and metaphysical
presuppositions.
a) Marx and the metaphysics of technique

The peculiarity of Castoriadis’, Axelos’ and Papaioannou’s reading of
Marx’s early writings stands in direct contradiction with that of both
orthodox Marxism and the approach of humanist Marxists. Whereas
orthodox Marxism rejected the continuity between the young and
mature Marx, and Marxist humanists pointed out the neglected human-
ist aspects in Marx’s works, Castoriadis, Axelos and Papaioannou read
Marx’s early writings as being imbued not only with radical and
emancipatory elements but also with technicism. In this context the
discussion of the concept of technique in Marx is a common thread
running through the critique of Marx by the Greek scholars. Without
making a distinction between the young and the old Marx, they argued
that Marx was trapped in his conception of technique.
More specifically, for Axelos, the Hegelian influence penetrates
through all levels of Marxian thinking. Nonetheless, Axelos argued that
‘Marx knew Hegel and yet misunderstood the essential dimension of
his thought. He recognized his greatness, and yet Hegel is a figure both
present and absent in Marx’s work.’2 Marx’s thought was linked to
Hegel’s theorizing and extended it dialectically. He developed and set
in motion the power of negativity and the concept of alienation. Axelos
asserted, however, that ‘the dialog, or duel, between Hegel and Marx
is hardly conducted on the same level and on the same terrain; Marx
makes a reply to Hegel using weapons that do not correspond to his
thought’.3 Marx pushed one side of Hegel’s thought to its most radical
and revolutionary consequences, but misconstrued other parts of the
Hegelian positions. Marx attacked Hegel’s metaphysics by using meta-
physical ideas. He made an effort to invert the Hegelian metaphysic
in which history was seen as the place and time for absolute spirit to
deploy itself, but Marx was led by the metaphysical concept to compre-
hend history as the history of the development of technique. According
to Axelos,
the Marxian vision is an advanced form of magnificent nihilism, a

planetary nihilism, and yet, in consequence of this, it grasps planetary
technique as the one lever that can put the world, this errant star, into
motion, by abolishing the putrefied world and its ‘errance’.4
Axelos argues that the ‘capitalist technique is not only alienating, it is

itself alienated’,5 and he asks: ‘Is not all making “alienating” and does it
not remain so, especially when it takes the form of our enormous mod-
ern technical machinery?’6 According to Axelos, Marx attacked Hegel
Marx in Question 73
not in the name of philosophy or in the name of reason but ‘in the
name of the will for the realization of Praxis, in the name of practice as a
conquering force’.7 This will for power expressed through the conquering
practice finds its ultimate embodiment in technique. Man is rendered
capable of conquering the world by virtue of technique. The concept
of technique unites Marx’s thought and constitutes the centre of the
Marxian problematic. It is the philosophical core that was included in
the Paris Manuscripts of 1844 and makes up the seed of Marx’s later theo-
retical elaborations. It is this central point ‘with its blazing ramifications
that becomes thereafter consolidated doctrine’.8 In this respect, Marx
made an effort to abolish metaphysics but all he managed to do was to
‘overturn traditional Western metaphysics’, to ‘reverse’ it. Consequently,
he ‘fulfills modern metaphysics’ by giving a ‘position of privilege’ to the
material world and technical activity.9 Marx opposed any kind of dual-
ism but his reduction of the world and world history to the development
of technique reproduced dualism. In this, Marx simply continued the
tradition of Western thought as it had been constructed after the dawn
of the pre-Socratic tradition.
Papaioannou, also, challenged both orthodox and humanist Marxist
readings of Marx’s early writings and called for a return to Marx in
order to rethink Marxism as philosophy and reinvigorate the Marx–
Hegel dialogue. In his attempt to understand Marx’s philosophical
foundations, Papaioannou rejected the orthodox Marxist problematic
as regards the ‘epistemological break’, the split between the young and
mature Marx. At the same time, however, Papaioannou argued against
humanist Marxist approaches to Marx’s early writings, arguing that
they constructed a ‘new ideology’, a new ‘humanism’, that emanated
from the discovery of the young Marx.10 According to Papaioannou,
in his early writings, Marx misconstrued the Hegelian metaphysics of
labour and absolutized the concepts of labour and technique. Hav-
ing been under the influence of Feuerbach, Marx was led to his early
‘naturalism-humanism’, which was nothing but a limited and contra-
dictory synthesis of Feuerbachian naturalism and Hegelian historicism.
In contrast with Hegel, for Marx it is not the state that can reconcile
man with his world but his productive labour. In this point, according
to Papaioannou, lies Marx’s metaphysics of practice (praxis), as Marx has
not specifically clarified the meaning of the term ‘practice’. As a conse-
quence, Papaioannou criticized Marx for a conception of praxis that is
not constituted in the real world.11 It is concealed from the development
of the productive forces, which become independent and determine
historical evolution.
Marx reduced human praxis to labour activity and industrial practice.

This perception of Marx’s concept of praxis served as a starting point for
Papaioannou’s discussion of Marx’s theory. In Papaioannou’s view, the
concept of ‘productive forces’ constituted the centre of Marx’s philo-
sophical intuition. The premier dialectic of Marx is a pure metaphysics
of technique formulated in his proposition:
If it is (industry) then conceived as the exoteric revelation of man’s

essential powers, the human essence of nature or the natural essence of
man can also be understood.12
Papaioannou stressed that in Marx’s analysis, industry was reduced to

a copula universi. Marx’s vision of a progressive unification of cosmos
through the development of the productive forces takes the form of a
veritable pantheism of industry. Only the industrial praxis is capable
of abolishing the exteriority of nature in regard to man by achiev-
ing the ‘humanization of nature’ and the ‘naturalism of man’. In this
way, Marx believed that the dualism between man and nature will
be transcended.13 Based on this assumption, Papaioannou pointed out
that Marx ended in a ‘monophysitic anthropology’ that deified labour,
but only industrial labour since the peasantry, their productive activ-
ity and their affiliation with nature belong to the idiocy of rural life.14
Papaioannou’s critique of Marx’s technicism concentrated nearly exclu-
sively on Marx’s early writings. According to Papaioannou, after 1847,
and basically with The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx gradually discarded
the ‘metaphysical naivety of his youth’15 and ‘blotted out from his mem-
ory this profoundly barbaric philosophy’.16 Nonetheless, Papaioannou
argued that the nihilism of the apocalypse of Marx’s early works did
not stop having a subterranean influence on Marx’s disciples and con-
nected this part of the young Marx with the ‘industrialism’ of orthodox
Marxism. Orthodox Marxists utilized these technicist elements that
could be traced in Marx’s thought and cancelled the more radical ele-
ments of Marx’s theorizing. In this point lies Papaioannou’s difference
in relation to Axelos’ and Castoriadis’ approach to the concept of tech-
nique in Marx. For Axelos and Castoriadis, the concept of technique ran
through all of Marx’s writings and marked his vision of man and his-
tory. According to them, Marx’s technicism and positivism penetrated
his whole work, and they are not limited to his early writings.
Castoriadis, more precisely, argued that Marx’s intellectual growth
was marked by one central antinomy between two elements – that is,
the revolutionary and the positivist elements. Marx’s idea of history
Marx in Question 75
includes two opposing theories of human emancipation: human eman-

cipation through the development of productive forces and human
emancipation through the class struggle.17 Initially, Castoriadis saw
Marx’s early writings as indicative of the revolutionary inspirations
of Marx’s youth. Later on, however, he claimed that the antinomy
between revolutionary and positivist elements could be traced to Marx’s
early works.18 According to Castoriadis, the positivist element of Marx’s
works finally prevailed in the theory and practice of Marxism and
the significance of class struggle was neglected. For Castoriadis, this
prevailing positivism represents ‘the profoundly persistent hold of
Marx’s contemporary capitalist world on his thought’.19 Reinforcing this
point, Castoriadis argued that Marx is ‘the founder of a great secular-
“rationalist” religion’ in which ‘is incarnated the last great avatar of
the West’s rationalist myth’.20 Marx is deeply immersed in capitalist
social imaginary significations. According to Castoriadis, the impact
of this rationalist-capitalist universe upon Marx’s thinking had as a
result the dominance in his writings of concepts like labour, productive
forces and technique. Hence it is no coincidence that Marx criticized
neither capitalist rationality nor the form of the capitalist technique.
Castoriadis attempted to explicate why Marx did not provide a thor-
ough critique of technique and focused his explanation on Marx’s idea
of history. The influence of capitalist significations and the inversion
of Hegelianism led Marx to write a philosophy of history in which
technique – that is, the development of productive forces – makes his-
tory advance.21 Marx was drawn to the metaphysics of technique and
to idealism since he regarded technical ideas as the decisive factor for
historical development.22
b) Marx and Western humanism

Castoriadis, Axelos and Papaioannou considered Marx as being imbued
with the very categories and significations of Western humanism and
capitalist culture. Marx’s emphasis on the significance of technology
determined his vision of history and his analysis of capitalism. He put
particular emphasis on the development of the productive forces at
the expense of human praxis. He was enslaved by the capitalist signi-
fications of progress and objectivist rationalism, and abandoned class
struggle. On this fundamental level, they all agreed that Marx is a
Western rationalist. Hence the three Greeks went a little further and sit-
uated Marx within the Western philosophical and humanist tradition.
Thus Marx was criticized for being a genuine representative of Western
humanism.
In Papaioannou’s view, for the first time after Plato, Hegel made an
endeavour to compose and integrate a variety of experiences, such as
different and opposite elements into his ‘system’. He not only limited
the ‘casual’ and the ‘arbitrary’ within his system but he also strength-
ened its cohesion. He called ‘recollection [Erinnerung]’ the way in which
he attempted to understand and assimilate the world, and for him, rec-
ollection is the recollection of the historical elements. Hence Hegel’s
intention was to show that man will be unable to get familiar with
his essence, to complete, complement and finish it, unless he makes
it through the work of history.23 In this way, ‘the Hegelian recollection
reflects the western, historical, radically Christian-eschatological con-
cept of man’.24 Unlike Hegel, for Plato the essence of human existence
was regarded as given in advance within a suprahistorical, mythical past,
and the Platonic recollection expresses not only the timeless charac-
ter of Greek ontology but also the non-historical character of Greek
humanism. And according to Papaioannou, this opposition between
the Hegelian and Platonic concepts of recollection could be seen as
the basis for a distinction between Western historical and ancient Greek
humanism.25
The Hegelian ‘Erinnerung’ does not reveal to man what he really is,
but reveals what he really becomes – that is, his historicity. Man makes
his own history no more within a cyclical and perpetually recurring
time, but within a new temporality, a linear time in which the future
and not the present becomes dominant and prevails within an escha-
tological time.26 And if for the ancient Greeks man’s route in the world
follows the cyclical rotation of the stars and the being of human beings
remains always unchangeable, in Hegel, man is always presented as a
future being, as an inscrutable and problematic being who will learn
what he really is only in the fullness of time and who will stop being
enigmatic for himself only at the end of history.27 For Plato, the rec-
ollection raises man to a suprahistorical truth, while for Hegel such a
suprahistorical, absolute truth appears only at the end of history and
as a result of history. Until then the recollection could be nothing
more than the historical consciousness, the acknowledgment of his-
tory as the only actuality for man.28 Papaioannou argued that both
Hegel and Marx are characterized by a similar perception of historical
truth, according to which each historical truth is incomplete and par-
tial. Consequently, they both build up the expectation for an absolute
and complete truth. Such a perception of truth, as Papaioannou believes,
derives directly from Christianity. It is inconceivable for pre-Christian
civilizations. As St. Paul put it,
Marx in Question 77
As for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part,

and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the
partial will come to an end . . . For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but
then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will
know fully, even as I have been fully known.29
According to Papaioannou, both Hegel and Marx could have easily

adopted St. Paul’s phrase ‘for now we see in a mirror, dimly’, since
they were both characterized by the same expectation of the advent
of the perfect.30 Hegel maintained that we will be able to know the
absolute truth only at the end of history, while Marx asserted that in
so far as history continues (which he called ‘prehistory’), man is a rid-
dle for himself and this riddle’s solution will be given by the future of
communism.31 On this basis, the Hegelian idea of history as the progres-
sive realization of human freedom with its pan-rational optimism and
with the dialectics with which it presented the existence of an internal
order within the human history and with its projection of history as
the only substantially human dimension of existence was nothing more
than the entelechian realization of the anthropocentric declarations of
the Renaissance.32
Papaioannou highlighted the distinction between Greek and Western
humanism and argued that in opposition to Greek perceptions of
the cosmos, the Western humanist approach conceived of the natural
world as an object of scientific domination and technical exploita-
tion. As Papaioannou put it, ‘nature ceased to be a value and became,
instead, an object of domination, deprived of ethical significance’.33
In regard to knowledge, to the Greeks ‘knowledge was “virtue” because
its objects, the cosmos, was the ethical model par excellence’, while
for the West, and more specifically for Francis Bacon, knowledge was
power. For Western humanism, knowledge ceased to be a virtue, ‘a
passive contemplation of the cosmos and an affirmation of our affin-
ity with it; instead knowledge became power; a promulgation of the
“reign of Man”, a violent interrogation of nature; an affirmation of the
utter sovereignty of the subject who apprehends it in order to sub-
jugate it’.34 According to Papaioannou, Marlowe ‘has expressed this
reversal of values with explosive force: “to have aspiring minds” ’.35
Thus ‘the will to power becomes the essence of being’ and ‘these men
“that much do want”, of whom Shakespeare speaks in Timon of Athens’
become ‘the ultimate measure of things’.36 By the same token, Marx
praised the bourgeoisie for creating a world market, a world history
and for drawing ‘even the most barbarian nations into civilisation’.
The bourgeoisie made ‘barbarian and semi-barbarian countries depen-

dent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois,
the East on the West’.37 For Papaioannou, Marx showed contempt for
the Asian civilizations and had an exclusively Eurocentric perception of
world history. Even his hostility to Russia and his Slavophobia could be
seen as part of his views regarding the West’s superiority to the East.38
Axelos also drew a distinction between ancient Greek and modern
European thought. In Greek thought ‘the world . . . remains one’, physis
is totality and is distinguished from the Western meaning of the word
‘nature’. Man ‘obeys a cosmic rhythm’, ‘is a being of physis’ and ‘he
does not set himself up as master of the Cosmos. His works do not try to
move beyond his own order.’39 In modern thought, the world is divided
into nature and spirit, reality and idea, and man’s will is ‘to know it,
enrich it, explain it, and transform it’. By the means of technique, man
is struggling against nature; he ‘works and toils at building objects’.40
In this context, Axelos made the claim that Marx took up and perpet-
uated the Western tradition, ‘with its basis in the human ego as agent,
that is, in the will and its power’.41 Greek thought is deprived of any
historical horizon and the idea of progress remained unknown. On the
other hand, as a prominent figure of Western thought, Marx grasped
nature as an object of technical exploitation and espoused the concep-
tion of history as a linear and progressive process. On this basis, it is
no coincidence that in Marx’s analysis ‘the dialectic of Western history
is . . . built up as the dialectic of universal history’.42 Marx’s ‘Western’ and
‘European’ schema and idea of history reflect a christianic-eschatological
concept of man. Does Marx’s ‘Western’ and ‘European’ schema include
‘the totality, both spatial and temporal, of the becoming of mankind
in history’? And Axelos asks further: ‘Was it always and everywhere the
forces of production that instigated social changes?’43 Marx had no con-
cern to know whether his historical materialism is ‘applicable to any
culture whatever’ or for the ‘riddles posed by Indian or Chinese his-
tory’. Thus ‘occidentalism becomes universal’ and Marx’s reading of the
world is particular and one-sided.44
Like Papaioannou and Axelos, Castoriadis also saw Marx’s thought
as derivative of Western humanism. Castoriadis perceived Marx’s stress
on technique and the primacy of the economic element as an expres-
sion of a world whose foundations could be traced to the beginning of
modernity. The end of the Middle Ages signified for Western Europe a
period of great transformations that modified man’s notions pertaining
to actual function of knowledge, the role of nature and the meaning of
man’s life.45 Grotius succinctly expressed this reformulated relationship
Marx in Question 79
between man, knowledge and nature: ‘almighty God at the creation,

and again after the Deluge, gave to Mankind in general a Dominion
over Things of this inferior World’.46 The Greeks perceived nature, cos-
mos, the motions of the stellar bodies as the measure of all things, the
manifestation of a reasonable harmonious order, the materialization of
beauty and order. Western humanism reduced nature to a mere object
that had to be subjugated, conquered and exploited. Marx espoused cer-
tain aspects of this perspective and grasped nature only as an object
of technical exploitation and man as a carrier of power exercised over
nature. Marx’s emphasis on the primacy of industry, technique and pro-
ductive forces reduced man to his productive activity and chimed with
the Hegelian metaphysics of labour. Marx created a new ontology of
labour under the influence of the Hegelian nature of labour. Yet he
pushed the Hegelian premise to its extreme by reducing the essence
of man into his labour activity and technique as the incarnation and
unfolding of this new Western rationality.
In his article ‘Value, Equality, Justice, Politics: From Marx to Aristotle
and from Aristotle to Ourselves’, Castoriadis argued that Marx was
imbued with capitalist significations and deeply immersed in the cap-
italist imaginary significations, and he claimed that ‘the first chapter
of Capital is metaphysical’.47 Castoriadis re-examined Marx’s critique of
Aristotle in Capital and found it ambiguous and fallacious. Marx crit-
icized Aristotle ‘as though the latter had wanted to create a theory of
the economy, and even of the capitalist economy’.48 For Castoriadis,
Marx was led to a historical reductionism and attempted to explicate
the past by using imaginary social significations that could operate ‘in
and by way of capitalist society’.49 The Marxian theorizing is antinomic
and divided between the position that social, economic and intellectual
categories are historically constructed and determined, and the convic-
tion that history itself has its own objective logic, which is unfolding
according an inevitable and automatic rationality, thus producing social
categories that are eternal and ahistorical.50 Marx absolutized the pecu-
liar conditions of capitalist society and reduced capitalist significations
into a ‘universal and trans-historic determination’.51 This resulted in
discussing Aristotle by using the creations and institutions of capital-
ism, and it fails to take into account the fact that they are historically
produced. In doing so, Marx privileges and ontologizes the Western
European social and historical experience. As Axelos could ask in order
to reinforce Castoriadis’ point, ‘Has not Marx once again projected and
generalized the truth of the reality of one historical epoch (which is
tending to become universal) upon the whole of history?’52
4.2 Castoriadis and Marx
Papaioannou and Axelos recognized the need to read Hegel and Marx in
unity and emphasized their inner connection. The reconstruction of the
Hegel–Marx dialogue brought out the Hegelian concepts that appear to
have permeated the whole of Marx’s writings. It also revealed the cen-
trality of the concept of alienation and the perspective in terms of which
Marx viewed and used this account. Axelos and Papaioannou treated
the concept of alienation as a central critical category, which arose from
their reading of Hegel and Marx as a unity. According to Axelos, Marx’s
theorizing aimed at ‘concreteness and freedom from mystification’53
concerned with the confrontation of the thinking of Hegel, Smith and
Ricardo not in order simply to provide ‘a better history of philosophy –
and philosophy of history – or a better systematic and historical expo-
sition of political economy, but in order to introduce philosophical and
historical criticism into philosophy and economy’.54 In a parallel way,
Papaioannou argued that the concept of ‘fetishism’ as articulated by
Marx in Capital expresses the essence of human and economic alien-
ation: the social relations between individual workers appear as relations
between material objects, the ‘definite social relation between men
themselves’ takes the ‘fantastic form of relation between things’.55
Castoriadis also made perceptive comments about the issues of
fetishism and reification as they were articulated in Marx’s thought. Yet
while Papaioannou and Axelos saw Marx’s thought as a philosophical
and historical critique, a critique of philosophy and political economy,
from another vantage point, Castoriadis speaks of Marx’s economic
theory and attempts to pinpoint the reasons for the failure of Marx’s
economic analysis of capitalism. For Castoriadis, Marx attached extreme
importance to the economy, and his premises concerning the contra-
dictions and the crises of the capitalist economy seem to disregard the
action of social classes and overlook the spontaneous trends of society
and the economy. Castoriadis takes the stance that this theorizing of
society and the economy emanates from Marx’s fundamental theoret-
ical principle. In his attempt to interpret Marx’s analysis of fetishism,
Castoriadis pointed out that
In the capitalist economy, individuals, whether proletarians or cap-

italists, are actually and wholly transformed into things, i.e. reified;
they are submitted to the action of economic laws that differ in no
way from natural laws, except that they use the ‘conscious’ actions of
individuals as the unconscious instrument of their realization.56
Marx in Question 81
Writing about Marx’s conception of a correspondence between eco-

nomic and physical laws, Castoriadis refers here, among other things,
to Marx’s statement in Capital that ‘the development of the economic
formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history’.57 Above
all, however, with his aforementioned quotation, Castoriadis appears
to be critical of Marx’s concept of fetishism, which is regarded as an
‘abstraction that corresponds . . . with only half of reality, and as such
it is ultimately false’.58 For Castoriadis, reification cannot be total and
the workers in capitalism are by no means fully reified and completely
alienated.59 On this issue but following a different reasoning, Axelos
founded his critique on Marx’s analysis of alienation on the following
premise:
The difficult thing to get hold of in Marx’s analysis of human alien-

ation is the nature of this entity, man, who alienates himself. For
alienation to exist, someone or something must get alienated. One
can ask, just what is the human essence that becomes alienated, since
there have never yet been men who were not alienated?60
At the centre of Axelos’ critique of Marx lies the position that Marx,
who had fiercely criticized and rejected all economic and philosophi-
cal presuppositions, did not worry at all ‘about his own metaphysical
presuppositions’.61 Hence, in order to criticize Marx, Axelos asks: Has
there ever been a non-alienated man? Is there a human nature, a
pure human essence that becomes alienated? Has there ever existed a
non-alienated human essence that makes it possible to perceive this
transition to an alienated condition? On this criterion, Marx was crit-
icized for being ‘metaphysical’ and based on ‘presuppositions’. To put
it differently, according to Axelos, Marx presupposed ‘a being or a real-
ity that “precedes” the externalization and the alienation’.62 For Axelos,
Marx presupposes a ‘true, real, species man that he uses as the mea-
sure of alienation’. And this ‘presupposition’ is a ‘highly metaphysical
idea; it precedes and transcends all sensuous, objective, real, empiri-
cal, natural, social, etc., experience. It is with this metaphysical (and
anthropological-historical) idea that Marx attacks other metaphysical
conceptions of man, indeed, any (metaphysical) conception of man –
especially that of Hegel.’63
Castoriadis’ and Axelos’ reading of the concept of alienation in Marx
is being deployed from a similar perspective. They both conceive of the
Marxian notion of alienation as it is used by orthodox Marxism – that
is, as being a closed category, an established and static fact. On the other
hand, the peculiarity in Castoriadis’ approach lies in the fact that it sup-
plies us with a dialectical and processual interpretation of the idea of
alienation as process, as a continuous struggle, which, however, bears
similarities with analogous developments of Marx’s thought provided by
critical Marxism.64 Helmut Reichelt, for example, has argued that ‘reality
as an inverted world consists of the unity of two contradictory move-
ments. Conceptions that are premised on the idea of being as stasis fail
here; reality is a being that can only be grasped as a dynamic process.’65
In this way, there is not a non-alienated state but a process, a constant
struggle between alienation and non-alienation. As John Holloway has
characteristically pointed out,
The concept of alienation, or fetishism, in other words, implies its

opposite: not as essential non-alienated ‘home’ deep in our hearts,
but as resistance, refusal, rejection of alienation in our daily practice.
It is only on the basis of a concept of anti-alienation or anti-fetishism
that we can conceive of alienation or fetishism. If fetishism and
anti-fetishism coexist, then it can only be as antagonistic processes.
Fetishism is a process of fetishisation, a process of separating sub-
ject and object, always in antagonism to the opposing movement of
anti-fetishisation, the struggle to reunite subject and object.66
Similarly, in a manner that is closer to critical Marxism than Castoriadis

himself realized, for Castoriadis the incomplete reification and the fact
that the people in capitalism have been alienated go hand in hand
with their struggle against this reification, against their reduction into
objects. Yet this imperfect reification constitutes the driving force and
at the same time indicates the fragility, the vulnerability and the ulti-
mate contradiction of capitalism. Therefore this struggle in and against
reification is the decisive characteristic of capitalist society and not the
action of economic laws which could lead capitalism to an unavoidable
collapse.67
According to Castoriadis, Marx put particular emphasis on the eco-
nomic laws that guide capitalist economy at the expense of human
praxis, resistance and subjectivity. Marx was enslaved by the capital-
ist significations of progress and objectivist rationalism, and abandoned
class struggle. For this reason, Marx’s views concerning ‘labour’, ‘indus-
try’, ‘technique’ and ‘productive forces’ determined his theory of history
and provided a sound basis for his philosophy of history and his anal-
ysis of capitalism. Marx made an endeavour to comprehend world
history and simultaneously to formulate his theory regarding human
Marx in Question 83
emancipation. However, Castoriadis argued that one could find in

Marx’s theory of human emancipation two elements which are diamet-
rically opposed: a revolutionary element that stressed class struggle and
workers’ self-organization, and a positivist and deterministic element
which perceived social development as a natural process and con-
tributed to the naturalization of history. The positivist element finally
became dominant in Marx and Marxism, and Marx’s theory developed
into the form of a closed system.68 Castoriadis’ key claim is that Marx’s
thesis in Capital is premised upon the position that capitalism is pro-
gressing by force of the unfolding of its own economic laws and under
the impact of an abstractly conceived historical and technological devel-
opment. In Marx’s analysis of capitalism, class struggle is disregarded
and omitted.
Castoriadis takes his argument a step further in his essay Modern
Capitalism and Revolution. Here he wrote that having been under the
influence of capitalist ideology, Marx developed in Capital an ‘economic
system’ which ‘does not account for the functioning and evolution of
capitalism’.69 Castoriadis argued that he used to consider the devel-
opment of Marx’s thought as a progressive swift from his early more
radical and revolutionary inspirations to the formation of a complete
theoretical system, a closed and finished theory. However, Castoriadis
now recognized that the two antinomic elements of Marx’s thought –
that is, the revolutionary and the positivist ones – both subsist in
Marx’s very early works. For Castoriadis, Hegel’s account regarding the
move and adventure of spirit turned out to be in Marx the constant
advance of the productive forces and the evolutionary substitution of
different social classes which define the several stages of this devel-
opment. Similarly, Papaioannou ascribed Marx’s ‘grandiose vision’ to
reconcile ‘the Apollonianism of progress with the Dionysianism of puri-
fying revolution’70 to his Hegelian influences. Papaioannou argued that
Marx and Hegel espoused a similar perception of history. History was
always for both of them the progressive march towards human emanci-
pation, the continuous unfolding of man’s autonomy and freedom. This
line led Marx to identify the progressive realization of freedom with the
development of the productive forces and its subsequent impact on the
social and economic struggles.71
It is this latter point that provides the basis of Castoriadis’ critique
of Marx. Marx and Engels opined in The German Ideology that ‘people
won freedom for themselves each time to the extent that was dictated
and permitted not by their ideal of man, but by the existing produc-
tive forces’.72 It is neither the goodwill of man nor his ideas which could
lead to the elimination of capitalist poverty, but the ‘existing productive

forces’ and their constant development. Castoriadis emphasized Marx’s
position in Capital, according to which ‘the development of the eco-
nomic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history’,
and for this reason,
even when a society has begun to track down the natural laws of
its movement – and it is the ultimate aim of this work to reveal the
economic law of motion of modern society – it can neither leap over
the natural phases of its development nor remove them by decree.
But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.73
For Marx, therefore, the historical necessity of the collapse of capi-

talism was reduced to natural necessity and in Marx’s words ‘capitalist
production begets, with the inexorability of a natural process, its own
negation’.74 Reinforcing his point, Castoriadis quoted Marx’s standpoint
regarding the description of his method provided by the European Mes-
senger of St. Petersburg. Marx called this critical presentation of his
‘own method’ ‘generous’. Incidentally, this ‘generous’ description of
Marx’s method mentioned, among other things, that ‘Marx treats the
social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws
not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence,
but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and
intelligence.’75 Therefore, as Castoriadis argued, Marx’s economic deter-
minism was developed ‘in the form of a system’. Marx saw history
as a ‘rational system ruled by given laws’.76 In this line of thought
the development of the productive forces is ‘progress’ and ‘commands
the rest in social life’.77 The fetishist conviction regarding the nat-
ural laws that rule and explain the historical movement of society
and the certainty about the natural necessity of the socialist revolu-
tion accelerated fatalist and reformist attitudes within the orthodox
Marxist parties. Fatalism and reformism were coupled with techno-
cratic positions that promoted the specialists and the technicians of
rationality.
Following this kind of argumentation, Castoriadis is concerned with
the issue of technique, which constituted one of the key elements
of his critique of Marx. Castoriadis’ thesis could be epitomized by
what he said in an interview given to the Italian journal Metropoli
(30 November 1978). Castoriadis argued that Marx remained enslaved
by capitalist social imaginary significations and was trammelled by his
Marx in Question 85
positions regarding the centrality of the concepts of economy and the

‘development of productive forces’. Marx found nothing reprehensi-
ble in regard to the pseudo-‘rationality’ of the capitalist technique and
the organization of capitalist production.78 Castoriadis dealt insistently
with the idea of autonomy and the self-management of the working
class, and he questioned the capitalist technique and its treatment by
Marx and Marxists. While Marx fiercely criticized the inhuman con-
ditions in capitalist factories, he did not condemn the organization
of capitalist factories, the implied rationality and the form of tech-
nique. In other words, he took technique for granted, as something not
likely to change, and sought human freedom beyond the necessity of
labour. As Castoriadis remarked, however, ‘contemporary technique is
well and truly capitalist; there is nothing neutral about it’.79 Castoriadis
attempted to explicate why Marx did not provide a thorough critique
of technique and focused his explanation on Marx’s idea of history;
the conclusions he drew were extremely critical of the role that Marx
and Marxism could play in the establishment of an autonomous and
self-governing society:
Marx did not and could not develop such a critique of technique.
The reason is profoundly bound to his conception of history. Like
the Hegelian Reason or Spirit of the world, in Marx it is the ‘ratio-
nality’ incarnated by technique (the ‘development of productive
forces’) which makes history advance. This explains why Marx and
Marxism could only be massive obstacles to a movement aiming at
self-management, autonomy, self-government.80
Castoriadis did not intend to overlook the great significance of Marx’s

theorizing regarding the study of society by making use of the concepts
of labour, organization of production and social divisions. Rather, he
rejected the idea of reducing human practical and productive activity to
technique, which is following an independent course that determines,
at the same time, social life and organization. Technique is neither
autonomous nor advancing in separate from social relations and con-
flicts. On the other hand, technique must not be seen as a determinant
for the social development and the characterization of a social system.
Throughout the earlier phases of human history the development of
technique was characterized by a relative stagnation and a ‘great vari-
ety of cultures, both archaic and historical (e.g. Asiatic cultures) built on
“the same technical bases” ’.81
Castoriadis proceeded to consider the genesis of the concept of tech-

nique by examining the origins and the use of the term in Greek
antiquity. His discussion pinpointed the affinity of the Greek techne
with the Western concept of technique and at the same time he high-
lighted what differentiated the two. Castoriadis noted that the Western
and modern technique ‘is separated from creation’, and added that ‘it
is separated, too, from questions about what is thus produced, and for
what’.82 Taking his argument a step further, he connected the Western,
‘vulgar’ notion of technique ‘as a neutral and ancillary instrument’ with
Marx’s use of the concept of technique.83 Like Papaioannou and Axelos,
Castoriadis argued that having been under the influence of Hegel, Marx
perceived the creation of man as his self-engendering through labour
and gradually he restricted this creation by identifying it with tech-
nical creation. Marx not only ‘steps unwisely across the threshold of
physis’ and conceives of man as the being who wants to ‘overcome,
dominate and shape the forces of nature’, but also considers that ‘tech-
nique is creation insofar as it is the unfolding of rationality’.84 Hence
history obtains its progressive character through this ‘unfolding of ratio-
nality’ and technique acts as a mediator between nature and human
needs. As a result, for Marx, technique is not only neutral; it is pos-
itive and performs as an expression of ratio as well. As Castoriadis
put it,
Marx . . . calls in question neither the objects nor the means of capital-
ist production, being concerned instead with the way in which both
are appropriated, and with capitalism’s diversion of the efficiency of
technique (which is itself seen as irreproachable) to the profit of a
particular class. Technique, here, has become, not just ‘neutral’, but
positive in all its aspects. It has become operative reason, and men
need only, and must only, regain control of its operations.85
From Castoriadis’ vantage point, technique, the technical object or

ensemble, ‘is itself a product’ and its construction ‘brings into play the
whole social existence of the collectivity which gives birth to it . . . its
organisation of the world’.86 Modern technology expresses the cul-
ture of the capitalist world; it is its language. Capitalist technique and
capitalist economy cannot be grasped separately. However, Marx in Cap-
ital ‘takes as given a technique whose development is autonomous’
and accordingly ‘the sources of this technique and of its capacity for
development are not really gone into; neither is the question of the
choice between several techniques’.87 Marx makes the same mistake as
Marx in Question 87
academic political economy did. He presupposed, posited as ‘given’, the

‘state of technique’ and for him the fundamental issue was not ‘the state
of technique, but its ceaseless development’.88
Castoriadis went on to develop his critique of Marx by associat-
ing the issue of technology with the class struggle. He argued that
the dynamic of technological evolution in capitalism is ‘increasingly
influenced by the development of the proletariat and the class strug-
gle within capitalism’.89 According to Monika Reinfelder, what dis-
tinguishes Castoriadis from other scholars, such as Bettelheim, is his
position that ‘the class struggle does not simply “intervene” in the tran-
sition from one mode of production to another, but actually determines
the development within the mode of production’.90 Indeed, Castoriadis
pointed out that both academic political economy and Marxist analysis
seem to obscure ‘the most important factor: social conflict in proportion
[sic] [there is a problem here with the English translation; it is “produc-
tion” instead of “proportion”], class struggle within the enterprise’.91
Capitalists seek the automation of production in order to eliminate
the human role in the process so as to ‘depend, not on men, but on
machines’ and ‘for every “need”, for every productive process’ they
develop ‘not one object or technique, but a vast range of objects and
techniques’.92 Hence, by quoting the example of the Luddites and the
English dockers, Castoriadis argued that
The putting into concrete effect of this technology, the selection from
this range of the technique to be applied under given circumstances,
is both an instrument of class struggle and among the stakes of that
struggle, whose outcome on each occasion determines the appear-
ance and disappearance of professions, the flourishing or decline of
entire regions. The struggle’s outcome depends on circumstances as a
whole, and its effects can be unexpected.93
For Castoriadis, Marx’s use of the concept of technique led him to a

‘metaphysics of technique’ and, contrary to his intentions, to idealism.
Marx, who fiercely opposed any views that regarded abstractions and
ideas as constituting the ‘moving forces’ of history, returned to ide-
alism by considering ‘technical ideas’ as determinants of historical
development.94 The issue of technology was always present in the
debates within the Marxist tradition. Linked to this were the notions
of ‘labour’, ‘industry’, ‘factory schooling’, ‘productive forces’, ‘economic
determinism’, ‘evolutionist historical development’, ‘modes of produc-
tion’ and ‘teleology of technology’. All of these concepts have been the
subject of fierce controversy within the ranks of both orthodox and criti-
cal Marxists. Nevertheless, even the critical Marxists attributed to Engels
the ‘technicist distortion’ of Marxism. Castoriadis endeavoured to trace
the origins of the technicism that undermined the radical and liber-
ating meaning of Marxism and distorted the objective of the labour
movement back to Marx’s own writings. The question of technique
occupied a prominent place in Castoriadis’ critique of Marx. Castoriadis
attacked Marx’s technicism, considering it to be responsible for the
positivist and deterministic elements of his theory. Marx was trapped
in his conception of technique and imbued with the very categories
and significations of Western humanism and capitalist culture. Marx’s
emphasis on the significance of technology determined his vision of
history and his analysis of capitalism. Castoriadis saw a connection
between Marx’s technicism and the technological determinism of ortho-
dox Marxism. Kautsky, Lenin and Stalin did nothing more than extend
Marx’s technicism to its extreme limits.
4.3 The limits of Castoriadis’ critique
Axelos, Castoriadis and Papaioannou were not only connected by com-

mon central issues in terms of developing their critique on Marx but
also shared similarities in the limitations of their approaches. The Greek
scholars’ reading of Marx was inextricably tied up with and rooted in
their experience of traditional Marxism, in both Greece and France.
Castoriadis, Axelos and Papaioannou had a very strong flavour of the
orthodox, dogmatic and mechanistic Marxism of the Greek communist
movement. Especially for Castoriadis, who as a Trotskyist ran the risk
of being arrested and murdered by the Greek Stalinists, this experience
caused obsessions or traumas, which proved to be crucial in forming
the ground of his critique of Marx. Arriving in France, they had to deal
with the dominance of the Stalinist intellectuals and the influence of
the French Communist Party. Castoriadis also faced the theoretical and
political inadequacy of French Trotskyism. This part of the French intel-
lectual and political setting was in some ways a continuation of the
experience of orthodox Marxism that they had in Greece. For all of
their differences, one key limitation which the Greek scholars have in
common is that they did not manage to get away from the experience
of orthodox Marxism, to liberate themselves from the shadow of tradi-
tional Marxism. In many cases, their reading of Marx was overshadowed
by it. They read Marx without drawing a distinction between Marx and
Marx in Question 89
orthodox Marxism. Hence they identified Marx with traditional Marxist

interpretations and came to the point of reading Marx through the
prism of orthodox Marxism. As a consequence, their interpretation of
Marx was done through the classical formulation used by traditional
Marxism to interpret Marx – that is, through the base-superstructure
scheme. All of them read Marx through the ‘famous’ passage from
Marx’s Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, accord-
ing to which the economic structure of society determines the political
superstructure. Marx’s thought was seen as reinforcing a split between
the subject and object, between struggle and the objective laws of the
development of society, between subjectivity and structure, between
economics and politics. This traditional analysis of Marx determined the
questions that they asked and led to significant consequences as regards
their evaluation of Marx’s antinomies and limitations.
For Axelos ‘there is a dogmatic element in Marx’s thought itself,
the closure of many questions’.95 But how successfully can someone
uncover Marx’s dogmatism by using a ‘dogmatic reading’ of Marx?
How could one criticize Marx’s presuppositions by presupposing and
espousing an ‘orthodox reading’ of Marx? Similarly, Castoriadis failed
or refused to recognize that the base-superstructure model is just a
‘simple popularisation’, a ‘popularistic simplification’96 of Marx’s theo-
rizing, overemphasized and misused by the traditional Marxist currents
over the last century. Castoriadis developed his critique of Marx and
dealt with the question of technique through the base-superstructure
metaphor. He struggled against orthodox Marxism, but he espoused its
analytical framework and perspective when he developed his critique on
Marx. In this respect, Monica Reinfelder has rightly pointed out that,
While Castoriadis thus repudiates what the technicists uphold, he

nonetheless stands on common ground with them as regards the
content and location of Marx’s ‘message’. While mocking the vulgar-
izers for ignoring the corner-stone of Marx’s theory, namely, Capital,
Castoriadis himself shows a marked tendency to rely on the ‘1859
Preface’ so popular with them. When he does turn to Capital, it is
to copy out passages reaffirming the ‘dialectic of history’ rather than
to study Marx’s analysis of ‘Machinery and Large-Scale Industry’; this
failure too Castoriadis shares with the ‘orthodoxy’ he so despises.97
Indeed, what Castoriadis appears to be arguing is that Marx never

questioned the pseudorationality of the capitalist technique. He did
not realize that there is no autonomy, no neutrality of the capital-

ist technique. As a result, he presupposed the state of technique and
its perpetual development. However, Marx very emphatically argued
in Capital, just to give an example, that the ‘automaton, the instru-
ment of labour confronts the worker during the labour process in
the shape of capital, dead labour, which dominates and soaks up liv-
ing labour-power’.98 Marx made clear that ‘the automaton itself is the
subject, and the workers are merely conscious organs, co-ordinated
with the unconscious organs of the automaton, and together with
the latter subordinated to the central moving force’.99 But Castoriadis,
as Raniero Panzieri has argued, is more interested in expressing ‘his
polemical opposition to Marxism’100 and does not want just to liber-
ate Marx from the economistic or technicist interpretations of orthodox
Marxism.
Seen through the prism of orthodox approaches, Marx was found
to have neglected class struggle, and his writings were seen as pro-
moting ‘scientific’ analysis and prioritizing objective historic necessity.
According to Castoriadis, Marx failed to recognize that the class strug-
gle determines the development of technique. For Castoriadis, Marx
maintained that ‘capitalism evolves solely in terms of the effects of the
economic laws it contains’ and consequently ‘class struggle nowhere
comes into it’.101 In an attempt to reinforce his point, Castoriadis main-
tained that there is ‘a more nuanced and more subtle Marxism’ that
‘affirms that the class struggle plays an important role’, in opposition
to Marx, who remained obsessed with the study of the economic laws
of capitalism and abandoned class struggle. Assuming this to be the
case, Castoriadis criticized this kind of Marxism for situating class strug-
gle ‘within a given framework which marks out its limits and defines
its meaning’.102 Castoriadis’ passion to prove Marx’s positivism reached
the point of arguing that compared with the ‘scientific’ and ‘objective’
approach taken by Marx, structuralist Marxism called attention to the
importance of the class struggle, though within a structurally deter-
mined framework of capitalist development. While Castoriadis rightly
pointed out the limited and confined role that the class struggle played
in Althusser’s and Poulantzas’ thought, his approach to Marx’s concep-
tion of class struggle was based on a misunderstanding and led him
to misinterpretations that had great theoretical and political implica-
tions. Marx is understood as a ‘scientist’ whose main purpose was to
study the objective trends of capitalist development and discover the
objective laws of motion of history. Without drawing a clear distinc-
tion between Marx and traditional Marxism, Castoriadis noted that
Marx in Question 91
within Marxism, class struggle always remained of secondary impor-

tance. It is not clearly separated from economic determinism. Hence
Castoriadis came to conclude that ‘Marx, who discovered class strug-
gle, wrote a monumental work analyzing the development of capitalism
from which the class struggle is totally absent.’103 In opposition to
Castoriadis’ claim, however, Marx emphatically wrote in his letter to
Joseph Weydemeyer: ‘I do not claim to have discovered either the exis-
tence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them’.104 For
Castoriadis, Marx simply believed that economic laws govern capital-
ism and all he did was to formulate these laws. Class struggle affects the
historical evolution unconsciously and it is limited by the ‘state of the
technical-economic infrastructure’.105 For Marxism, classes have no con-
scious and separate role and they are ‘simply the instrument in which
the action of the productive forces is embodied’.106 Thus Castoriadis con-
cluded that in Marxism there is ‘a triumph of determinism over class
struggle’.107
Castoriadis proceeded to evaluate Marx’s thought not on the basis
of its total content. And this is the case for Axelos and Papaioannou
too, who, to a large extent, tended to focus their attention on Marx’s
Early Writings and, even then, did so very selectively. The Greek schol-
ars’ critique emphasizes some parts and fails to examine Marx’s work
as a whole. The assessment of Marx’s concepts is not understood and
located within the whole of his writings. Castoriadis intentionally over-
looks the primacy that Marx attributed to class struggle in his earlier
works and fails to see that in Capital there is ‘a shift of attention from
class struggle in general to the specific form taken by class struggle in
capitalist society’.108 Castoriadis focused more on the economic inter-
pretation of Marx’s critique of economic categories. His treatment of
Capital seems lacking in depth, given that he reads it as an economic
text that seeks to investigate the objective laws of capitalist society.
Castoriadis accepts the economic categories in Capital uncritically – that
is to say, he does not see commodity, value, money, capital, wage and so
forth as forms that are socially constituted, deriving from antagonistic
human social relations. These categories are categories of social conflict,
of struggle, even when Marx himself failed or omitted to emphasize the
working-class struggles. As Holloway put it, ‘working-class struggle is not
the explicit object of the analysis in Capital, but it is implicit in every
category’.109 As a result, Castoriadis fails to perceive that ‘Capital is a
formal analysis of struggle in capitalist society, an analysis of the forms
taken by the antagonistic social relations.’110 Castoriadis grasped these
categories as being deprived of the class antagonism and not related to
the class struggle, reproducing in this manner the traditional Marxist

interpretations that he was forcefully opposed to.
More to the point, Castoriadis repeatedly refers to Marx’s naturaliza-
tion of history and his emphasis on the economic laws of capitalism
at the expense of class struggle. Castoriadis over and over again quotes
Marx’s words in the preface to the first edition of Capital (1867). Marx
argued there that ‘it is the ultimate aim of this work to reveal the eco-
nomic law of motion of modern society’ and that ‘the development
of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural
history’.111 Castoriadis pointed out that Marx’s economic determinism
was developed ‘in the form of a system’. Marx saw history as a ‘rational
system ruled by given laws’.112 In this line of thought the development
of the productive forces is seen as ‘progress’ that ‘commands the rest
in social life’.113 Indeed, the Second and Third International naturalized
the capitalist economic categories and deified an objective developmen-
tal logic. Once again, Castoriadis pushed some of Marx’s unfortunate
and problematic formulations to the extreme. He not only neglected
the critical Marxist accounts on this issue but also failed to interpret
the ‘laws’ (as Marx called them) of capitalist society as a product of class
struggle between capital and labour, as forms through and in which class
conflict subsists. Marx’s analysis of the imposition of the commodity
form and the creation of a normal working day constitutes a very clear
manifestation of what Marx meant when he talked about those ‘laws’
of capitalism. He comprehends the laws that legalize and exercise con-
trol over the length and structure of the working day as the outcome of
fierce struggle between labour and capital:
these [legal] minutiae . . . were not at all the products of Parliamen-

tary fancy. They developed gradually out of circumstances as natural
laws of the modern mode of production. Their formulation, official
recognition, and proclamation by the State, were the result of a long
struggle of classes.114
The consequence of viewing ‘the economic laws of motion of modern

society’ in this way contradicts the naturalization of both history and
capitalist economic categories. It regards history as the making of peo-
ple’s will and not as the result of objective social and historical laws.
As Cleaver aptly argued, these ‘natural laws’ are
hardly the metaphysical, unexplained regularities usually evoked by

traditional Marxists. The ‘laws of motion’ of capitalist society are the
Marx in Question 93
direct product of the class struggle and denote only what capital has had
the strength to impose, given the rising power of the working class.
They occur ‘behind the backs’ of the actor only in the way they are
the unforeseeable outcome of the confrontation of the two classes’
power.115
‘Laws’ do not exist separately from the class confrontation, nor do they
act independently of human actions, from the antagonism of class
struggle. Nor does this class struggle derive from presupposed struc-
tural mechanisms; it does not take place within a given framework of
enduring structures and laws. The laws of social reproduction express
the social and historical specificity of the movement of class struggle
in capitalism. They are neither objective nor transhistorical regularities,
but rather transient categories that are always in motion. On this issue
and in contradistinction to Castoriadis, Papaioannou argued that Marx
reproached bourgeois political economy for ‘fetishism’ – that is to say,
for considering ‘things’ as creations external to human activity, while
in fact they are the products of human practice.116 One could criticize
Marx’s thought for its own insufficiencies, but it is impossible to claim
that ‘production relations’ or ‘economic laws’ in the thought of Marx
constituted an objectivity external to human activity. For Papaioannou,
Marx’s phrases in the preface of Capital as well as in some isolated
passages of his writings regarding the ‘economic laws’ and the natu-
ralization of history do not represent Marx’s thinking, but rather betray
his sociological thought.117
It is this latter point made by Papaioannou regarding the sociologi-
cal thought of Marx that constituted another common limitation that
the three Greek scholars shared in reference to their reading of Marx.
Indeed, what they all had in common is that Marx’s work was seen
as divided into its economic, philosophical, political and sociological
parts. Seen in this light, such an approach led them, despite claims
to the opposite, to endorse in their analysis of Marx the distinction
made by the traditional Marxist tradition between Marxist economics,
Marxist philosophy, Marxist sociology and Marxist political science.
Papaioannou’s and Axelos’ re-examination of the relation between Marx
and philosophy and the return to Hegel’s philosophy could be seen as an
attempt at an anti-dogmatic reading of Marx. Yet the emphasis placed by
Papaioannou and Axelos on the philosophical origin of Marx failed to
grasp Marx’s thought as a theory of struggle against capitalism and this
implied a misunderstanding and disregard of Marx’s work as a critique
of economic categories. For Papaioannou, Marx’s works contain some
considerable sociological insights that should be acknowledged for their

analytical and interpretative force. Papaioannou placed particular stress
on Marx’s thought as ‘a theory of society’ and not as a ‘theory against
society’, against capitalist society.118 As Holloway has put it,
Once it is understood as a theory of society, Marxism can be ranged

alongside other theories of society, compared with other theoretical
approaches which seek to understand society. Through this compari-
son, emphasis falls on the continuity rather than the discontinuity
between Marxism and the mainstream theories of social science.
Thus, Marx the economist is seen as a critical disciple of Ricardo,
Marx the philosopher as a critical disciple of Hegel and Feuerbach;
in Marxist sociology, there has been discussion of enriching Marxism
with the insights of Weber; in Marxist political science, especially
in the writings of many who claim to derive their inspiration from
Gramsci, it is assumed that the purpose of a theory of the state is to
understand the reproduction of capitalist society.119
In a parallel way to Axelos and Papaioannou, Castoriadis argued that

having been under the influence of capitalist ideology, Marx developed
in Capital an ‘economic system’ which ‘does not account for the func-
tioning and evolution of capitalism’.120 In his view, the development
of Marx’s thought could be seen as ‘an evolutionary movement that
estranged him from the revolutionary inspirations of his youth so as
to make him into a “systematic” theoretician’.121 From this perspec-
tive, he made the claim that we have to reconsider ‘Marx’s economic
theory’ and argued that this economic theory ‘is tenable neither in
its premises, nor in its method, nor in its structure’.122 Hence he took
great pains to demonstrate the failure of ‘Marx’s economic theory’ and
Capital was read as a text on economics. Once again, what is missing
at crucial points in Castoriadis’ critique of Marx is a clear distinction
between Marx’s ‘dialectic method of exposition’123 and the orthodox
Marxist views regarding the existence of a Marxist economic theory or
Marxist political economy with its structure and its economic premises.
As Simon Clarke has pointed out, ‘Marxist political economy’ is ‘a
contradiction in terms, since Marx always referred to his work as a
“critique of political economy” ’.124 Hans-George Backhaus adds that
Marx developed a critique, ‘a critical explication of economic categories’
and a ‘critique of economics’ in order to destroy ‘the categorical basis
of academic economics’.125 Marcuse expressed the same idea when he
Marx in Question 95
pointed out that ‘Marxian theory rejects such a science of economics

and sets in its place the interpretation that economic relations are exis-
tential relations between men.’126 By seeking ‘the actual content of the
economy itself’ and making an analysis of the origins of capitalist pro-
duction, one can ascertain that this mode of production is not a ‘natural’
one but ‘a specific historical form of existence that man has given him-
self’. As a result, ‘once this content comes to the fore, economic theory
would turn into a critical theory’.127 Castoriadis appraised Marx as a
political economist and saw in Capital, as the traditional Marxist tra-
dition did, an alternative economic theory. In this respect, he appears
not to be able to get hold of Marx’s critical theory and his subsequent
critique of economics.
On a last note, Castoriadis, Axelos and Papaioannou provided some
valuable insights regarding the Eurocentric and Western humanist ori-
entation of Marx’s thought. Based on the Greek scholars’ critique,
some parts of Marx’s perspective on colonialism and his projection of
European historical experience on a world level could promote a great
deal of question and debate.128 Yet a crucial issue arises here: Marx asked
not to treat Hegel as a ‘dead dog’129 and Axelos asked the same for
Marx: not to treat him as a ‘dead dog’, not to consider him as ‘fin-
ished and done with’.130 The same treatment of Marx, however, cannot
be found in Castoriadis’ approach to Marx. Castoriadis situated Marx
within the tradition of Western humanism and rationalism, and con-
sidered him as ‘finished and done with’. In a parallel way, Castoriadis
championed Aristotle’s thought, his political inquiry and his question-
ing ‘on the foundations of the polis and of politeia’.131 Yet, as Murray and
Schuler aptly ask, ‘Why is Castoriadis able to find insight in Aristotelian
texts, despite their defence of slavery and hierarchy, when Marx presum-
ably must be sacrificed to history – some atonement for the brutalities
committed in his name?’132
4.4 Freeing or freezing Marx?
Papaioannou evoked Marx’s positions against orthodoxy and ideologi-

cal monolithism, and made an effort to ‘rescue from oblivion’ the ‘sum
total of Marx’s message that has been forgotten and misted over by
the clouds of incense that burn before his effigy’.133 In the same vein,
Axelos acknowledges that Marxism was ‘castrated in the impetus’ of its
project ‘by the removal of the revolutionary element’.134 According to
Axelos, ‘the freeing of the truth in Marx . . . and in Marxism . . . would
mean bringing’ Marx and Marxism ‘back to a much more basic wan-
dering, a movement, which is based on nothing, but which assimilates
and gives rise to substructures and meanings’.135 Did Papaioannou and
Axelos, however, attempt the ‘freeing of the truth in Marx’ or try to
liberate the revolutionary elements of Marx’s theorizing? Axelos’ read-
ing of Marx and his emphasis on the concept of technique resonated
with Heidegger’s analytic categories and approach to Marx. Axelos
accused Marx of metaphysics and of a lack of radicalism. But, fol-
lowing Heidegger’s thought, has Axelos managed to radicalize Marx’s
thought, to keep Marx’s questions open and at the same time to ren-
der them more problematic? Papaioannou himself oscillated between
social-democratic and libertarian positions, and he came to the point
of marching together with Raymond Aron on 30 May 1968 in support
of the right-wing government and against the May 1968 events.136 This
lack of radicalism was also evident in Papaioannou’s later theoretical
development. It is thus no coincidence that the last period of his life till
his early death in 1981 was marked by his return to an analysis of Lenin
and Leninism. Papaioannou never worked on the conclusions of his cri-
tique of Marx, and never developed the most radical aspects of Marx’s
thought.
On this issue, Castoriadis’ attitude towards Marx seems to be com-
pletely contradictory. On the one hand, he asserted that Marx is a great
author,137 a ‘great mind who wrote a great work, the Capital’.138 For
Castoriadis, the work of Marx ‘embodies one of the most radical, even
if failed, attempts toward a critique of the existing social order’.139 This
approach led Castoriadis to argue that ‘it is clear that by analysing the
historical destiny of Marxism, I am not, in any ethical sense, “imputing”
the responsibility to Marx’.140 According to Castoriadis, even after the
demise of the Soviet-type regimes, ‘to draw from this collapse the con-
clusion that it nullifies Marx’s work would be tantamount to accepting
the Hegelian principle of Weltgeschichte ist Welt-gericht – world history
is the Last Judgment – that is, paradoxically, to remain a Marxist’.141
On the other hand, he opined that ‘apart from a few abstract ideas, noth-
ing that is essential in Capital is to be found in the reality of today’,142
and he regarded as ‘laughable’ ‘the “faithfulness to Marx” that brack-
ets the historical fate of Marxism’.143 Castoriadis made clear that ‘there
can be no “restoration” of Marxism in its original purity, nor a return
to its “better half” ’.144 He was opposed to a ‘particular reading of a few
passages of Marx’ and ‘the omission of an infinitely greater number of
texts’.145 His emphasis was on the actual history of Marxism, ‘of what
Marxism has actually become, of how it worked and still works in real
Marx in Question 97
history’,146 and he arrived at the conclusion that Marxism is what it

became in reality. Hence ‘the return to Marx is impossible’ since the
‘full sense of the theory is, according to the theory itself, that which
appears in the practice that it inspires’.147
Following this line of thought, Castoriadis took the argument a step
further. Not only is the return to Marx impossible, but also Marxism
has been ruined and has come to an end. It ‘no longer exists histor-
ically as a living theory’148 and, according to Castoriadis, ‘we have to
choose between remaining Marxist and remaining revolutionaries’.149
Castoriadis oscillates between his two extreme and bombastic asser-
tions: from the claim made in 1949 that ‘we know ourselves to be the
only ones who are responding in a systematic way to the fundamental
problems of the contemporary revolutionary movement: we think we
are the only ones who are resuming and continuing the Marxist anal-
ysis of the modern economy’150 to the announcement about the end
of Marxism in 1964. Castoriadis seems to get confused by his effort to
reconcile his intellectual origins or the revolutionary elements which
he knows exist in Marx’s thought and his ambitions not only sim-
ply to renew the revolutionary movement but to move beyond Marx.
It was Castoriadis who returned to Marx to defend him against orthodox
Marxism, and he was the ‘only one’ who in 1949 represented the ‘living
continuity of Marxism within society’.151 And it was Castoriadis who,
15 years later, was entitled to announce the ruin, the end, of Marxism
(in fact at this time Castoriadis was not the ‘only one’, and was not a
pioneer in announcing the end of Marxism). Castoriadis tended to for-
get that ‘a philosophical doctrine has many sides, and each side may
have the most diverse historical effects’152 and most importantly that
‘the end is where we start from’.153 As Axelos reminded us, ‘one cannot
propose a one-dimensional approach and reading of Marx. If someone
did so, she would be dogmatic.’154 Castoriadis made the same mistake,
which he attributed to critical Marxism. Despite his claims to the con-
trary, he neglected the other sides or the other readings of Marx. Marx’s
theorizing was understood as a closed system, as a finished and defi-
nitely completed project, and not as having an ‘open-ended character’
and constituting a moment of beginning for ‘practical-critical’ activity.
Similarly, Capital was grasped by Castoriadis as a ‘closed book’, which
aimed to provide us with absolute knowledge. It was not read as an
‘open book’ and, consequently, it was not perceived and construed as
an ‘open-ended project’.155
According to Axelos, ‘no one ever sufficiently puts into action the
thought of the person he is discoursing with. There always remain
important hidden elements which do not come to light.’156 Given this,

Castoriadis did not attempt to put Marx’s thought into action. He did
not go beyond his negation to free Marx, but the choice he made
was to flee from Marx. The Marxian theory was seen by the Greek
scholar as a theoretical system that should have lacked any contra-
dictions and inconsistencies. Yet, needless to say, Marxian thinking is
not a pure and harmonious set of doctrines that could explain every-
thing and provide us with the ultimate and correct solutions to our
problems. The key issue for critical and radical theory, then, is iden-
tifying the direction in which any critique of Marx’s contradictions
should be orientated. Castoriadis neither disclosed the radical elements
of Marx’s thinking nor attempted to liberate his theorizing from pos-
itivist and dogmatic elements, to reveal a critical and radical Marx
by criticizing his ‘orthodoxy’, his orthodox aspects. We could assess
Castoriadis’ critique of Marx by applying Ernst Bloch’s questions to
him: ‘What goal and what purpose? What do we really want?’157 Or,
in other words, what did Castoriadis really want when he developed
his critique of Marx and Marxism? Why was he dealing with Marx?
What was he aiming at? In most cases the Greek scholar’s assessment
of Marx was compatible with the post-modernist critiques of Marx,
whose common thread is the ‘refusal’ to see Marx’s critical theory ‘as an
open-ended project and the resulting attempt to “freeze” that project at
the level of its “paradigm” and thereby to reduce it to an “historical-
philosophic theory of history” – exactly that which Marx expressly
denied’.158
What is missing in the development of Castoriadis’ critical theory is
taking his critique of Marx through to its radical theoretical and political
implications. It seems that his critique of Marx was operating in a theo-
retical and political framework, which was already preconstituted in the
direction of not building on Marx’s revolutionary elements. One of the
reasons for this failure lies in his decision – mainly after the 1960s – to go
beyond Marx and any Marxist perspective. The complete refutation of
Marx or any Marxist critical contribution, however, could have negative
implications for the function of radical and critical thought. Luxemburg
made a very apt remark on this:
The scrupulous endeavor to keep “within the bounds of Marxism”

may at times have been just as disastrous to the integrity of the
thought process as has been the other extreme – the complete repu-
diation of the Marxist outlook, and the determination to manifest
“independence of thought” at all hazards.159
Marx in Question 99
The endeavour made by Castoriadis to demonstrate his ‘independence

of thought at all hazards’ and to draw a marked distinction between his
work and orthodox Marxism led him to an ambivalent attitude towards
Marx and critical Marxism. Yet, as Horkheimer has pointed out, ‘inves-
tigation of facts is strenuous . . . but one at least knows what to go by’.160
Did Castoriadis know what to go by? Similarly, a radical critique of
Marx must presuppose anti-capitalism, otherwise there will be a gulf
between the critique of Marx on the one hand and the social reality and
ideas which this critique serves and reproduces on the other. At times,
Castoriadis failed to bridge this gap and opened himself up to misap-
propriation. As a consequence, today his ideas are mostly praised and
utilized, having been deprived of any critical and radical meaning. Yet
one could reply to Castoriadis’ most recent celebration of his ideas with
Cavafy’s verses from his poem ‘Theodotos’: ‘If you are one of the truly
elect, be careful how you attain your eminence’.161
5
The Crisis of Modern Societies
and the Revival of Emancipatory
Politics
Castoriadis’ critique of totalitarianism, Marxism and Marx occupies a

large part of his political thinking and critical project. His critique was
not always balanced and sufficiently clarified in terms of his political
intentions and the perspective from which it was launched. Yet this
limitation should not overshadow his parallel critical effort to anal-
yse and explicate the crisis of modern capitalist societies. Although
uneven and disproportionate in respect to his critique of the crisis of
Marxism and the Left, broadly conceived, Castoriadis’ views concerning
the crisis and decay of contemporary societies are of extreme impor-
tance and interest. This chapter starts with Castoriadis’ analysis of and
stance towards the revolutionary crisis of May 1968. His pioneering and
radical approach not only elucidates the events but also supplies us with
insightful remarks that could lead to a better understanding of contem-
porary social movements and uprisings. Castoriadis’ interpretation of
the May events constitutes a crucial link in order to engage critically
in a thoughtful attempt to understand the crisis of modern societies.
The chapter goes on to read the phenomenon of the recurring capi-
talist crises through Castoriadis’ two-fold approach. First, it critically
explores his theory of crisis, which is grounded in the contradictory
constitution and antagonistic movement of capitalist social relations.
The concept of reification and the dynamic of class struggle play a piv-
otal role in his conceptualization of crisis as ensuing from the inherent
contradictions of capitalist social production. Second, the chapter goes
on to outline critically Castoriadis’ second interpretation of the issue of
crisis, which pertains to the adventure of the project of autonomy, both
its own emergence and eclipse. It proceeds to consider his fusion of the
two previous analytical approaches, which led him to perceive modern
societies as moving from a state of permanent crisis to a situation of
100
The Revival of Emancipatory Politics 101
decline and decomposition. In doing so, it follows Castoriadis’ views on

the crisis of the identification process, the expanded ‘vacuum industry’
and the rising tide of insignificancy, which, in line with the disappear-
ance of capitalist social significations that held society together and
the evanescence of non-economic values, make neoliberal societies dys-
functional, unable to reproduce themselves smoothly and overcome the
crisis. Through this prism, then, the current crisis is seen as a moment
of opportunity and decision, which involves the necessity to act in
the direction of constructing a radical alternative. Finally, the chapter
seeks to trace Castoriadis’ radical alternative to crisis by critically exam-
ining and further elaborating his positions with respect to socialism,
autonomy and revolution. In this regard, the accelerated mental and
moral poverty of contemporary human beings as the inside limit of
the crisis of capitalist societies and ecological catastrophe as an outside
limit necessitate a radical resolution of the crisis. They require a com-
mitment to the revolutionary project, which entails the autonomous
self-transformation of society and the struggle for collective self-activity
and self-institution.
5.1 Castoriadis and the crisis of May 1968
Evolutionary conceptions of history and mechanistic versions of social

development espouse a philosophy of progress that is reliant upon
the idea of history’s constantly forward movement. This perception
endorses and favours the continuum of history, which is unfolded
according to history’s inner logic and normativity. The advance of
history, then, becomes inevitable and takes on the form of a natural
phenomenon. According to this approach, which reflects the view of the
rulers, the victors of history, history is abstracted from social reality and
follows a predetermined course at the service of progress and develop-
ment. Unsurprisingly, whatever breaks up the continuum of history and
opens up new possibilities for a different social organization is deemed
as abnormality, underestimated and mystified. Subversive events and
past struggles for social emancipation become a permanent source of
annoyance for the status quo and, subsequently, have to be annihilated
and erased from social memory. Seen from this perspective, then, the
most significant upheaval in post-war Europe, the May 1968 events,
has to be defamed, buried and entirely forgotten. Both intellectuals and
politicians have repeatedly contributed to the construction of an offi-
cial and dominant narrative of the May explosion, to the management
of its memory and elimination of its political dimensions. According
to Raymond Aron, for example, May 1968 was ‘the event that turned
out to have been a non-event’.1 In other words, it did not exist as an
event since nothing happened in May 1968. On the same wavelength,
Pierre Nora categorically asserted that ‘not only was there no revolution,
but nothing tangible or palpable occurred at all’, no one died in this
‘soft revolution’ as Lipovetsky named it.2 More recently, during the 2007
French elections, Sarkozy condemned May 1968 and attacked the ‘cyn-
ical’ and ‘immoral’ Left, stating that ‘in this election, it is a question of
whether the heritage of May ’68 should be perpetuated or if it should be
liquidated once and for all’.3 Or, when the existence of the event is not
questioned, then an effort has been widely made to interpret the revolt
of May as a spiritual and cultural revolution. As a consequence, an image
of a frozen past is constructed and the events presented as having paved
the way to contemporary individualism, emphasizing the importance of
human rights and contributing to the emergence of post-modernism.4
In contradistinction to the above approaches, critical and radical
theory does not compromise with continued forgetting and imple-
mented forms of social amnesia. For the world of the exploited and the
oppressed, history is a social product: ‘history does nothing, it “possesses
no immense wealth”, it “wages no battles”. It is man, real, living man
who does all that, who possesses and fights . . . History is nothing but the
activity of man pursuing his aims’.5 For this concept of history, there is a
continuity of the revolutionary struggles that breaks the homogeneous
time of official history and unifies the militant legacy, arguing that ‘most
of the past is interrupted future, future in the past’.6 From this vantage
point, then, as Marcuse argued,
Remembrance of the past may give rise to dangerous insights, and the
established society seems to be apprehensive of the subversive con-
tents of memory. Remembrance is a mode of dissociation from the
given facts, a mode of ‘mediation’ which breaks, for short moments,
the omnipresent power of the given facts. Memory recalls the terror
and the hope that passed. Both come to life again, but whereas in
reality, the former recurs in ever new forms, the latter remains hope.7
The revolutionary tradition includes terrors, sufferings, horrors and

tragedies, but also hopes, unfulfilled promises and revolutionary inspi-
rations. The heritage of May 1968 is not past history that is being
disconnected from the present social struggles. Its subversive memory
of resistance, struggle and refusal re-emerges as hope and militant opti-
mism for the world of the ruled and revolted. In this sense, May 1968
carries a ‘secret index’,8 which is experienced in times of disobedience
and revolt wherein everything is at stake, history is open and nothing is

impossible. For Holloway, we discuss and reflect upon May 1968 because
‘we are feeling lost and need some sense of direction’.9 In Castoriadis’
understanding, May 1968 should not be made an ‘engraving’, a ‘dead
past’, a closed or rigidified subject. On the contrary, its meaning ‘remains
wide open’ and we go back to it in order to move forward: ‘To trans-
form things . . . we have to understand them; to advance we have to
orient ourselves.’10 Taking May 1968 in this way implies a stance accord-
ing to which, as Adorno put it, ‘criticism really means the same as
remembrance’.11 This in turn means that criticism should endeavour
to be developing through a process of demystification that overcomes
the reification of forgetting. Cutting through mystified appearances and
rigidified facts, remembrance as part of the critical and radical tradition
focuses on the essence of the May explosion, and stresses the ‘substance
of its demands and the meaning of its forms and modes of action’.12
In its effort to reveal the essence of phenomena, Castoriadis’ criticism,
then, conceives of the May events through the categories of ‘crisis’ and
‘critique’.
The revolt of May 1968 did not erupt due to an economic break-
down. It was not the result of a financial collapse.13 As Castoriadis put
it, the movement of 1968 ‘was provoked not by the hunger’ or ‘by some
economic crisis’.14 On the contrary, the breaking out of the events con-
tributed ‘to creat[ing] a crisis in the economy’.15 The social upheaval was
manifested as a massive refusal of key elements of the main productive
and consumerist functionalities of capitalism, its instrumental ratio-
nality and mechanization of life.16 The distinctiveness of Castoriadis’
interpretation of the events lies in the fact that he understands the
crisis as the result of the popular initiatives, of the collective action
taken by ordinary people in their universities, factories, offices and
neighbourhoods. The crisis was not seen as the outcome of an eco-
nomic or structural dysfunctionality, but, as he argued, the ‘crisis [was]
unleashed . . . by a few enragés from Nanterre . . . shaking French society
from its roots to the summits of power’.17 It was a ‘radical break’, a ‘rad-
ical revolutionary affirmation’, which revealed the ‘immense creative
potential of society’.18 The unfolding of the crisis disclosed the ‘insur-
mountable’ and ‘fundamental contradiction of bureaucratic-capitalist
society’, which
manifests itself in bureaucratic capitalism’s need to exclude people

from the management of their own affairs, and in its inability to
succeed in doing so (if it were to succeed, it would immediately col-
lapse due to its very success). Its human and political expression is
to be found in the bureaucrats’ project of transforming people into

objects (whether by violence, mystification, manipulation, teach-
ing methods, or economic ‘carrots’) and in people’s refusal to let it
happen.19
Seen from this viewpoint, then, the crisis of May 1968 is considered as
being in an immediate relation to the explosive subjectivity and peo-
ple’s power of negativity. In Castoriadis’ understanding the crisis was
also experienced as a critique and rejection both of structuralism and
of traditional forms of political organization. Castoriadis does not only
broach the theme of the stance adopted by the major spokesmen of
structuralism during the May days. He is mainly concerned with the
effect that May 1968 had on structuralist thought itself as a whole.20
Castoriadis’ criticism was launched from the standpoint of the revolted
subjectivity, and the May events acted as the practical and conceptual
backdrop against which he sought to deepen his critique of structural-
ism. As Castoriadis characteristically argued, ‘while a new contestation
was developing, while people were searching for, and beginning to
create, new attitudes, norms, values, the accent was placed on “struc-
tures” so as to evacuate living history’.21 Accordingly, structuralism was
not simply put into crisis during the May revolt, but as he opined,
‘ “structuralism” melted away’,22 as ‘living history . . . came to evacuate
structuralism’.23 As a motto read on the walls of Sorbonne in May 1968,
‘structures don’t go down into the streets’.24 History is made by men and
not by structures.
The May days were one of these ‘rare moments when society is at
boiling point and therefore fluid’.25 Throughout the uprising, the vol-
canic explosion of the insurgents opened up the way for solidarity
and resocialization that was pointing to a radically new way of life
and sociopolitical organization. The development of bottom-up initia-
tives and participatory forms of organization created a space for the
unfolding of non-state oriented politics independent of political par-
ties and state structures. These anti-state forms of organization were
experimented on in various forms of direct democracy, sit-ins, occupa-
tions, action committees, strikes and open assemblies. Traditional forms
of political organization, such as political parties and trade unions,
were fiercely rejected and a common public area of struggles, militant
protests, common assemblies, street battles and occupations of public
buildings was created. The movement of May challenged the established
presuppositions regarding the hierarchical organization of society and
promoted the aim of autonomy in and though the ‘autonomous and
democratic self-management of collectivities’.26 The social explosion

posed the question, once again in the history of the radical move-
ment, vis-à-vis the forms of organization in an emancipatory movement.
The revolted created a community of struggle that experienced ‘some-
thing of the freedom and the spontaneity which will mark the future’.27
This spontaneity expressed in and through open assemblies and radical
activities was their self-organization.
In a parallel way, the social unrest revealed the fact that opposi-
tion to fetishized state organizational forms does not mean that the
struggle against the capitalist social relations has to be developed with-
out organization. As Castoriadis argued, ‘to accept that spontaneity
and organization are mutually exclusive is to give over the field of
organization . . . to the bureaucrats’.28 Precisely for that reason he main-
tained that ‘one cannot overcome bureaucratic organization by refusing
all organization’.29 Moving beyond the dilemma between the Leninist
tradition of the revolutionary party, on the one hand, and the lack
of any organization for the fear of the movement’s potential integra-
tion and absorption into the established order, on the other, Castoriadis
made it clear that
Someone who is afraid of cooptation has already been coopted. His

attitude has been coopted – since it has been blocked up. The deepest
reaches of his mind have been coopted, for there he seeks guaran-
tees against being coopted, and thus he has already been caught in
the trap of reactionary ideology: the search for an anticooptation
talisman or fetishistic magic charm.30
For Castoriadis, ‘everything can be coopted – save one thing: our

own reflective, critical, autonomous activity’.31 The living movement
of the people in May 1968 demonstrated that forms of political
organization should not be presupposed as given or eternal struc-
tures. Deploying the dialectics of struggle and organization, Luxemburg
argued that means of struggle and forms of organization ‘arise as a
product of the struggle’ and ought to be ‘tested in the struggle’.32
All of these forms of struggle are always in a fluid situation. They
are constantly moving and changing in and through the recipro-
cal mediation of theory and practice. As Luxemburg put it, all of
the different forms of struggle discovered by the movement ‘run
through one another, run side by side, cross one another, flow in
and over one another – it is a ceaselessly moving, changing sea of
phenomena’.33 For Castoriadis, ‘openness is that which constantly
displaces and transforms its own terms and even its own field, but
can exist only if, at each instant, it leans on a provisional organiza-
tion of the field’.34 The collective and radical praxis of those involved
in the social unrest posed the question as regards the means–end rela-
tion and the answer was given by the revolted themselves through the
formation of ‘open assemblies’. Open assemblies were the spontaneous
forms of organization which brought together the elements of open-
ness and organization, and united concrete aspects of self-discipline and
freedom.
These forms of negativity and self-organization contradicted the
conservative political line of the various ‘central committees’ and tran-
scended in practice the pre-existing division within the radical move-
ment between the rulers and the ruled, the directors and the performers.
In the various forms of self-determination the insurgents depicted the
anti-authoritarian and libertarian tendencies of the movement. They
stopped capitalized time and performed through the open assemblies
against the ‘rationalization’ of politics.35 By extension, they faced ‘the
central question of all political activity’, which is ‘the question of the
institution’.36 The posing of the above question disclosed profoundly
contradictory aspects of the movement, which, for Castoriadis, are
undoubtedly correlated with the
antinomic character of the modern political imagination. This imag-

ination is, on the one hand, under the sway of the aim of autonomy
and its successive extensions into the various fields in which the
social sphere is instituted; on the other hand, it seldom, and only
for a brief time, manages to disengage itself from the representation
of politics – and of the institution – as an exclusive domain of the
State and from the representation of this State . . . as belonging only
to itself.37
The movement was marked from this tension – that is, the development
of the aim of individual and social autonomy, which was manifested in
various forms of extra-institutional opposition, and the attempt made
by many political groups or a part of the movement anchored in
state-oriented politics to channel the insurrection within the limits of
capitalist society and its state. The lesson of the May explosion was that
political action that is extra-institutional, but within society, radical-
izes the political class struggle and cannot be incorporated within the
system. On this point, Agnoli made a very significant remark about the
influence of the 1968 movement:
To act extra-institutionally within society assures the possibility of

influence. In this regard, the experience of the 1968 movement is
very instructive. It was able to exert political influence only for
as long as it did not participate in a direct and immediate sense
in state politics (Staatspolitik). Its ratio emancipationis (Vernunft)
came into play as long as it assembled in the streets; its Vernunft
went astray as soon as the movement began the long institutional
march.38
By reflecting upon this contradiction, Castoriadis endeavoured to draw

lessons which have wider resonance for the radical and anti-capitalist
social struggles. On the one hand, he made the interesting remark that
due to this antinomy ‘the result has been that, in modernity, politics as
collective activity (and not as a specialized profession) has been able to
be present so far only as spasm and paroxysm, a bout of fever, enthu-
siasm and rage, a reaction to the excess of . . . Power’.39 On the other,
Castoriadis sought to grasp the concept of revolution as a process that
goes beyond temporal social explosions and the bureaucratic decline of
radical movements, upheavals and forms of organized social struggles.
The autonomous collective actions which are expressed as short-lived
angry outbursts can easily be absorbed into the dominant praxis. In fact,
these ephemeral upsurges act as safety valves, assisting the established
order to continue to exist by modernizing itself. They play a regula-
tive role and enhance the resilience and flexibility of capitalist and
authoritarian normality. Castoriadis examined what the history of these
uprisings can teach us in order to cease being trapped in the impasse of
temporary social eruptions, on the one hand, and the decay of endur-
ing patterns of social and political organization, on the other.40 For
Castoriadis, the real challenge was rather to realize why the ‘truly social-
ist elements’ that were brought about in the course of radical social
struggles ‘cannot maintain themselves, or develop, or above all, be insti-
tuted’.41 Without denying the power of negative thinking and practice,
the ‘violence of the negative’,42 Castoriadis maintained that ‘negativ-
ity as pure negativity is only an abstraction, and therefore, at bottom
a piece of speculative mystification’.43 The historical experience of May
1968 and past social explosions show that if the revolted have not cre-
ated their own culture and something ‘positive’ to rely upon after the
slowdown of the outbreak, then they inescapably ‘fell back upon the
“positive” aspects of capitalism’.44 That is why, according to Castoriadis,
the most vital question from a practical-critical point of view posed by
May 1968 and its aftermath is
How would this tremendous explosion be able to go beyond the stage

of mere explosion without losing its creativity, how would this fan-
tastic deployment of autonomous activity be able to institute lasting
collective organizations that express it without drying it up or confis-
cating it, how would the contents that it was creating in abundance
be able to find new forms – above all, political ones – that would
permit them to rise to the level of full social-historical effectiveness?45
The overt political and social manifestation of crisis in May 1968 has
been a significant point of reference that marked the history, politics,
culture and societal tendencies of contemporary societies. Capital and
its state have been constantly attacking the social explosion of 1968
with a view to annihilating its meaning and erasing its political and anti-
capitalist dimensions. Over and over again, they have endeavoured to
reappropriate and resabsorb the rebellion into the mechanisms of their
domination and power. The events have been presented as an isolated
fact, a temporary event or an accident that had no deeper correlations
with distinct traits and contradictions of the post-world war capital-
ist society. In Castoriadis’ view, by contrast, ‘accident’ is the form, the
appearance that various sorts of crises take when they break out. It is the
nature of the capitalist social relations that produces these accidents in
a periodic way.46 As Castoriadis put it,
By ‘crises’ we do not mean, or do not only mean, economic crises,

but also periods of social life where any kind of event (whether
economic, political, social, or international) significantly upsets the
current functioning of society, temporarily incapacitates existing
institutions and mechanisms, and prevents them from immediately
reestablishing equilibrium. In this sense, crises, whatever their origin,
are inherent in the very nature of the capitalist system. They express
its fundamental irrationality and incoherence.47
In this respect, the crisis of May 1968, with all its marked characteris-
tics and peculiarities, belonged to a more profound general crisis, which
characterizes modern Western societies. The events of May just made
explicit what was subterranean and implicit.
5.2 Crisis, reification and class struggle
Since the 1950s, Castoriadis had expressed remarkable opinions on the

origins and substance of this multilateral crisis of modernity, which
reflect his intellectual trajectory and subsequent conceptual turns. The

Second World War period and the post-war phase confirmed the cri-
sis and revealed its profound character, which is inherent in the nature
and organization of modern societies. According to Castoriadis, both the
US and Russian bureaucratic modes of social organization are torn by a
crisis, which is premised upon the split and heightened conflict between
directors and executants in the process of production. The directors and
the smooth functioning of capitalist social relations are reliant upon the
autonomous, independent and creative initiatives of the executants, but
at the same time they tend to control, repress and inhibit these expres-
sions of autonomy as an uncontrolled expansion of this creativity would
threaten their power and the existence of the bureaucratic system itself.
However, should the directors manage entirely to block the creativity
and autonomy of the ruled, then the system would collapse. This inter-
nal social, economic and political contradiction amounts to an enduring
source of instability and crisis and, on the other hand, constitutes a
reproductive mechanism that reaffirms and guarantees the persistence
and perpetuation of the capitalist system.48 From Castoriadis’ point of
view, the ‘crisis of exploitative society’ is manifested in a double man-
ner and it is ‘expressed in two forms: both as the workers’ struggle against
alienation and against its conditions, and as people’s absence from soci-
ety, their passivity, discouragement, retreat, and isolation. In both cases,
beyond a certain point this conflict leads to the overt crisis of the estab-
lished society.’49 The Hungarian events of 1956 encapsulate an example
of the unfolding of crisis as the result of the explosive power of struggle
and revolted subjectivity, while the breakdown of the Polish economy
around the same time is indicative of a crisis that stemmed from a state
of generalized alienation and social apathy.50
Starting from the first part of his premise – that is, the role of social
struggle as generator of the crisis, Castoriadis shifted the emphasis of his
analysis from the objective contradictions of capitalism, an approach
that was the focal point of the thought and practice of traditional
Marxism, to the actual social activity of people and their struggles.
It was class struggle itself and by no means the objective economic laws
of capitalism that determined the level of wages as well as the devel-
opment of technology, production, economy and politics. Reflecting
upon the unfolding of the working-class revolutions from 1848 to 1956,
Castoriadis argued that there was a positive ‘process of development’
of proletarian action, though ‘interrupted and contradictory’, but abso-
lutely not an objective one. Rather, there was the ‘development of the
embodied meaning of working-class action’51 and all of these vibrant
class struggles deeply modified the character of modern capitalism. Seek-

ing a non-deterministic theory of crisis, he placed particular stress on
the dynamic of class struggle in order to explicate capitalist crises. This
line of analysis led him to argue that the crises of modern society are
‘the by-product of struggle’.52 They could be ascribed to the fact that
‘people do not submit passively to the present organization of society,
but react and struggle against it, in a great many ways’.53 In contradis-
tinction to widespread traditional Marxist views, Castoriadis grasped
the concept of crisis as a category of social contradiction, as a con-
stant trend inherent in capitalist social relations. This approach allows
Castoriadis to put forward the fundamental contradiction of capitalism,
which lies in production and work and constitutes the main source of its
crisis:
This contradiction is contained within the alienation experienced by

every worker. We may summarize this alienation by pointing out cap-
italism’s need to reduce workers to the role of mere executants and
the inability of this system to function if it succeeded in achieving
this required objective. In other words, capitalism needs to realize
simultaneously the participation and exclusion of the workers in the
production process. The same goes for citizens in the political sphere,
and so on and so forth.54
Castoriadis does not draw a clear distinction between the concepts of

alienation and reification. Though the Marxian concepts of fetishism
and alienation, and Lukács’ theory of reification, inform his account
of crisis, the three concepts are used interchangeably. It seems that in
his analysis of the fundamental contradiction of capitalism, the three
conceptions overlap and are treated as synonymous. In most cases,
fetishism and alienation are grouped under the notion of reification.
In Castoriadis’ approach, then, the notion of reification is described as
the process of transformation of human beings into things. In the words
of Castoriadis,
Reification, the essential tendency of capitalism, can never be wholly

realized. If it were, if the system were actually able to change individ-
uals into things moved only by economic ‘forces’, it would collapse
not in the long run, but immediately. The struggle of people against
reification is, just as much as the tendency towards reification, the
condition for the functioning of capitalism. A factory in which the
workers were really and totally mere cogs in the machine, blindly
executing the orders of management, would come to a stop in a

quarter of an hour.’55
As indicated by the above, Castoriadis perceives reification as thingifica-

tion, which is not a static, accomplished and fixed category, but rather
should be understood as a dynamic concept that mirrors a contradictory
and antagonistic relationship between directors and executants. This
processual and dialectical understanding of the concept of reification
plays an important role in the manner in which Castoriadis associates
the contradictions and crises of modern societies with class struggles and
resistance. As he put it,
Capitalism can function only by continually drawing upon the gen-

uinely human activity of those subject to it, while at the same time
trying to level and dehumanize them as much as possible. It can
continue to function only to the extent that its profound tendency,
which actually is reification, is not realized, to the extent that its
norms are continually countered in their application. Analysis shows
that the final contradiction of capitalism resides here, and not in the
so to speak mechanical incompatibilities presented by the economic
gravitation of human molecules in the system. These incompatibil-
ities are ultimately illusory, even though they go beyond particular
and localized phenomena.56
Castoriadis reiterates the same reasoning, by making the same point

over and over again, in an attempt to construe crisis not just as an eco-
nomic phenomenon, but rather as a crisis of capitalist social relations,
including political and cultural ones. Under the influence of Lukács’ and
Weber’s positions, Castoriadis conceives of this process of dehumaniza-
tion and depersonalization as a generalized reification that penetrates
not only individuals but also social institutions, as well as the polit-
ical and cultural domain. The crisis thus becomes all-embracing, as
reification extends from the sphere of production to the most important
facets of contemporary societies. According to Castoriadis,
Capitalism . . . is built on an intrinsic contradiction . . . The capital-

ist organization of society is contradictory in the same way that a
neurotic individual is so: It can try to carry out its intentions only
through acts that constantly thwart these same intentions.
Let us look at this first at the most basic level: at the point of produc-
tion. The capitalist system can only maintain itself by continually
trying to reduce wage earners to the level of pure executants – and

it functions only to the extent that it never succeeds in so reducing
them. Capitalism is constantly obliged to solicit the participation of
wage earners in the production process and yet it also tends to render
this participation impossible. The same contradiction is found again,
in an almost identical form, in the domains of politics and culture.57
Deriving from this longstanding accumulated contradiction of capitalist

societies, the ensuing multilateral crisis discloses the crisis-ridden nature
of capitalism and the fragility of capitalist social relations. In Castoriadis’
discussion, however, the concept of crisis is not always seen as an open,
fluid and antagonistic process of struggle. It appears that capital always
has the initiative, it is constantly the subject. Thus he underscores and
stresses the power and domination of capital, which makes decisions
about what the working class should and should not do. The struggles
of the workers are thus apprehended as an external reaction, and the
relationship between capital and labour appears to be an external one, a
mere opposition of labour to the attacks of capital. In Castoriadis’ words,
‘the system . . . necessarily engenders opposition, a struggle against it by
those upon whom it seeks to impose it’.58 Castoriadis grasps crisis as the
‘consequence of a wave of struggle or militancy’ and not as a tendency
‘embedded in the form of the class antagonism’.59 The intrinsic contra-
dictions of capital are thus separated from class struggle and, hence, the
relationship between crisis and struggle is disarticulated and turns out
to be an external one.
In this way, capital appears to be determined by definite laws, to
have its own logic, whose irrationality and incoherence create the con-
ditions for the working class’s rebellion, disorder and crisis. Crisis is
conceptualized as having ensued from the self-activity of capital, the
self-contradictory and problematic character of capitalism, which is torn
deterministically by its own contradictions and inconsistencies and not
by the social antagonism with the working class. Capital is understood
as a self-referring economic category, a machine-like entity, and not as
the product of two antagonistic poles of a social relation that exists as
a movement of contradiction between dependence and separation of
capital and labour. Castoriadis theorizes the capitalist crisis by underes-
timating ‘capital’s dependence upon the subordination of labour’ and,
consequently, he undervalues ‘the power of labour as internal contra-
diction within capital’ as he shows ‘no understanding of the way in
which the insubordination of labour constitutes the weakness of capi-
tal (especially in capitalist crisis)’.60 At the core of Castoriadis’ position,
class and class struggle are seen as fundamental and of major impor-
tance, but the internal relation between capital and labour is reduced to
an external one, a relation of mere oppositional conflict. As Castoriadis
pointed out, ‘the capitalist structure of society consists of organizing
people’s lives from the outside . . . and creates a perpetually renewed cri-
sis in every sphere of human activity’.61 The internal instability and
fragility of capital is not traced in the subsistence of living labour as an
antagonistic force inside capital, as a power that constitutes, permeates
and negates perverted capitalist forms. In this respect, for Castoriadis,
the volatility of capital and the limits of capitalist domination are not
grounded in the insubordinate power of labour as an internal contradic-
tion within capital. They are rather located in the contradictory relation
between participation and exclusion, which now becomes the obstacle
to capitalist development and generates crises and instability.
The significance of Castoriadis’ argument lies in the fact that he con-
ceives of crises as inherent and reoccurring results of the reified capitalist
social relations. He points out that the alienated and reified workers
constitute a boundary to alienation and further reification, because of
both their resistance and their profound objectification that threatens
to reduce them to mere non-creative and unproductive reified things.
In The Imaginary Institution of Society, Castoriadis made a similar point
by emphasizing the ‘struggle of people against reification’ as one of
the main parameters of the fundamental contradiction of capitalism,
although he treats struggle as ‘the condition for the functioning of
capitalism’.62 In this kind of case, Castoriadis raises an issue of great
theoretical importance and he appears to make sense of the internal
relation between capital and labour, though, at times, he perceives it
in a problematic and ambivalent way. Class struggle remains the con-
necting thread linking with his previous analysis, but he emphasizes
the role of class antagonism as being indispensable for the stabil-
ity, development and reproduction of the capitalist social relations.
As he argued, ‘capitalism can function only insofar as those whom it
exploits actively oppose everything the system seeks to impose upon
them’.63 Castoriadis broaches a theoretical theme that echoes Adorno’s
views, which asserted that society has perpetuated itself because of
its contradictions and opposing interests. Mankind survives and ‘pre-
serves itself not despite all irrationalities and conflicts, but by virtue
of them’.64 The social division into antagonistic class relationships
between the rulers and ruled reproduces the system and assists it in
extending itself as ‘society stays alive, not despite its antagonism, but by
means of it’.65
In the first place and in a manner similar to Adorno’s approach,

Castoriadis’ contention that class struggle reproduces capitalist social
relations could be understood as a defence of the power of negativ-
ity and conflict and against the voices that demand reconciliation,
conformism and compromise. Second, and in distinction to tradi-
tional Marxist theory, Castoriadis’ line of reasoning could be grasped
as a critique of the understanding of labour as a transhistorical and
fetishized appearance, as a new ontology that is used for the creation
of ‘one vast labour camp – the global Gulag’66 as the only alternative
to capitalist society. From this vantage point, Castoriadis’ point chal-
lenges the traditional views that have reduced class struggle to a set
of reformist demands that seek to improve the capitalist societal con-
ditions by fighting for better salaries and by operating constructively
within the existing political order. As Castoriadis put it, ‘within its cur-
rent limits, the continuous rise in workers’ real wages not only does
not undermine the foundations of capitalism as a system but is the
condition for its survival’.67 The trade unionist militancy that focuses
merely on economic demands and struggles for wage increases with-
out fundamentally challenging the capitalist social relations is easily
absorbed within the capitalist system. It also creates the basis for the
irrevocable bureaucratization of these organizations, which become an
indispensable regenerative and stabilizing cog in the process of capitalist
reproduction.68 Practicism and tacticism have led to a sterile, spectacu-
lar and lifestyle activism that presents itself as class struggle and has
transformed the latter into a means of maintaining and reproducing the
system itself. In this respect, as Adorno argued, social struggle and prac-
tice have become ‘a piece of the politics it was supposed to lead out of;
it became the prey of power’.69
On the other hand, Castoriadis’ views pertaining to class struggle as
the condition for the functioning of capitalism could lead to determin-
istic, reformist and fatalistic interpretations, which are also related to
Castoriadis’ theory of crisis. The function of labour and class struggle is
seen as subsisting in and against capital, as always being part of the
logic of capital, but having now taken a secondary role. Class strug-
gle and labour are constantly integrated into the network of capitalist
social relations, and the potential to move ‘beyond’ capital is cancelled
and dismissed. Class struggle thus becomes predictable, it is located in
a predetermined and closed framework, and it acts as a positive com-
ponent for the reproduction of capitalism, losing any potential to play
a subversive and emancipatory role. This line implies a fetishization of
the power of capital and a concurrent underestimation of the power of
labour and class struggle. Capital is thus understood as a subject that

follows a predetermined course that always incorporates class conflicts
as their outcome is known in advance. Within the presupposed and
objective framework of existing class relations the future is foreclosed
and social practice is construed in terms of subordination to a teleolog-
ical and deterministic scheme. Castoriadis, who fiercely castigated the
determinism of traditional Marxism, could now be read as reintroduc-
ing a determinist view of historical development, in which the future
is inscribed in abstract historical laws and any resistance is doomed
to failure. As a consequence, class struggle does not tend to social and
human emancipation but is reduced to performing a reproductive and
stabilizing function within capitalism.
This in turn intermingles with Castoriadis’ theory of crisis, as crisis
could be seen as a mechanism that facilitates the capitalist reproduction
through the regeneration of bourgeois structures and institutions. As he
noted, ‘the proletariat enables capitalism to continue by acting against
the system’.70 The danger here is that Castoriadis’ views about the issue
of crisis could be conceptualized as not being related to class struggle
in the direction of the radical transformation of the system. The issue
at stake is whether his theory of crisis is to be understood not as a rad-
ical break with capitalism but crises to be encapsulated, as Negri and
Hardt have pointed out, as the ‘norm of modernity’,71 since, ‘as it is for
modernity as a whole, crisis is for capital a normal condition that indi-
cates not its end but its tendency and mode of operation’.72 Following
Lefebvre, the crisis of modernity appears to be ‘total and permanent.
Total, in that it throws into question values and norms as much as
socio-economic structures. Permanent, in that it is not making for some
solution to the crisis, but seems rather to constitute the very mode of
existence of “modern” societies.’73 For Castoriadis, the capitalist mode of
organization is ‘profoundly irrational and full of contradictions. Under
it, repeated crises of one kind or another are absolutely inevitable.’74
Does this unavoidability and recurring character of crises amount to a
neglect of the revolutionary potential and to an uncritical affirmation
of the established order with some of the later Castoriadis’ fashionable
philosophical terms as an ornament of conformism and reconciliation?
Castoriadis acknowledges that ‘only the class struggle can give the con-
tradictions and crises of modern society a revolutionary character’,75 and
he notes that workers ‘cannot resolve their problems without abolish-
ing capitalism and the bureaucracy and totally reconstructing society’.76
At times, however, his approach to the phenomenon of crisis tends to
be ambivalent, seeing that he seeks the solution to capitalist crises by
substituting the dynamic of class struggle and the historical and spe-
cific analysis of social relations with norms and abstractions, without
thereby developing his point concerning the relationship between crisis
and struggle to its radical implications.
Castoriadis’ point of departure in analysing the phenomenon of crisis
is shifted, therefore, from locating the contradiction to work and pro-
duction to an examination of every societal domain. Instead of focusing
his argumentation on the antagonism between capital and labour, he
proceeds to investigate the genesis of crisis as the product of the con-
flict between directors and executants. Capitalist social relations are
challenged enduringly by this internal contradiction, which is spread
to all of society due to the development of capitalism and the expan-
sion of capitalist relations owing to the rising tide of the bureaucratic
management of society. While a critique of labour and production in
capitalism continued to be part of his mode of thought, he gradually
turned his emphasis to the determining role of state and bureaucracy.
This approach was tied to an attempt to dissociate himself from Marx
and Marxism, and at the same time was bound up with his stress on
the role of hierarchy and bureaucratic political structures. In this way,
in Castoriadis’ critique of capitalist relations and subsequently in his
interpretation of the phenomenon of crisis, class relations are reduced
to power relations. By doing this, he introduces a disarticulation, a sepa-
ration of exploitation and domination, and he thus fails to grasp the
interweaving character of the two concepts, which are not mutually
exclusive but, on the contrary, complement and presuppose each other
within capitalist social relations. This approach lessened the effective-
ness of Castoriadis’ interpretation of the crisis of modern society and
led him to produce abstractions and generalizations.
5.3 Crisis and the odyssey of the project of autonomy
In his later theoretical elaborations, Castoriadis rightly criticized the

usage of the terms ‘modern’ and ‘post-modern’, and the periodiza-
tion of Western European and US history on the basis of the above
designations. He also appeared to be well aware of the ‘schematic char-
acter of all periodizations, of the risk of neglecting continuities and
connections, or of the “subjective” element involved’.77 Nonetheless,
Castoriadis espoused a similar way of interpreting history by unfold-
ing his own scheme of periodization, which of course this time relied
upon his philosophical and theoretical assumptions. The criterion for
the division of history into fundamentally distinct periods applied was
‘the specificity of the imaginary significations’, which mark and deter-

mine each period. In the case of Castoriadis’ analysis, the specificity
of Western European history from the twelfth century to the present
could be evaluated and understood in accordance with the ‘significa-
tion and the project of (social and individual) autonomy’.78 Based upon
the criterion of autonomy, Castoriadis divided European history into
three periods. The first, from the twelfth to the early eighteenth cen-
tury, is marked by the emergence (constitution) of the West. During
this period, and for the first time after the collapse of ancient Greek
democracy, the project of autonomy recurred after 15 centuries of non-
existence. The second era lasted 150 years, from 1800 to 1950, and it was
characterized by a creative explosion in all spheres of social life, result-
ing in the radicalization of the project of autonomy. This modern period
witnessed the emergence and creation of capitalism, which ‘embodies a
new social imaginary signification: the unlimited expansion of “ratio-
nal mastery” ’.79 Throughout this historical stage, the conflict between
the two imaginary significations – that is to say, the struggle between
autonomy and unlimited expansion of ‘rational mastery’, defined the
character of the socioeconomic reality and constituted the driving force
of the extraordinary growth and advance of Western societies.80 Finally,
the third period, which started in 1950, is the epoch of a generalized
conformism. The social and political conflicts disappeared, and more
precisely, after the ‘semifailures’ of the social movements of the 1960s,
‘the project of autonomy seems totally eclipsed’.81 From 1950 onwards,
a date which Castoriadis himself admits is ‘evidently arbitrary’,82 the
Western world entered a period of crisis. This crisis has penetrated
every aspect of the Western liberal model and has extended generalized
conformism to all levels of daily life.
Castoriadis takes issue with Habermas’ stance towards modernity and
his preconceptions that associate it with the Hegelian philosophical doc-
trine. As Castoriadis commented, ‘actual history is replaced, once again,
with the history of ideas’.83 Yet Castoriadis’ direct engagement with the
problematic of modernity and its subsequent crisis follows the same
logic. Departing from a concrete analysis of the contradictions rooted
in production and social relations, he replaces actual history, conflicts
and struggles with the history of social imaginary significations. This
time the antagonism between labour and capital or between directors
and executants is restored and substantiated into the struggle between
autonomy and capitalist rationalization. Castoriadis’ method was to
proceed by adopting an ideal-typical approach, and consequently he
did not ground historical and social development socially. Hyppolite
argued that for Hegel ‘the collapse of the ancient world is the source
of a permanent division in the modern world’.84 For Papaioannou, in
Phenomenology of Mind, Hegel maintained that philosophy could reveal
the ‘great necessity’ of history and show the ‘absolute necessity of
Christian misfortune and modern alienation’.85 Having passed through
the Greek Polis, the spirit had to destroy its community life ‘because
the Polis had no notion of subjectivity, the individual and his infi-
nite value’.86 Afterwards the spirit lived in ‘misfortune’ and ‘alienation’
during the 2,000 years of Christianity, which ‘sliced the world in two,
depreciated the here-and-now to the profit of the hereafter, even ren-
dered man miserable’.87 For Hegel, according to Papaioannou, from the
downfall of the ancient world onwards, all history is the history of the
alienation of man. Thus since the decline of the ancient Polis, Hegel
considered history as an alienation that expanded to every aspect of the
human experience and came to an end with the outbreak of the French
Revolution.
By the same token, for Castoriadis, the social imaginary signification
of autonomy appears to function in a manner akin to the Hegelian
notion of the evolution of the spirit. Hegel, according to Karel Kosik,
constructed his work in a ‘metaphorical motif’ – that is, the motif of an
‘odyssey’ and, more specifically, ‘the odyssey of the spirit’.88 Similarly,
Castoriadis’ motif is unfolded as the odyssey of the project of auton-
omy. The latter emerged in ancient Greece and then it was eclipsed,
or rather it became an independent reality, and it was wandering for
17 centuries in the misty clouds of history until its re-emergence in
Western Europe during the twelfth century. History is reformulated as
the history of the project of autonomy, its successive emergence and
eclipse, within a framework of a peculiar Western Eurocentrism, which
seems to overlook the history of the people in Latin America, Asia and
Africa. The concept of autonomy not only takes us beyond the analysis
of social and economic reality but is also utilized as a measure for other
cultures and other people’s struggles.89 The notion of autonomy serves
as a conception of historical periodization and misses the historically
specific and contradictory social foundations of various patterns of capi-
talist development. It acts as an abstract ‘norm’ or ‘model’ which departs
from distinct historical tendencies and certainly fails to accommodate
the resurgence of social struggles after the 1960s or 1990s. Paradoxically,
Castoriadis’ views resemble the theories regarding the end of history as,
for him, since 1950 and especially after the movements of the 1960s,
capitalism has been advancing and ‘expanding without any effective
internal opposition’, and ‘modernity is finished’ as a social reality that
was shaped in and through the unfolding of the project of social and
individual autonomy.90 Castoriadis asserted that ‘the project of auton-
omy itself is certainly not finished’ and argued that ‘it would be absurd
to try to decide whether we are living through a long parenthesis or we
are witnessing the beginning of the end of Western history as a history
linked with the project of autonomy and codetermined by it’.91 At any
rate, his ideal-typical approach not only leads to an eclectic depiction of
the past but also amounts to an abstract model for future development,
in which a potential re-emergence of the project of autonomy seals the
vitality and dynamics of capitalist society.
Castoriadis’ later theoretical development also involved a turning
towards placing much more emphasis on the social, human, political
and cultural character of the crisis. In this process, Castoriadis developed
insights that are worthy of attention and made remarks that have wider
resonance in terms of shedding light on the financial crisis that erupted
in 2008. Radical, Marxist or Left interpretations of the post-2008 crisis
focus almost exclusively on the financial aspect of the crisis and, there-
fore, it is striking how much less attention has been paid to the wider
and multilateral character of the crisis. In Castoriadis’ interpretation of
the phenomenon of crisis, the economic crisis can be understood as a
symptom of the process of a generalized decomposition and decline of
capitalist societies. This decay is evident as a crisis of social and human
values92 or as a crisis in the meaning of life and of human motives,
which have led to the emptiness and poverty of everyday life. Crisis,
then, is not only a life without an economic and professional future;
it is also the dislocation of social reality, and the destruction of com-
munities and collective ways of life, which have caused a tremendous
psychological and moral disintegration and a massive spread of men-
tal degradation. Crisis appears as a ‘void of signification’, as a crisis
of the significations and meanings that used to hold modern societies
together.93 The values that have become dominant are ‘consumption’,
‘money’ and ‘power’, but these ideals are unable to supply people with a
positive motive and to fill both personal and social life. This procedure
and the intensification of the crisis posed the crucial issue concerning
the meaning of human existence, which is also manifested in the pri-
vatization of the people and the process of desocialization that they are
going through. As Castoriadis characteristically put it, referring to the
modern individual, ‘he runs, he jogs, he shops in supermarkets, he goes
channel surfing’, but ‘nothing he does . . . has the slightest meaning’.94
The inability of modern people to give a positive orientation, a con-
tent and meaning to their lives, discloses the emptiness of neoliberal
normative values. The traditional roles and values which used to be

necessary for the social cohesion of capitalist societies are undergoing
a tremendous crisis. Neoliberal bearings are increasingly losing their
strength and the vitality that allowed the processes of social integra-
tion and identification to be carried out. More and more modern people
realize that they cannot find human motives and a positive meaning of
life in neoliberalism. This disassociation escalates the crisis of neoliberal
societies and this crisis ‘produces the crisis of the identification process,
and at the same time it is reproduced and aggravated by the crisis of
identification’.95
In his discussion with Christopher Lasch concerning ‘The Culture
of Narcissism’, Castoriadis observed that since the end of the 1950s
and due to the growing integrative power of capitalism, the advanc-
ing rise of consumerism and the decline of traditional working-class
organizations, people had started retreating into their private sphere.
Life came to denote a struggle for survival. The expression ‘one day
at a time’ not only captures well the lack of an individual and social
project but also signifies that the time horizon has been transformed
into a private one: ‘Nobody participates in a public time horizon.’96
According to Castoriadis, modern capitalist societies not only under-
mined traditional forms of public time and space but also came to
the point where they destroyed the ‘anthropological types that have
conditioned the system’s very existence’.97 These anthropological types
enabled the capitalist system to function and advance; they include the
‘Schumpeter-style entrepreneur’, as well as ‘incorruptible judges, honest
Weberian-style civil servants, teachers devoted to their vocation, work-
ers with at least a minimum of conscientiousness about their work, and
so on’.98 In view of this and by means of mainstream media, the politi-
cal and social changes on a global level and a neoliberal economic and
credit policy, a very particular type of individual was brought about en
masse and an endeavour was made for a new ‘anthropological type’ to be
instituted.99 The new liberal and modern individual had to work hard,
to calculate and not to think or reflect, to be efficient and not creative,
to substitute quantity and speed for quality. They had to be flexible in
every aspect of their life, to establish networks of public relations and
not to make friendships. They appear to be confused, emotionally unsta-
ble, unbalanced and disorganized. Giving freely, emotions and love were
decried as old-fashioned and naïve virtues. There was no space for a
poetic and romantic way of living, for tenderness and solidarity. There
was no room for passion, earnestness, dignity and integrity. A person by
their human nature is bad and cunning. They had to be cool, insolent
and selfish. In the end, they had to appear stupid and satisfied. At the
same time, the human body was glorified and set in the service of career
and financial success. The body was reduced to vulgar flesh. You can do
anything in order to succeed in your objectives provided you are not
having trouble with the law. Body, mind and soul had to be separate
from each other and resolve into exchange values. Doing was detached
from thinking and feeling. You needed to know how to sell yourself,
to ‘loot’ the others, to use them. Every action which was profitable
was morally accepted and socially valued. The new neoliberal human
characters had to be transmuted into heartless, cruel and callous beings
that had to constantly move and be in uncertainty, to live and feel like
nomads and migrants within their own country. As Polanyi put it, a
market economy can exist and function only in a market society.100
Concomitantly, the political, cultural and ecological crises represent
aspects of the general and profound crisis of modern societies. Over the
last 40 years and more, systematically after the demise of the Soviet-
type societies, the ruling classes in the neoliberal capitalist world have
made an effort to impose upon the working classes the market liberal
norms, bearings, motivations and values: individualism, career, pro-
ductivity, efficiency, privatization, free market economy, globalization,
lifestyle, flexibility, gain, consumption and superficiality. Their main
objective was to achieve and maintain the social cohesion necessary
for further capitalist development and expansion. It was a social and
cultural ‘revolution’ of the rulers and privileged against the working
classes in an attempt to reorientate the content of their lives by filling
them with new social and cultural values. Yet, however much the bour-
geois class with the support of the private mass media and ‘the vacuum
industry’101 attempted to present neoliberal ideals and attitudes as nat-
ural, immutable and eternal, they remained abstract, one-dimensional
and non-natural. And, as Hegel argued, ‘to make abstractions hold
good in actuality means to destroy actuality’.102 The imposition of the
neoliberal abstractions precipitated social dislocation and the destruc-
tion of social reality, of human social relations. It left a ‘cultural
vacuum’103 and caused a psychological and moral disintegration. As a
result, contemporary societies present elements of decomposition and a
total evanescence of values.
The ruling classes perceived and interpreted the biblical saying ‘some
who are last will be first’ as ‘those who are the most insignificant, nar-
cissist and depraved will be first and will rule’. This perverted adage has
been applied by capital and the market mechanism to any aspect of
modern society: politics, media, the arts, culture and education. At the
political level, insignificancy, cynicism, social and political apathy, cor-

ruption and bureaucracy were coupled with the people’s movement
towards privatization. As Castoriadis put it, politics has become ‘prac-
tically indistinguishable from any other form of advertising or sale of
products’.104 Concurrently, the political crisis was deepened by the inte-
gration into the system of the so-called Left parties, which became
entirely systematized and institutionalized. ‘Liberal Oligarchies’,105 as
Castoriadis named the modern societies, in particular after the col-
lapse of the Left ideologies, are experiencing an ‘ideological aberration’,
which ‘is itself an important sign of the crisis. There is no new subver-
sive or revolutionary discourse, but there is no conservative discourse
either.’106 From Castoriadis’ point of view, both left-wing and right-
wing political parties and their respective programmes and ideologies
have been deeply immersed in the ideas of ‘development’, ‘economy’,
‘rationality’ and ‘progress’. Acting as a critical conceptual backdrop
against which the ongoing global economic crisis could be examined,
Castoriadis’ approach could also be read as a substantial critique of
the thoughts, plans and policies that have dominated Left discourse
over the last century, and they are still alive. Modern societies, even
under the prism of the current financial crisis or after the numerous
instances of environmental destruction, such as the nuclear ‘accidents’
of Chernobyl and Fukushima, never pose themselves the fundamental
questions: What is development? Why development? Development of
what and towards what?107 Castoriadis conceived of the notion of devel-
opment as ‘social imaginary signification’ and as being in close affinity
with the glorification of
(1) the virtual ‘omnipotence’ of technique; (2) the ‘asymptotic illu-

sion’ relating to scientific knowledge; (3) the ‘rationality’ of economic
mechanisms; and (4) various assumptions about humanity and soci-
ety, which have changed with time but which all imply either
that humanity and society are ‘naturally’ predestined to progress,
growth, etc. ([H]omo economicus, the ‘invisible hand,’ liberalism and
the virtues of free competition).108
Following Castoriadis’ reasoning, the unlimited expansion of economic

rationality and the new religion of ‘technosciences’ are unable to con-
ceal the crisis of development. This crisis, which for Castoriadis is also
a crisis of technique, sciences, rationality and the ideas relating to the
self-regulative ability and power of free markets, is due to the ‘strug-
gle which those living under the system carry on against the system’.109
It is manifested in their increasing reluctance to identify and associate

themselves with the dominant imaginary significations of capitalist
society.
5.4 Towards a radical social transformation: Socialism,

autonomy and revolution
Castoriadis’ discussion of the deep-seated crisis of modern capitalist soci-

eties is not an abstract, purely academic and apolitical description of an
acute social phenomenon. His view in respect of the role of the scholar
in times of a generalized decomposition of Western societies manages to
conceptualize well the vantage point from which he dealt with the issue
of crisis: ‘Uncompromising criticism of existing realities and elucidation
of the possibilities for transforming them.’110 In Castoriadis’ approach,
then, crisis and critique are dialectically interwoven and from his per-
spective ‘the crisis of criticism is only one of the manifestations of the
general and deep-seated crisis of society’.111 The understanding of the
crisis–critique relationship is crucial in order to grapple with Castoriadis’
analysis of crisis and the alternatives that he put forward to overcome it.
He is concerned about showing that since 1950 ‘the Western World has
entered into crisis, and this crisis consists precisely in this, that the West
ceases to call itself truly into question’.112 One of the reasons for this
lack of self-reflection and self-criticism lies in the fact that ‘society can
open itself onto its own question only if, in and through this question,
it still affirms itself as society’.113
What emerges in Castoriadis’ thought is an insightful argument that
sheds light on the inadequacy of the Left to offer a persuasive alterna-
tive to crisis and, simultaneously, it addresses two significant issues. The
first concerns ‘society as such’, its own self-presentation and its positing
as a meaning and question: ‘Does contemporary man want the society
in which he lives? Does he want another one? Does he want society
in general?’114 Yet this questioning process and the search for another
society cannot be developed and advanced without an assertive refer-
ence not to a fixed and ideal society but to an alternative project that
‘does say something about that toward which we are heading’.115 What
the Western world is missing, in other words, is neither an improved
version of the capitalist social and political model nor a more efficient
regulation of the capitalist economy, but a new undertaking that offers
a radical alternative to capitalism. In this sense, modern society is in cri-
sis, according to Castoriadis, because ‘it is not capable of engendering
another way for people to be together’.116
An ambiguity is found in some other parts of Castoriadis’ work in

relation to his perception of the issue of crisis. In his essay ‘The Crisis of
Culture and the State’, for instance, he made a slightly different point
and argued that ‘there is a crisis when a process has reached a point
where, implicitly or potentially, a moment of decision arises between
opposing alternatives’.117 However, if there is not an existing, tangible
or even potential alternative, how can we make the claim that we are
living in a state of crisis, in which a decision has to be made between
two diametrically opposed versions? At times, Castoriadis categorically
asserts that
we are not living today a krisis in the true sense of the term, namely,
a moment of decision. In the Hippocratic writings, the crisis point in
an illness, the krisis, is the paroxysmal moment at the end of which
the sick patient either will die or, by a salutary reaction provoked
by the crisis itself, will initiate a process of healing. We are living
a phase of decomposition. In a crisis, there are opposing elements
that combat each other – whereas what is characteristic of contem-
porary society is precisely the disappearance of social and political
conflict.118
It seems that Castoriadis oscillates between his position that contem-

porary society is going through a deep-rooted multidimensional crisis
and his opinion that it is experiencing a prolonged period of decay and
dilapidation since there is no real positive political project that points
to a different orientation. It might be the case that he believes that the
ongoing and long-lasting crisis has led to an impasse, which has all the
characteristics of decadence and decomposition. Although Castoriadis
maintained that we ‘cannot say that Western societies are dead, simply
writing them off from history’,119 he went so far as to declare that ‘just
as creation is not “explicable,” neither is decadence or destruction’.120
He resorts to his position concerning the decline of contemporary soci-
eties by combining in his analysis both his previous approaches – that is,
crisis as inherent to capitalism resulting from the process of reification
and the continuous struggle against it – and crisis as a phenomenon
ensuing from the eclipse of the project of autonomy. The interplay of
these two explanations forms the basis that allows him to intermin-
gle his theories of crisis with his references to the rise of insignificance
and the generalized and pervasive corrosion of values, morals and social
relations.
Nonetheless, in many instances throughout his theoretical and polit-
ical trajectory, Castoriadis determinedly argued that if there is a way out
of this permanent crisis of modern society, ‘if there is a response, it is

the great majority of people who will provide it’.121 In his early elab-
orations, which considered the innate contradictions of capitalism as
being responsible for the generation of crisis, he made it explicit that
these contradictions, and by extension the phenomenon of recurring
crisis, ‘cannot be suppressed unless the system itself is abolished’122 and
it is only class struggle that ‘can give the contradictions and crises of
modern society a revolutionary character’.123 It is this standpoint that
enables Castoriadis to state without hesitation that the crisis cannot be
transcended by ‘carrying out reforms, by raising the standard of living,
or by eliminating private property and the “market”. It will be abol-
ished only by the instauration of the workers’ collective management
over both production and society as a whole.’124 Equally, on many occa-
sions in his later writings, he maintains his subversive perspective and
stands for a radical social transformation as an antidote to the crisis and
decline of modern society.125 The issue at stake, then, is to ‘comprehend
what, in this social-historical world, is dying, how, and, if possible, why’
and in a parallel way to ‘find in it what, perhaps is in the process of
being born’.126 The aim of what Castoriadis calls ‘revolutionary politics’
is, then, to trace the ‘seeds of something new’ that comes out of the
crisis and assists with its entire emergence and further development.
As Castoriadis very characteristically put it, ‘the new will not complete
itself, will not be able to establish itself as a new social system, as a new
pattern of social life, unless at some stage it becomes a conscious activity,
a conscious action of the mass of the people’.127
From Castoriadis’ ground-breaking analysis of the content of social-
ism to his project of autonomy, the objective of ‘revolutionary politics’
has been the profound reorganization of social institutions and rela-
tions, the creation of a new society that aims at ‘the development of
human beings instead of the development of gadgets’.128 ‘Revolutionary
politics’ perceives crisis as a ‘moment of opportunity or of necessity for
acting.’129 Hence in order to transcend the permanent crisis of capital-
ism and create a radical alternative, economic values have to cease to
be central in our lives and other significations and objectives must be
put at the centre of human life. This procedure would amount to a rad-
ical reorganization of social institutions and labour, economic, political
and cultural relations. It would also involve a reorientation of Western
humanism, changing the conceptions that contemporary societies have
regarding the issues of progress, power, knowledge, and nature, and of
the relations between them. In pursuing this end, as Castoriadis argued,
‘no critique, not even an analysis of the crisis of capitalism, is possi-
ble outside of a socialist perspective’.130 The radical practical activity of
those who live from the sale of their labour power, then, must address
and answer the ‘true problems’:
Why produce and why work? What kind of production and what
kind of work? What kinds of relations between people should there
be, and what kind of orientation for society as a whole?131
These ‘true problems’ allowed Castoriadis to deploy his radical views by

epitomizing some of the most critical and revolutionary inspirations of
the tradition of the anti-capitalist movement. In Castoriadis’ approach,
a ‘positive conception of the content of socialism’ stands for
the restitution of people’s domination over their own lives; the trans-
formation of work from an absurd form of bread winning into the
free deployment of the creative forces of individuals and groups; the
constitution of integrated human communities; the unification of
people’s culture and lives . . . The socialist program ought to be . . . a
program for the humanization of work and society. It ought to be
shouted from the rooftops that socialism is not a backyard of leisure
attached to the industrial prison, or transistors for the prisoners. It is
the destruction of the industrial prison itself’.132
Socialism as the ‘destruction of the industrial prison itself’133 does not

stand just for economic demands and an improvement in the standard
of living or for central planning and the nationalization of industry
and economy. It stands for a society that places emphasis on self-
expression and self-creation and ‘aims at giving a meaning to people’s
life and work’.134 Marcuse expressed views similar to those of Castoriadis
pertaining to the ‘socialized means of production’:
If these are not utilized for the development and gratification of the
free individual, they will amount simply to a new form for subjugat-
ing individuals to a hypostatized universality. The abolition of private
property inaugurates an essentially new social system only if free
individuals and not ‘the society’, become masters of the socialized
means of production.135
Socialism refers to a fundamental transformation of labour and it is

based upon the workers’ management of production – that is, the power
of the workers’ councils, the radical transformation of all institutions
and the creation of new forms of direct democracy. In Castoriadis’ view,
socialist society means people’s self-organization and for this reason it

depends on the autonomous action of the working class. In this sense,
socialism is the self-organization of this autonomy and, by extension,
‘socialism both presupposes this autonomy and helps to develop it’.136
Although Castoriadis makes a strong case against the use of the term
‘socialism’, the projects of socialism and autonomy must be seen as
being intimately linked to and mediated with each other in and through
the process of revolution. In distinction to apolitical interpretations of
Castoriadis’ works and paraphrasing Luxemburg’s dictum regarding the
relationship between socialism and democracy, for radical critical the-
ory there is no socialism without autonomy and no autonomy without
socialism. ‘Revolutionary politics’ understands that socialism, auton-
omy and revolution are inseparable and sees each as the condition
of the other. Castoriadis made it clear that for historical and political
reasons ‘what was intended by the term “socialist society” we hence-
forth call autonomous society’.137 Castoriadis himself was well aware
of the fact that the idolatry of words cloaks economic and political
reality and mystifies the contradictory character of capitalist social rela-
tions. For him the deeper meaning of capitalism and its own inherent
crises cannot be elucidated ‘unless one begins with the most total idea
of socialism . . . Socialism is autonomy, people’s conscious direction of
their lives.’138
Seen from this perspective, the project of autonomy amounts to a cri-
tique and a thoroughgoing shake-up of all established forms of social
life,139 and it is critical of any form of exploitation and domination.
Autonomy implies a constant ‘calling into question’, an ‘unending
interrogation’,140 which by no means is the privilege of an isolated
individual, a small group of people or a semireligious sect of anar-
chists, Marxists, autonomists or Castoriadians. Determinate negation
and radical opposition to capitalism, which do not express, as James
Burnham put it, ‘genuine social forces are as trivial, in relation to
entrenched power, as the old court jesters’.141 As Castoriadis phrased
it, the radical project of autonomy must always go ‘hand in hand with
a movement on the part of society that is critical toward the established
order, the powers-that-be, and the dominant ideas’.142 In this sense, it
could contribute enormously to the creation of what Marx and Engels
called the ‘proletarian movement’, which is ‘the self-conscious, inde-
pendent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the
immense majority’143 and which will rely ‘solely and exclusively upon
the intellectual development of the working class, as it necessarily had
to ensue from united action and discussion’.144 It will be a self-conscious,
independent and radical movement that includes the conception of

autonomy and at the same time goes beyond it, a self-organized move-
ment that calls everything into question and keeps the question open145
and, most importantly, an emancipatory movement which ‘cherish(es)
the questions themselves’, ‘live(s) the questions’, lives everything.146
The project of autonomy is not a complete and closed theoretical
system, which substitutes the absolute truths of the traditional labour
movement with a dogmatic and apolitical adherence to Castoriadis’
tenets. It is not an infallible dogma, which consists of a rigid and doc-
trinaire set of principles. It cannot be separated from social reality as an
abstract model having a fixed and general application. As Luxemburg
put it succinctly and in an anti-dogmatic manner, ‘we have never
been idol worshippers of formal democracy. Nor have we ever been
idol worshippers of socialism or Marxism either.’147 Needless to say,
this applies equally to Castoriadis’ thinking and the idea of autonomy.
The project of autonomy is not a logical inference from Castoriadis’
correct theory. It is not imposed upon the radical movement as a pre-
determined theoretical scheme. Neither is it derived from a scholastic
interpretation of Castoriadis, nor is it reduced to ‘Talmudic commen-
tary on sacred texts’.148 Castoriadis himself stresses that ‘autonomy is
not closure but, rather, opening’.149 It is not a state and it does not con-
stitute another more sophisticated academic dogma which represents
the only genuine version of emancipatory politics. It is, rather, a process,
a critical-practical activity of becoming autonomous, both individually
and socially, by rejecting capitalist social relations. In this respect it is a
process of both critical thinking and radical praxis, since the disarticula-
tion between theory and practice belongs to the reified world that wants
to transcend. Autonomy entails a procedure of political education and
an ongoing penetrating criticism of capitalist relations in and through
the course of political and social struggles for human emancipation.
Autonomy promotes the self-activity of the people and reflects upon
the dialectic of form and content of political organization, posing
the question as regards the means–end relation. It argues that an
autonomous society has already to be anticipated in the forms of orga-
nization deployed in an emancipatory movement. In doing this, it
rejects professional politicians and the party form, and it seeks to tran-
scend in practice the pre-existing division within the labour movement
between the rulers and the ruled, the directors and the performers.
Autonomy conceives the traditional hierarchical structures of the rad-
ical movement as transitory forms of organization in the process of
being changed by human activity. In contradistinction to crystallized
and sclerotic forms of organization, it maintains that open assemblies,

councils and communes, in terms of their form and content, unite ele-
ments of self-discipline and freedom – or self-limitation and freedom, to
use Castoriadis’ terms – and also overcome the division between repre-
sentatives and the represented. Autonomy challenges the dogmatic and
Left conformist adherence to parliamentarism, negating capitalist state,
representative democracy and professional politicians. As Castoriadis
put it, ‘to decide means to decide for oneself. To decide who is to decide
already in not quite deciding for oneself. The only total form of democ-
racy is therefore direct democracy.’150 The later Castoriadis was equally
assertive: ‘In my view, there is no democracy but direct democracy.
A representative democracy is not a democracy.’151
Direct democracy is of key importance to the expansion and deep-
ening of political education that fosters the creation of an autonomous
society. It contributes enormously to the politicization of social, eco-
nomic, political and cultural relations. Direct democracy involves a
radical critique of the inverted forms of capitalist social relations and
is open to the process of struggle itself. It concerns not only the politi-
cal sphere but both production and society as a whole. For Castoriadis,
a ‘purely political autonomy would be meaningless’.152 The idea of
autonomy as self-determination and self-organization of the people does
not pertain to an abstract and indeterminate reform of the economy.
Castoriadis refers to capitalist economy and argues that ‘autonomy is
therefore meaningless unless it implies workers’ management, that is,
unless it involves organized workers determining the production pro-
cess themselves at the level of the shop, the plant, entire industries, and
the economy as a whole’.153 To this end, the revolutionary project, as
Castoriadis called it, ‘is not an end’ but a ‘beginning’,154 and autonomy
can be grasped ‘only as a social problem and as a social relation’.155 As a
political and social problem, autonomy does not merely amount to an
abstract renunciation of any form of heteronomy and determinism that
leads to an uncritical acceptance of Castoriadis’ dismissal of Marx, crit-
ical Marxism or any other strand of the radical anti-capitalist tradition.
Rather, it must trace its own beginning in Castoriadis’ argument, when,
in line with Marx, he pointed out that the transcendence of alienation,
and subsequently of the permanent crisis of capitalism, calls for ‘the
necessity of abolishing classes’, advances the ‘idea of the transforma-
tion of institutions’ and ‘all this both presupposes and leads to a radical
change in the mode of existence of human beings – individually and
collectively’.156 Nor does the project of autonomy as a social relation
involve a fashionable invocation of the conceptions of ‘imaginary’ and
‘creativity’, which takes the place of the grasping and penetrating cri-
tique and analysis of social, economic and political capitalist relations.
As Psychodedis noted,
The roots of revolutionary subjectivity cannot lie in some creativ-

ity divorced from the presuppositions and achievements of social
practice as it stems from the system of division of labour and of
political/class relations. Nor can these presuppositions and results be
analysed as creation ex nihilo by taking the ‘creative’ element in action
as a starting point; they must be analysed as social relations within
which human creativity is shaped historically under alienating and
exploitative forms. The ‘creative’ element in human action becomes
abstract and ideological if it is separated from that relation and given
precedence over it so as to provide a foundation for it.157
The construction of fetishistic concepts and an unquestioning endorse-

ment of the priority of the notions of imaginary, creation and institu-
tions not only abstract from particular social relations but have also led
Castoriadis’ critical theory to become domesticated, bloodless and apo-
litical. This approach postulates the primacy of a purely contemplative
grip of Castoriadis’ theorizing, thus downplaying its oppositional and
revolutionary sense. As a consequence, his theory ceases to be grasped
as social critique and he is construed in a conformist manner, which
has resulted in ‘the adoration of what is, the sanctification of the fait
accompli, a fetishistic attitude toward “reality” ’.158 In this way, society
is conceived as being non-contradictory, the social relations of produc-
tion are taken for granted, and the practical and social constitution of
abstract and ideological categories is never questioned. Determinism
seems to enter by the back door since institutions appear to subsist
as independent entities, having their own logic separately from dis-
parate social contradictions, historical tendencies and human relations.
Castoriadis’ conceptual tools are disconnected from social relations and
political action, and hence radical praxis and his revolutionary project
drop out of sight.
Such an approach implies a canonization of Castoriadis’ thought and
marks a departure from the most radical aspects of his critical the-
ory. In many instances in his writings, however, he insisted on not
compromising himself with the capitalist reality. He refused to make
concessions, to ‘make reality into a virtue and to conclude that some-
thing is right just because is a fact’.159 He articulated his revolutionary
project as a life endeavour to unite the various individual and collective
revolts against the system, to radically reconstruct society and transform

the crisis of capitalism into a revolutionary crisis.160 Honneth focuses
on this point succinctly when he argues that ‘Castoriadis has detached
himself from the theoretical framework of Marxism in order to be able to
rescue for the present its practical core, the idea of a revolutionary trans-
formation of capitalism.’161 Castoriadis makes an effort to conceptualize
the relationship between crisis and revolution, and to articulate the rela-
tionship between his theory of crisis and radical theory. This in turn
implies his deploying of a concept of revolution, which has nothing to
do with an inevitable bloodletting or a neurotic expectation of a ‘great
action’. For Castoriadis, revolution is a prolonged historical and social
process that means self-organization of the people.162 The idea of revo-
lution as self-institution of society in and through the democracy of the
councils runs through his theoretical and political analysis from Russia
(1917) to Hungary (1956) to France (1968). For him, revolution is always
in fluid movement and becomes aware of its essence in the course of the
class struggle itself. It is an unending process, an unlimited interroga-
tion and an open question. Castoriadis’ revolutionary project regains its
radical and critical force in and through its contribution to the public
time and space horizon of the anti-capitalist struggles. Its questioning
vigour provokes the other currents of the anti-capitalist tradition and at
the same time it is challenged by them, coexisting and working together
in the direction of the radical transformation of capitalism. Revolution
means that ‘most of the community enters a phase of political-meaning
instituting-activity’.163 A revolutionary period of struggle begins, accord-
ing to Castoriadis, when people form their own autonomous organs.
With their autonomous collective activity they open their way forward,
becoming conscious of the fact that revolution as a radical alternative to
the crisis of modern societies ‘is not a matter of living one night of love.
It is a matter of living a whole life of love.’164
Conclusions
Castoriadis’ early years in Greece were of particular importance for

his intellectual itinerary and later theoretical development. His evo-
lution reflects a series of social and politicohistorical transformations
that occurred in Greece from 1936 to 1945. He came from a bour-
geois class background and obtained a considerable and multilingual
education based on both ancient Greek and Marxist philosophy. His
first philosophical concerns, his involvement in the theory and prac-
tice of Marxism and his interest in the thought of Max Weber could
be traced to these early years in Greece. Castoriadis experienced the
Greek fascist regime of Metaxas (1936–1941) and the Nazi occupation of
Greece (1941–1944), the bloody events of the armed conflict of Decem-
ber 1944 which were the prelude to the Greek Civil War (1946–1949),
as well as the British armed intervention. During this period, as a young
Trotskyist, he participated in the theoretical debates promoted by the
minor Trotskyist groups and got a very strong flavour of the codi-
fied and mechanistic Marxism of the Greek communist movement. His
encounter with the dogmatism of the orthodox Marxist tradition was
coupled with his traumatic experience of being persecuted and at risk
of being assassinated by the Stalinists of the Greek Communist Party.
In the end, he migrated to France to keep himself alive and continue
his personal and intellectual journey. His move could be seen as part of
the last and most distinctive intellectual migration, which took place
before and after the Second World War. Arriving in France, he had to
deal with the dominance of the Stalinist intellectuals and the influence
of the French Communist Party, and he felt the theoretical and political
inadequacy of French Trotskyism. This part of the French intellectual
and political setting could be seen as a continuity of the experience of
orthodox Marxism that he had experienced in Greece. On the other
132
Conclusions 133
hand, he came across the developing intellectual ferment that emerged

in post-war France and opened himself up to other radical influences
and theoretical currents. It was the beginning of a new period marked
by the renaissance of Hegel’s thought and the return to Marx’s writings,
principally to the newly discovered ‘young Marx’. This intellectual jour-
ney was associated with the Socialisme Ou Barbarie group and journal, in
which he started publishing his theoretical contributions.
On this basis, his early years in Greece, the existential incident of his
migration and the intellectual milieu in France decisively formed his
intellectual idiosyncrasy and were reflected in his later theoretical con-
tribution. More specifically, all of these life and intellectual influences
found expression in the particular way he attempted to interpret and
criticize Marxism and Marx’s own thought. The decline of the labour
movement and the crisis of Marxism, the question regarding the class
character of Soviet-type societies and the role of bureaucracy needed
more careful and sufficient consideration from Castoriadis’ perspective.
For him it was a crisis that called for the eradication of all mystifica-
tions, the critique of the social relations that produced and at the same
reduced Marxism to a mere ideology. This process of demystification
brings to the fore old questions addressed in a new way, eliminates pre-
suppositions and attacks everything that conceals the truth. The failure
and crisis called everything into question. As Karel Kosik argued, ‘in
every crisis everything is again theoretically examined and analyzed,
and things that once seemed to be resolved and clear have long ceased to
be obvious and appear problematical; that is, as vital questions that must
forever and always be examined and analyzed’.1 And this is, accord-
ing to Axelos, the significance of thought: ‘calling everything in question
and keeping the question open’.2 Several questions arise from the func-
tion of questioning thought, which sought not to reconcile itself with
the so-called ‘Marxist social reality’, not to base itself on assumptions
and presuppositions, and to take nothing for granted. In this sense,
Castoriadis’ critical thinking was directed against the established mode
of thought, against what was prevalent and what presented itself as
natural, certain and absolute.
But what used to be prevalent in the labour and radical movement
and came under fierce criticism by Castoriadis? The prevalence of ortho-
dox Marxism in all of its dimensions, its decay into simple ideology,
a closed system, a dogma that was used to legitimate both social-
democratic and Soviet-type regimes, the stagnation of theory and the
emasculation of practical struggles were called into radical question. The
historical realization of different ‘Marxist trends’ – such as Leninism,
Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism and social democracy – or the

political and historical course of others (Trotskyism) implied the ques-
tioning of theory’s validity. It also entails the need for the re-emergence
of critical theory, since ‘the more elements of the theory become real-
ity’, according to Marcuse, ‘the more urgent becomes the question of
what the theory intended as its goal’.3 The consequence of Castoriadis’
dealing with orthodox Marxism in this way was to bring to the surface
the postulation of the unity of theory and practice. For Castoriadis, the
crisis, inconsistencies and contradictions in orthodox Marxist thought
could not be overcome separately from the social reality of orthodox
Marxism. A simply theoretical reflection upon the crisis of Marxism
was unable to reveal the new possibilities that stand before critical the-
ory for the reunity of thought and action. From this vantage point,
Castoriadis endeavoured to explicate the various aspects of Marxist real-
ity and practice, and to find their origins. Was not the identification of
orthodox Marxism with the revolutionary movement a mystification?
Why should we take as natural and for granted the prevalent position
and hegemony of Marxism in it? To what extent was Marxism responsi-
ble for the decay of the labour movement? Why was Marxism reduced
to ‘state ideology’ and ‘reformist practice’?
Running through Castoriadis’ political thought are two fundamen-
tal notions and one major aim. The concepts of ‘crisis’ and ‘critique’
constitute the conceptual pillars upon which his critical theory is
premised, and this is expounded with a view to critically examining
and re-evaluating the theoretical and practical history of the working-
class and anti-capitalist movement. Castoriadis’ undertaking started as
an immanent critique of orthodox Marxism, which could be seen as his
attempt to defend Marx from orthodoxy. By criticizing Trotsky’s ideas
and contrasting them with those of Marx, he made a pioneering and
remarkable effort to demystify the actual class character of the USSR.
His intellectual endeavour led him not only to question Lenin and
Leninism, but also to seek Marx’s responsibility for this metamorpho-
sis of orthodox Marxism and its reactionary function. Castoriadis was
led to question the foundations of Marxism – that is, he critically con-
fronted the Marxian theory itself and correspondingly the foundations
of Marx’s thought as well. Marx had to lose any sacred aura, and any reli-
gious attitude towards him had to be castigated. During the Cold War
anti-communist hysteria, Castoriadis considered the crisis of Marxism
as a crisis of Marx’s original thought as well. He probed Marx’s writings
with many penetrating questions in an attempt to explore the meta-
physical presuppositions and positivistic elements of his thought. His
Conclusions 135
passage from Marxism to Marx prompted a reappreciation of fundamen-

tal critical concepts and theoretical categories. For the Greek scholar, the
crisis and degeneration of both Bolshevik and social-democratic regimes
and organizations could not be explained by making ‘repairs at least
cost’ in Marxist theory or adapting a theological attitude towards Marx.
As Castoriadis put it, one can no longer talk about Marxism without
taking into account its actual history, as Marx taught that ‘an ideology
is not to be judged by the words it employs but by what it becomes in
social reality’.4
According to Karl Korsch ‘the first step in re-establishing a revolution-
ary theory and practice consists in breaking with the monopolistic claim
of Marxism to revolutionary initiative and to theoretical and practical
leadership’.5 In this sense, Castoriadis contributed enormously to the
critique of traditional Marxism in its all versions. His theorizing has been
instrumental in elucidating the crisis of orthodox Marxism, in all of its
varieties from Marxism-Leninism to structuralist Marxism. His analyses
flew in the face of established and dogmatic ideas and practices that
were dominant within the Left, broadly conceived, throughout the last
century and they are still alive in the contemporary anti-capitalist move-
ment. He also raised intriguing questions with respect to the nature,
origins and genesis of the bureaucratic and authoritarian regimes of
Eastern Europe. There is a neglected legacy of Castoriadis’ critique of
traditional Marxism which could constitute the basis for further dis-
cussion and development. Also, he inspired scholars, political groups
and theoretical currents. For example, E. P. Thompson in The Poverty
of Theory drew on his argument in order to criticize Althusser’s struc-
tural Marxism.6 Castoriadis’ emphasis on the working-class autonomous
struggles also had a considerable impact on the ‘Workers’ Autonomy’
(Autonomia Operaia) movement in Italy between the end of the 1950s
and the beginning of the 1960s.7 Further, his positions had a significant
influence on the British Solidarity group as well as on minor ‘councilist’
groups in Germany and Holland.8
Castoriadis chose not only to set Marx against the ‘Marxist ideol-
ogy’ with a view to exposing the roots of this ideology and exploring
its foundations but also followed the opposite direction. He made
an effort to reread, rethink and question Marx through the theory
and tradition of Marxism. He decided to investigate the grounds on
which Marx’s thought was reduced into a reformist (social democ-
racy) and established (Bolshevism) ideology, and search for Marx’s own
responsibility. The first problem of a theoretical and political nature is
that he neglected the tradition of critical Marxism and other critical
readings and interpretations of Marx. Most important of all, the fact

that Castoriadis’ thought continues to be an insightful critique of ortho-
dox Marxism should not let us lose sight of the way in which he
confronted Marx’s thought. He did shed light on Marx’s positivist ele-
ments and addressed questions which subsequent scholars, theoretical
currents and political groups tackled more profoundly and extensively.
Yet, though he rejected the logic of orthodox Marxism, he espoused
its logic in the manner in which he understood Marx. In many cases
he read Marx through the prism of orthodox Marxism (e.g. the base-
superstructure model) and came to the point of identifying Marx with
orthodox Marxist interpretations. This approach, of course, was not
irrelevant to his pronouncement about the end of Marxism and his
declared verdict for the necessity of going beyond Marxism and Marx.
This stance implied his intention to go beyond the Marxian categories
and more specifically to go ‘beyond “class thinking” ’.9 More emphasis
was placed upon the political and ideological elements of society, mostly
at the expense of an analysis of human social relations. In his analysis
of social and political phenomena, class relations were reduced to power
relations. This is a matter of great importance for Castoriadis’ later the-
oretical development, for it involved his breaking away from the core
issues and conceptual tools of critical theory. It marked a new departure
in his intellectual course, which in many cases was expressed in views
and positions that were not always compatible with radical theory and
the anti-capitalist tradition.
Castoriadis tended to forget the fundamental distinction between
Marx and Marxism, or traditional and critical Marxism. He announced
the death of Marxism and at the same time he did not always make
explicit the theoretical and political implications of his critique. He
posed a question to structuralist thinkers with respect to their stance
towards May 1968 that could be addressed with equal force to his treat-
ment of critical Marxism and Marx: ‘What, then, is the status of your
discourse?’10 What was the purpose of Castoriadis’ critique – at times
justified and at times unsubstantiated and unfortunate? What about the
useful elements in Marx, in a revolutionary sense, and the tradition of
various Marxisms, especially critical Marxism? Castoriadis left his discus-
sion of Marx, Marxism, the regimes of Eastern Europe and the history
of the working-class movement open to being misunderstood, falsified
and misused. At stake here is the manner in which Castoriadis has been
received, read and used by both the critical, radical and anti-capitalist
tradition and the existing social and theoretical order, the ‘intellectual
establishment’. For a large part of the traditional Left and the various
Conclusions 137
Marxist currents, Castoriadis’ contribution remained unknown and was

dogmatically, unwisely and crudely seen as ‘reactionary’. On the other
hand, and more specifically during the 1970s, an attempt was made by
the ‘new philosophers’ (Bernard-Henri Levy, André Glucksmann, etc.)11
to misuse and misappropriate Castoriadis’ critique of the Soviet sys-
tem, Marxism and Marx. The ‘new philosophers’ revived interest in the
term ‘totalitarianism’, but they attributed to it a completely different
meaning than the Greek intellectual used. Castoriadis’ critique of Marx
and Marxism was also understood as being compatible with the post-
modernist views that discard the grand narratives and champion today’s
model of ‘representative democracy’. He not only rejected the ‘new wave
of diversionists’,12 the ‘new philosophers’ approach, but also reacted
against the misuse and distortion of his own ideas. For Castoriadis it is
explicit that the function of the ‘new philosophers’ ‘fully plays into the
interests of the apparatuses’13 with a view to ‘covering over in advance
the true questions by “answers” which have for their effect and their func-
tion to stop dead in its tracks the movement of reflection and to take the
edge off the political and revolutionary critique of totalitarianism on
the one hand, of Marxism on the other’.14 And Castoriadis goes on with
his forceful critique:
The new wave of diversionists does not ask: How is totalitarianism

actually engendered? Shamelessly pillaging through what a few of us
have been working out for the past thirty years, it hastily lifts from
this work a few elements whose meaning it distorts in order to say:
Totalitarianism is Marx, is Hegel, is Fichte, is Plato. It understands
neither what thinking means nor the unfathomable relationship his-
torical thought and historical reality entertain. Diverting the critique
of Marx that we had made from a political, praxical, revolutionary
perspective – a critique that was bringing out precisely the capitalist,
Western, metaphysical heritage of which Marx had remained pris-
oner, to discover thereby what in Marx remained on the hither side of
a revolutionary aim – it tries to draw from this critique the following
absurd conclusion: it is precisely as a revolutionary that Marx would
have engendered the Gulag.15
After the ‘nouveau philosophies’, and over the last 30 years, the work
of Castoriadis was subjected to a ruthless and peculiar academization
and canonization. There have been repeated attempts to use it to serve
the existing reality of the capitalist society. Castoriadis is presented as
the theoretician of the modern political imaginary, of post-Marxism,
of social creativity, of psychoanalysis or of democracy and autonomy

deprived of both the radical and the critical meaning that Castoriadis
attributed to them. There is no reference to the early and more rad-
ical Castoriadis, to the man as a critique of orthodox Marxism or to
his critique of Marx that echoes the Left and radical assessments of
the latter. Not surprisingly, these aspects of Castoriadis’ work have been
nearly neglected or presented to show that he rejected Marx in favour
of democracy. This abstract and apolitical reading of him led to the loss
of the anti-capitalist dimension of his thought, to a ‘fashionable’ mis-
appropriation of his later philosophical writings at the expense of his
‘political, praxical, revolutionary perspective’.16 Once again, after the
1970s, Castoriadis’ political and revolutionary critique of totalitarian-
ism, Marxism and Marx is distorted by ‘the new wave of diversionists’,
and new Stalinists of anti-Marx, anti-Marxism and anti-communism
are produced among his adherents. Unfortunately, Castoriadis himself
opened the door to this misappropriation of his ideas. Inherent contra-
dictions and limits of his thought were pushed to the more conservative
and apolitical extreme by the academic and intellectual apparatuses. He
countered with the distortion of his critical project, though belatedly
and unsuccessfully, and attempted to champion the radicalism of his
theoretical endeavour. As he vigorously reminds us,
The workers’ movement began well before Marx, and it had nothing
to do with Fichte or with Hegel . . . The question posed is not how
to ‘replace Marxism’ but how to create a new relationship between
thinking and doing, how to elucidate things in terms of a practical
project without falling back either into the system or into doing just
anything.17
In his attempt to search for a new relationship between critical the-

ory and radical praxis, Castoriadis articulated his practical project in
and through a parallel critique of the crisis of modern capitalist soci-
eties. Having as a reference point his analysis of the movements of
the 1960s and principally his critical examination of the revolution-
ary crisis of May 1968, he was powerfully engaged in developing an
insightful understanding of the decay of Western contemporary soci-
eties. The most important aspect of his critique lies in the fact that
he searched for the genesis of the crisis in the social contradictions of
the capitalist society. He also went beyond a mere economic interpreta-
tion of the crisis and perceived it as a permanent and generalized crisis,
which has corroded the social, political, cultural and anthropological
Conclusions 139
foundations of modern societies. By re-evaluating this decay critically,

he made it explicit that the crisis cannot be overcome without a radical
transformation of the dominant economic and political model. There
is thus a common thread running through Castoriadis’ critical theory
from the crisis and critique of Marxism and Marx, to the crisis and cri-
tique of totalitarianism, to the crisis and critique of modern capitalist
societies. He supplies us with an extensive and multilateral analysis of
the complex issue of the crisis of modernity, revealing at the same time
the contradictory and controversial nature of his argumentation and
way of thinking. Two antithetical and opposed currents of thought can
be identified in his theorizing. The first tendency, with all of its own
limitations, emphasizes the role of social struggle and antagonism as
a major factor for creating the crisis, and grasps the crisis as a prod-
uct of the social contradictions immanent in bureaucratic and capitalist
societies. Concomitantly, he stresses the role of subjectivity and the rev-
olutionary praxis of the people as a means of transcending the crisis in
the direction of creating an alternative to capitalist society. The second
current of Castoriadis’ thought focuses attention upon the explication
of crisis via the construction of a paradigmatic approach, by espousing
and applying an ideal-typical model or norm or by establishing his own
periodization of Western European history based upon his project of
autonomy. This deficiency was connected with his Weberian influences
and could explain why he failed to grasp the complexity and moving
contradictions of the social systems under consideration and reproduced
abstractions and generalizations.
In his essay entitled ‘Recommencing the Revolution’, Castoriadis sug-
gested that ‘everything must be started over again [recommencer], but
starting from the immense experience of a century of working-class
struggles’.18 However, one could ask Castoriadis: Why start only from
the practical experiences of the working-class struggles and neglect the
theoretical ones? Are we not slipping into metaphysics when we sep-
arate the theory and the practice of the class struggle? And further, as
Ernst Bloch reminds us, ‘a new good is never completely new. Most of
the past is interrupted future, future in the past.’19 The Greek scholar
attacked the nihilism of the spirit and at the same time seems to adopt
a nihilist stance towards Marx’s thought and the Marxist tradition. But
do Marx and critical Marxism not form one of the fundamental bases
for any future development of critical and radical theory? As Karel Kosik
aptly pointed out, ‘anything without a foundation is unstable, shallow,
empty’ and by losing our foundation we ‘overcome by nothingness’ and
‘nothing means nihil’.20 Castoriadis himself was well aware of this when
he made the point that ‘the movement must maintain and enlarge its
openness as far as possible. Openness, however, is not and can never be
absolute openness. Absolute openness is nothingness – that is to say, it
is immediately absolute closure.’21
The argument of this study is that Castoriadis’ thought can enor-
mously enrich the tradition of critical and radical theory. His heated
debates, disputes and critical confrontations with other political theo-
rists, scholars and philosophers could constitute a reference point for
reinforcing and strengthening the radical currents in social and political
thought. Furthermore, his critique could promote discussion regard-
ing the achievements and failures of radical anti-capitalist theory and
practice. We turn to him not only to find affirmative answers to our
questions but to pick up and develop the valuable and challenging ques-
tions bequeathed to us by him. His analysis of the Hungarian Uprising
of 1956 and the events of May 1968 could provide us with invaluable
lessons which have wider resonance for the study and understanding of
contemporary social movements. In the same vein, Castoriadis’ com-
prehensive exploration of the crisis of modern societies supplies us
with thoughtful and sound insights into a much more profound under-
standing of its origins and generalized character. Most significantly, his
scholarly work is highly political and his critical theory is never disas-
sociated from political and social reality: it never remained on the side-
lines. It was developed as a thorough critique of all authoritarian forms
of social and political organization and paved the way for the search
for radical alternatives to capitalism. His ideas about socialism, auton-
omy, revolution and the creation of a new society based upon direct
democracy and the democracy of councils run throughout his entire
political thought. The most important issue for critical political theory
and radical political praxis, then, is to keep the questions addressed by
Castoriadis open, as an enduring source of problems and a continuous
struggle against the dogmas and the closure of practical-critical activity.
Notes
Introduction: Reading Castoriadis Politically

1. C. Castoriadis (1993) ‘The Diversionists’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) Cornelius
Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings, Vol. 3, 1961–1979: Recommencing the
Revolution: From Socialism to Autonomous Society (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press), p. 272.
2. Ibid., p. 276.
3. C. Castoriadis (1988) ‘Modern Capitalism and Revolution’, in D. A. Curtis
(ed.) Cornelius Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings, Vol. 2, 1955–1960:
From the Workers’ Struggle Against Bureaucracy to Revolution in the Age of Modern
Capitalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), p. 239.
4. C. Castoriadis (2003) ‘The Dilapidation of the West’, in C. Castoriadis (ed.)
The Rising Tide of Insignificancy (The Big Sleep), translated from the French and
edited anonymously as a public service. Electronic publication date: 2003.
URL http://www.costis.org/x/castoriadis/Castoriadis-rising_tide.pdf, p. 76.
5. On this see Castoriadis, C. (1997) ‘The Movements of the Sixties’, in
D. A. Curtis (ed.) World in Fragments (Stanford: Stanford University Press),
pp. 53–54.
6. Ibid.
7. Castoriadis ‘The Diversionists’, p. 275.
8. Ibid., p. 276.
9. R. Vaneigem (1983) The Revolution of Everyday Life (London: Left Bank Books
and Rebel Press), p. 215.
10. R. Viénet (1992) Enrages and Situationists in the Occupation Movement, France,
May ’68 (New York: Autonomedia), p. 105.
11. J. Agnoli (2003) ‘Destruction as the Determination of the Scholar in
Miserable Times’, in W. Bonefeld (ed.) Revolutionary Writing (New York:
Autonomedia), p. 26.
12. I use here the concepts ‘positive’, ‘responsible’ and ‘constructive’ as the
opposite of critique’s subversive and negative role. See on this T. Adorno
(2005) ‘Critique’, in T. Adorno Critical Models (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press); Agnoli ‘Destruction as the Determination of the Scholar in
Miserable Times.’
13. See C. Castoriadis (1997) ‘The Retreat from Autonomy: Postmodernism
as Generalized Conformism’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) World in Frag-
ments (Stanford: Stanford University Press), p. 34; K. Kαστoριάδης (2007)
‘H ειτoυργία της Kριτικής’, in K. Kαστoριάδης Π αρ άθ υρo σ τ o Xάoς (Aθήνα:

Yψιλoν), pp. 123–132. Castoriadis also forcefully and convincingly opposed
the ‘alteration and basic degradation of the traditional function of book-
review criticism’. Castoriadis, C. ‘The Vacuum Industry’ in C. Castoriadis
The Rising Tide of Insignificancy (The Big Sleep), p. 8.
14. C. Castoriadis ‘The Rising Tide of Insignificancy’, in C. Castoriadis (2003)
The Rising Tide of Insignificancy (The Big Sleep), p. 151.
141
142 Notes
15. Ibid., pp. 128, 130.

16. Ibid., p. 131.
17. C. Castoriadis ‘The Crisis of the Imaginary?’ in C. Castoriadis (ed.) (2011)
Postscript on Insignificancy, translated from the French and edited anony-
mously as a public service, p. 108.
18. C. Castoriadis (1991) ‘The Crisis of Culture and the State’, in D. A. Curtis
(ed.) Cornelius Castoriadis: Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy (Oxford: Oxford
University Press), p. 220.
19. C. Castoriadis (2003) The Rising Tide of Insignificancy (The Big Sleep), p. 130.
20. C. Castoriadis ‘The Dilapidation of the West’, p. 83.
21. H. Arendt (1976) The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt), p. 460.
22. The concept of ‘totalitarianism’ is utilized here and elsewhere in this study
in accordance with Castoriadis’ use of the term and neither reflects my views
nor meets my approval for both theoretical and political reasons.
23. C. Castoriadis ‘Neither God, Nor Caesar, Not Tribune’, in C. Castoriadis (ed.)
Postscript on Insignificancy, p. 12.
1 Origins: Early Years in Greece,

Migration and Life in France
1. C. Castoriadis (1990) ‘An Interview’, Radical Philosophy, 56: Autumn, p. 35.
2. Ibid.
3. For the relationship between Castoriadis and Stinas, see Kαστoριάδης, K.
(1992) ‘Oμιλία για τoν A. τίνα’, in O Θρυμματ ισ μένoς Kóσ μoς (Aθήνα:

Yψιλoν), pp. 143–150.
4. K. Kαστoριάδης (2000) Eίμασ τ ε Yπ εύθ υνoι γ ια τ ην Iσ τ oρία μας (Aθήνα:
óλις), p. 41.
5. Kαστoριάδης ‘Oμιλία για τoν A. τίνα’, p. 147.
6. Castoriadis was at odds with Stinas on the assessment of the armed
conflict of December 1944. For Castoriadis’ views and his disagree-
ment with Stinas, see Kαρύτσας, . (2003) ‘Eισαγωγή’, in . Tαμτάκoς,
Aναμν ήσ εις μιας ζωής σ τ o επανασ τ ατ ικ ó κίνημα (Kύκλoι Aντιεξoυσίας),
p. 18.
7. Castoriadis, ‘An Interview’, 35.
8. ’A. τίνας (1985) Aναμν ήσ εις : Eβδoμήντ α Xρ óνια Kάτ ω απ ’ τ η Σημαία τ ης
Σoσ ιαλισ τ ικ ής Eπ αν άσ τ ασ ης (Aθήνα: Yψιλoν), p. 455.
9. See ’A. τίνας (1977) ‘O Kαστoριάδης έννημα και ρέμμα της Eπανάστασης’,
TOMEΣ, 8, Iανoυάριoς, pp. 24–25. For Stinas’ political and intellec-
tual positions see also τίνας Aναμν ήσ εις : Eβδoμήντ α Xρ óνια Kάτ ω απ ’
τ η Σημαία τ ης Σoσ ιαλισ τ ικ ής Eπ αν άσ τ ασ ης.
10. See, for example, the case of the group known as Aρχείo τoυ Mαρξισμoύ
(Marxist Archive).
11. Castoriadis, ‘An Interview , p. 35.
12. M. αλιδóπoυλoς ‘Mεταϕράσεις Bιβλίων Oικoνoμικών Eπιστημών στην
Eλληνική λώσσα, 1808–1948: Tα Iδεoλoγικά Mηνύματα’, in M. αλιδóπoυλoς
Πoλιτ ικ ή Oικoνoμία και Eλληνες Διανooύμενoι (Aθήνα: Tυπωθήτω), p. 34.
13. For the translations of the economic writings of Marx, see αλιδóπoυλoς
‘Mεταϕράσεις Bιβλίων Oικoνoμικών Eπιστημών στην Eλληνική λώσσα, 1808–
1948’, pp. 16–28.
Notes 143
14. !. ιβιεράτoς (1985) Koινωνικoί Aγ ώνες σ τ ην Eλλάδα 1923–1927 (Aθήνα:

Koμμoύνα), pp. 191–192.
15. Source: Eθνική Bιβλιoθήκη της Eλλάδας (National Library of Greece).
16. αλιδóπoυλoς, M. (1999) ‘Mεταϕράσεις Bιβλίων Oικoνoμικών Eπιστημών
στην Eλληνική λώσσα, 1808–1948’, p. 13.
17. Ibid., p. 37.
18. His graduation grade was ‘Good’, 7 5/11.
19. Castoriadis’ student file constitutes a source of information concerning
these modules and professors. In his exams during 1939 and 1940 he did
exceptionally well and got a distinction in public economics and political
economy. In the Greek grading system and on a scale of grades, which were
assigned on a range of 0–10, his grades in his final exams were as follows:
civil law 9; private international law 7; commercial law 8 and 9; civil proce-
dure 9; ecclesiastical law 10; criminal law 8 and 9; criminology 10. Based on
these grades the professors in his department granted him the final average
grade, that is 8 9/12 = 9. Source: Historical Archive, University of Athens.
20. M. αλιδóπoυλoς (1989) H Kρίσ η τ oυ 1929 και oι Eλληνες Oικoνoμoλóγ oι:
Συμβoλή σ τ ην ισ τ oρία τ ης oικoνoμικ ής σ κ έψης σ τ ην Eλλάδα τ oυ μεσ oπ oλέμ
oυ(Aθήνα: ’Iδρυμα ’Eρευνας και αιδείας Eμπoρικής Tράπεζα της Eλλάδας),
p. 106.
21. Ibid., pp. 463–464.
22. Quoted in . Noύτσoς (1993) H Σoσ ιαλισ τ ικ ή Σκ έψη σ τ ην Eλλάδα, Tóμoς
(Aθήνα: νώση), p. 156.
23. M. αλιδóπoυλoς (1989) H Kρίσ η τ oυ 1929 και oι Eλληνες Oικoνoμoλóγ oι,
pp. 153–155.
24. Ibid., p. 198.
25. Noύτσoς H Σoσ ιαλισ τ ικ ή Σκ έψη σ τ ην Eλλάδα, p. 26.
26. M. Mazower (2000) After the War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation
and State in Greece, 1943–1960 (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 6.
27. P. Voglis (2002) Becoming a Subject: Political Prisoners during the Greek Civil
War (New York and Oxford: Berghan Books), p. 56. According to Heinz
Richter, ‘in November 1945 more than eighteen thousand people were incar-
cerated, of whom fewer than three thousand served a sentence. Warrants had
been issued against eighty thousand persons.’ H. Richter (1981) ‘The Varkiza
Agreement and the Origins of the Civil War’, in J. Iatrides (ed.) Greece in the
1940s: A Nation in Crisis (New Hampshire: University Press of New England),
p. 172.
28. M. Mazower (1991) Greece and the Inter-war Economic Crisis (Oxford:
Clarendon Press), p. 6. In the same vein, Polymeris Voglis observes that
‘in contrast to France, Belgium, or the Netherlands where – at least in the
first two years after the liberation – governments prosecuted and punished
wartime collaborators, in Greece there was no real purge of the state appa-
ratus’. P. Voglis (2002) Becoming a Subject: Political Prisoners during the Greek
Civil War (New York: Berghahn Books), p. 55.
29. H. Richter (1981) ‘The Varkiza Agreement and the Origins of the Civil War’,
p. 173. See also Papastratis, P. ‘Purging the University after Liberation’ in
M. Mazower (2000) After the War Was Over, pp. 62–72.
30. C. Tsoukalas (1981) ‘The Ideological Impact of the Civil War’, in J. Iatrides
(ed.) Greece in the 1940s: A Nation in Crisis (New Hampshire: University Press
of New England). p. 337.
144 Notes
31. George Theotokas’ diary entry for 6 January 1943, quoted in M. Mazower
(1993) Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941–1944 (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press), p. 83.
32. C. Montague Woodhouse (1976) The Struggle for Greece, 1941–1949 (London:
C. Hurst & Co. Publishers), p. 140.
33. In fact, 150 of them were awarded a scholarship and the remaining 70
were self-funding bursars. According to the most recent historical research
delivered and presented by N. Manitakis, the first group that travelled on
the ‘Mataroa’ included 97 bursars of the French state and 26 self-funding
students. The second group travelled on the Swedish ship Gripsholm at
the beginning of February 1946 and consisted of 70 students (35 were
bursars). The last group (10 students) were transported to France by a
military French aircraft. It seems that not all of the people who were
granted the scholarship managed to move to France. For details about this
‘exodus’, see N. Manitakis, ‘Mαταρóα: η ανάκαμψη της ελληνικής ϕoιτητ
ικής μετανάστευσης πρoς τη αλλία στη μεταπoλεμική περίoδo’. ‘To ταξίδι τoυ
Mαταρóα – oρτραίτo μιας εξóριστης γενιάς’ was a symposium talk deliv-
ered by N. Manitakis in the French Institute of Athens on 11 October 2013.
Available at http://www.blod.gr/lectures/Pages/viewlecture.aspx?LectureID=
1011. Also, on the history of this journey, see N. Aνδρικoπoύλoυ (2007)
To Tαξ ίδι τ oυ Mατ αρ óα (Aθήνα: Eστία).
34. L. Fermi (1971) Illustrious Immigrants: The Intellectual Migration from Europe
1930/1941 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), p. 365.
35. D. Kellner (1989) Critical Theory, Marxism and Modernity (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press), p. 81.
36. A. Koestler (2005) Darkness at Noon (New York: Vintage), p. 144.
37. For the role that migration played in influencing the Frankfurt School’s
positions, see the analysis in Kellner Critical Theory, Marxism and Modernity,
pp. 80–82.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Adorno’s Minima Moralia is permeated by this experience of exile, and ‘the
intellectual in emigration’ is a reference point for Adorno’s text.
41. Kellner Critical Theory, Marxism and Modernity, p. 81.
42. S. Khilnani (1993) Arguing Revolution: The Intellectual Left in Postwar France
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press), p. 130.
43. M. Poster (1975) Existential Marxism in Postwar France: From Sartre to Althusser
(Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 4.
44. D. Macey (1993) The Lives of Michel Foucault (New York: Pantheon Books),
p. 37.
45. T. Judt (1992) Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944–1956 (California:
University of California Press), p. 38.
46. Khilnani Arguing Revolution, p. 129.
47. Poster Existential Marxism in Postwar France, p. 41.
48. Ibid., p. ix.
49. J. Duvignaud (1962) ‘France: The Neo-Marxists’, in L. Labedz (ed.)
Revisionism: Essays on the History of Marxist Ideas (New York: Praeger and
Unwin), p. 313.
50. Poster Existential Marxism in Postwar France, p. 36.
Notes 145
51. Duvignaud ‘France: The Neo-Marxists’, p. 313.

52. Ibid.
53. D. McLellan (1979) Marxism after Marx (London: Macmillan), p. 280.
54. Quoted by Macey The Lives of Michel Foucault, p. 32.
55. For this introduction of German philosophy and the three H’s (Hegel,
Husserl and Heidegger), see Schrift, A. (2004) ‘Is there such a Thing as
“French Philosophy”? Or Why do We Read the French so Badly’, in J. Bourg
(ed.) After the Deluge: New Perspectives on the Intellectual and Cultural History of
Postwar France (London: Lexington Books), pp. 27–29.
56. Poster, Existential Marxism in Postwar France, pp. 41–42.
57. Ibid., p. 42.
58. Ibid., p. 41.
59. Duvignaud ‘France: The Neo-Marxists’, p. 315.
60. G. Lichtheim (1966) Marxism in Modern France (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press), p. 83.
61. Khilnani Arguing Revolution, p. 135.
62. For the revitalization of Hegel’s theory in post-war France, see M. Poster
(1973) ‘The Hegel Renaissance’, Telos, No.16, Summer, pp. 109–127;
J. Hechman (1973) ‘Hyppolite and the Hegel Revival in France’, Telos, No.16,
Summer, pp. 128–145.
63. K. Kαστoριάδης (2000) Eίμασ τ ε Yπ εύθ υνoι γ ια τ ην Iσ τ oρία μας , p. 41.
64. Castoriadis, ‘An Interview , 38.
65. C. Lefort (1976–1977) ‘An Interview with Claude Lefort’, Telos, Winter,
Vol. 30, p. 174.
66. C. Castoriadis (1975) ‘An Interview with C. Castoriadis’, Telos, 23, Spring,
p. 134. For a comprehensive presentation of the group’s history, as well as
its theoretical considerations and political views, see, among others, Ph.
Gottraux (1997) «Socialism ou Barbarie». Un engagement politique et intel-
lectuel dans la France de l’ après-guerre (Lausanne: Payot) and A. Gabler
(2008) Antizipierte Autonomie. Zur Theorie und Praxis der Gruppe “Socialisme
ou Barbarie” (1949–1967) (Hannover: Offizin).
67. A. Hirsh (1981) The French New Left: An Intellectual History From Sartre to Gorz
(Boston: South End Press), p. 113.
68. Castoriadis, ‘An Interview , p. 36.
69. Ibid., pp. 36–37.
70. Hirsh The French New Left, p. 113. It is worth noting here that both
Castoriadis and Lefort were engaged in a fierce dispute with Sartre, while
at the same time Castoriadis had a genuine appreciation for Merleau-Ponty.
For the dispute with Sartre, see ibid., pp. 113–114.
71. S. Tormey and J. Townshed (2006) Key Thinkers from Critical Theory to Post-
Marxism (London: Sage Publications), p. 15.
72. For Castoriadis’ books published in English, see D. A. Curtis (ed.) (1988)
Cornelius Castoriadis: Political and Social Writings, Vol. 1, 1946–1955, From the
Critique of Bureaucracy to the Positive Content of Socialism (Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press); D. A. Curtis (ed.) (1988) Cornelius Castoriadis,
Political and Social Writings, Vol. 2, 1955–1960: From the Workers’ Struggle
Against Bureaucracy to Revolution in the Age of Modern Capitalism (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press); D. A. Curtis (ed.) (1993) Cornelius
Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings, Vol. 3, 1961–1979: Recommencing the
146 Notes

Minnesota Press); C. Castoriadis (2005) The Imaginary Institution of Society
(Cambridge: Polity Press); C. Castoriadis (1984) Crossroads in the Labyrinth
(Brighton: Harvester Press); C. Castoriadis (1997) World in Fragments: Writings
on Politics, Society, Psychoanalysis and Imagination (Stranford: Stanford Uni-
versity Press); C. Castoriadis (1991) Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy (Oxford:
Oxford University Press); D. A. Curtis (ed.) (1997) The Castoriadis Reader
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell); C. Castoriadis (2010) A Society Adrift, Interviews and
Debates, 1974–1997 (New York: Fordham University Press).
73. O. Paz (1988) The Collected Poems 1957–1987 (Manchester: Carcanet),
p. 543.
2 The Critique of Totalitarianism

1. S. Tormey and J. Townshed (2006) Key Thinkers from Critical Theory to Post-
Marxism (London: Sage Publications), p. 15.
2. C. Castoriadis (1975) ‘An Interview with C. Castoriadis’, Telos, 23, Spring,
p. 133.
3. Castoriadis, C. (1997) ‘Presentation of Socialisme ou Barbarie: An Organ of
Critique and Revolutionary Orientation (1949)’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) The
Castoriadis Reader (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers), p. 35.
4. Ibid., p. 37.
5. L. Trotsky (1965) The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where
Is It Going? (New York: Merit Publishers), pp. 254–255.
6. Ibid., p. 249.
7. Ibid., p. 248.
8. C. Castoriadis (1988) ‘On the Regime and Against the Defense of the USSR’,
in D. A. Curtis (ed.) Cornelius Castoriadis: Political and Social Writings, Vol. 1,
1946–1955, From the Critique of Bureaucracy to the Positive Content of
Socialism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), p. 40.
9. C. Castoriadis (1988) ‘Socialism or Barbarism’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) Cornelius
Castoriadis: Political and Social Writings, Vol. 1, 1946–1955, From the Cri-
tique of Bureaucracy to the Positive Content of Socialism (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press), p. 77.
10. C. Castoriadis (1988) ‘General Introduction’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) Cornelius
11. C. Castoriadis (1988) ‘The Relations of Production in Russia’, in D. A. Curtis
(ed.) Cornelius Castoriadis: Political and Social Writings, Vol. 1, 1946–1955,
From the Critique of Bureaucracy to the Positive Content of Socialism
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), pp. 114–115.
12. K. Marx (1985) ‘On Proudhon’ (Letter to J.B. Schweitzer), London, January
24, in K. Marx and F. Engels (eds.) Collected Works Vol. 20 (London:
Lawrence and Wishart), pp. 27–28.
13. Castoriadis ‘On the Regime and Against the Defense of the USSR’, p. 40.
14. Castoriadis ‘The Relations of Production in Russia’, p. 115.
15. Ibid., p. 120.
Notes 147
17. Castoriadis ‘The Relations of Production in Russia’, pp. 135–136.
18. Ibid., p. 116.
19. Ibid., p. 120.
20. Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed, p. 255.
21. Ibid., p. 249.
22. Ibid., p. 250.
23. K. Marx (1973) Grundrisse. Foundations of the Critique of Political Econ-
omy (London: Penguin), p. 95. Quoted in Castoriadis ‘The Relations of
Production in Russia’, p.109.
24. K. Marx Capital, Vol. 3, p. 927.
25. Castoriadis ‘The Relations of Production in Russia’, p. 112.
26. L. Trotsky (1963) Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky
(Michigan: The University of Michigan Press), p. 162.
27. Ibid., p.163.
28. Ibid., p. 166.
29. Ibid., p. 133.
30. Ibid., p. 135.
31. Ibid., p. 144. Quoted also in K. απαϊωάννoυ (1991) H Γ ένεσ η τ oυ Oλoκληρω
τ ισ μoύ (The Genesis of Totalitarianism) (Aθήνα: Eναλλακτικές Eκδóσεις),
p. 267.
32. Trotsky Terrorism and Communism, p. 142.
33. Ibid., p. 168.
34. C. Lefort. (1986) ‘The Contradiction of Trotsky’, in J. B. Thompson (ed.)
C. Lefort: The Political Forms of Modern Society (London: Polity Press), p. 50.
35. Castoriadis ‘General Introduction’, p. 8.
36. Lefort ‘The Contradiction of Trotsky’, p. 50.
37. S. Matgamna (ed.) (1998) The Fate of the Russian Revolution (Phoenix Press),
p. 110. On Trotsky’s construction of a ‘metaphysics of nationalized econ-
omy’, see also M. Rooke (2003) ‘From the Revolution Against Philosophy to
the Revolution Against Capital’, in W. Bonefeld (ed.) Revolutionary Writing
(New York: Autonomedia), pp. 228–229.
38. Quoted in I. Deutscher (1959) The Prophet Unarmed, Trotsky: 1921–1929
(Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 139. See also Lefort ‘The Contradiction
of Trotsky’, p. 40.
39. See, for example, C. Castoriadis (1993) ‘The Role of Bolshevik Ideology in
the Birth of the Bureaucracy’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) Cornelius Castoriadis:
Political and Social Writings, Vol. 3, 1961–1979: Recommmencing the Revo-
lution: From Socialism to Autonomous Society (Minneapolis: University of
40. Castoriadis ‘The Role of Bolshevik Ideology in the Birth of the Bureaucracy’,
p. 91.
41. D. Guerin (1998) No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism, Book two
(Edinburgh: AK Press), pp. 107–108.
42. K. απαϊωάννoυ (1991) H Γ ένεσ η τ oυ Oλoκληρωτ ισ μoύ, p. 263.
43. K. Papaioannou (1983) ‘Classe et Parti’, in K. Papaioannou (ed.) De Marx et
du Marxisme (Paris: Gallimard), p. 324.
44. Quoted in A. Liebich (1977) ‘Socialism ou Barbarie: A Radical Critique of
Bureaucracy’, Our Generation, 12(2): 55–62.
148 Notes
45. O. Rühle (2006) The Struggle Against Fascism Begins with the Struggle Against
Bolshevism (London: Elephant Editions), p. 24.
p. 91.
47. A. Pannekoek (1954), ‘Letter to Socialisme ou Barbarie’, Socialisme ou
Barbarie, No 14, April–June. Available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/
pannekoe/1953/socialisme-ou-barbarisme.htm.
48. E. Bloch (1970) ‘Interview given to NIN’, No 1031, October, 11. Quoted in
A. Zwan (1979) ‘Ecstasy and Hangover of a Revolution’, in M. Markovic and
G. Petrovic (ed.) PRAXIS: Yugoslav Essays in the Philosophy and Methodology
of the Social Sciences (Boston: D. Reidel Pub. Co), p. 361.
49. A. Pannekoek (1954), ‘Letter to Socialisme ou Barbarie’, For a recent English
translation of this correspondence by Asad Haider and Salar Mohandesi, see
Viewpoint Magazine, available at http://viewpointmag.com/.
50. Pannekoek ‘Letter to Socialisme ou Barbarie’.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. C. Castoriadis (Pierre Chaulieu), ‘Réponse au camarade Pannekoek’,
Socialisme ou Barbarie, 14, pp. 44–50. I use here the Greek trans-
lation, K. Kαστoριάδης (1984) ‘Aπάντηση στo σύντρoϕo άνεκoυκ’, in
K. Kαστoριάδης, H π είρα τ oυ Eργ ατ ικoύ Kιν ήματ oς , 1 (Aθήνα: Yψιλoν),
p. 188.
55. Ibid., p. 189.
56. A. άνεκoυκ. ‘!εύτερo γράμμα τoυ Aντoν άνεκoυκ’, in K. Kαστoριάδης,
‘H π είρα τ oυ Eργ ατ ικoύ Kιν ήματ oς ’, p. 201.
57. Ibid., p. 200.
58. Quoted in E. Morin (1998) ‘An Encyclopaedic Spirit’, Radical Philosophy, 90,
p. 3.
60. For Castoriadis’ early interest in and work on Max Weber, see
K. Kαστoριάδης (1988) Πρ ώτ ες Δoκιμές (Aθήνα: Yψιλoν).
63. C. Castoriadis (1988) ‘The Problem of the USSR and the Possibility of a
Third Historical Solution’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) Cornelius Castoriadis: Political
and Social Writings, Vol. 1, 1946–1955, From the Critique of Bureaucracy to
the Positive Content of Socialism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press), p. 50.
65. Ibid., p. 39.
66. C. Castoriadis (1988) ‘The Concentration of the Forces of Production’, in
D. A. Curtis (ed.) Cornelius Castoriadis: Political and Social Writings, Vol. 1,
1946–1955, From the Critique of Bureaucracy to the Positive Content of
Socialism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) p. 67.
67. Castoriadis ‘Socialism or Barbarism’ p. 79.
68. Ibid., p. 79.
69. Ibid., p. 79.
70. Ibid., p.87. See also p. 85.
Notes 149
71. C. Castoriadis (1997) ‘The Social Regime in Russia’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) The
Castoriadis Reader (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers), p. 227.
72. A. Arato (1993) ‘Facing Russia: Castoriadis and the Problem of Soviet-type
Societies’, in A. Arato From Neo-Marxism to Democratic Theory: Essays on the
Critical Theory of Soviet-Type Societies (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe), p. 149.
73. Castoriadis ‘The Social Regime in Russia’ (1978), p. 228.
74. Ibid., p. 231.
75. Ibid., p. 233.
76. Ibid., p. 233.
77. Ibid., p. 236.
78. Ibid., p. 236.
79. Ibid., pp. 236, 237.
80. Ibid., p. 237.
81. Ibid., p. 228.
p. 98.
83. Ibid., p. 102.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid.
86. Ibid., p. 103.
87. Ibid.
88. Ibid.
89. C. Castoriadis (1997) ‘The Pulverization of Marxism-Leninism’, in D. A.
Curtis (ed.) World in Fragments (Stanford: Stanford University Press), p. 65.
90. Ibid., p. 66.
91. C. Castoriadis (1983) ‘The Destinies of Totalitarianism’, Salmagundi, 60,
p. 116.
92. Ibid., p. 112.
93. Ibid., 116–117.
94. Ibid., p. 114.
95. Ibid., p. 118. For Castoriadis’ position on the Soviet regime as a mili-
tary society, see C. Castoriadis (1981) Devant la Guerre (Paris: Fayand);
C. Castoriadis (1980–1981) ‘Facing the War’, Telos, 46, pp. 43–61.
96. Castoriadis ‘The Destinies of Totalitarianism’, p. 121.
97. Castoriadis ‘The Pulverization of Marxism-Leninism’, p. 67.
98. On the concept of ‘the heresy of reality’ used by Johannes Agnoli, see
W. Bonefeld (1987) ‘Open Marxism’, Common Sense, 1, p. 36.
99. G. Rittesporn (1982) ‘Facing the War Psychosis’, Telos, 51, p. 22.
100. These ‘Stalinists of anti-communism’ consisted of ‘an intelligentsia which
was, almost by definition, considered to be on the left’ that ‘has packed
up its bags and gone over to the other side. It now addresses its criticisms,
not to French society, but to those who dare to think of transforming it.’
P. Delwit and J. M. Dewaele (1984) ‘The Stalinists of Anti-Communism’, The
Social Register, 21: 324–48.
101. Pollock argued that the liberal phase of capitalism had come to an end and
had given rise to a new social order – that is, state capitalism, which con-
sisted of two typical variants: totalitarian and democratic state capitalism.
For Pollock’s views on this issue, see F. Pollock (1982) ‘State Capitalism:
Its Possibilities and Limitations’, in A. Arato and E. Gebhardt (eds.) The
150 Notes
Essential Frankfurt School Reader (London: Continuum), especially p. 72, and

F. Pollock (1941) ‘Is National Socialism a New Order?’ Studies in Philosophy
and Social Science, 9, pp. 440–455.
102. B. Brick and M. Postone (1976) ‘Introduction: Friedrich Pollock and the
“Primacy of the Political”: A Critical Reexamination’, International Journal
of Politics, 6: 3, p. 13. For my critique of Castoriadis I have also drawn on
M. Postone and B. Brick (1982) ‘Critical Pessimism and the Limits of Tradi-
tional Marxism’, Theory and Society, 11: 5, pp. 617–658; M. Postone (1993)
Time, Labor, and Social Domination (New York: Cambridge University Press),
especially pp. 84–104.
103. T. Adorno (2003) Negative Dialectics (London: Continuum), p. 5.
104. H. Horkheimer (1972) ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’, in M. Horkheimer
(ed.) Critical Theory: Selected Essays (New York: Herder and Herder),
p. 240.
105. D. Howard (1975) ‘Introduction to Castoriadis’, Telos, 23 p. 120.
106. K. Axelos (1982) ‘Theses on Marx’, in N. Fischer, L. Patsouras,
N. Georgopoulos (eds.) Continuity and Change in Marxism (New Jersey:
Humanities Press), p. 67.
3 Subversive Praxis, Open Crisis and Critique

1. Horkheimer, H. (1972) ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’, in M. Horkheimer
(ed.) Critical Theory: Selected Essays (New York: Herder and Herder), p. 271.
2. J. Agnoli (2003) ‘Destruction as the Determination of the Scholar in
Miserable Times’, in W. Bonefeld (ed.) Revolutionary Writing (New York:
Autonomedia), p. 26.
3. K. Kosik (1995) ‘Reason and Conscience’, in J. H. Satterwhite (ed.) The Cri-
sis of Modernity: Essays and Observations from the 1968 Era (Lanham and
London: Rowman and Littlefield), p. 13.
4. F. Fehér and A. Heller (1983) Hungary 1956 Revisited (London: George Allen
and Unwin), p. 48.
5. H. Arendt (1958) ‘Epilogue: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution’, in
H. Arendt (ed.) The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2nd edition (Cleveland and
New York: Meridian Books), p. 509.
6. C. Castoriadis (1993) ‘The Hungarian Source’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) Cornelius
Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings, Vol. 3, 1961–1979, Recommmencing
the Revolution: From Socialism to Autonomous Society (Minneapolis:
7. Ibid., p. 252.
8. Fehér and Heller Hungary 1956 Revisited, p. 1.
9. This silence concerning the Hungarian Uprising was, of course, more evi-
dent within Hungary itself. As Ferenc Fehér has argued, ‘the resurrection
of the memory of the greatest historic event in Hungary after World War
II would have been an emancipatory gesture in itsef’. Fehér, F. (1992) ‘The
Language of Resistance: “Critical Marxism” versus “Marxism-Leninism” in
Hungary’, in R. Taras (ed.) The Road to Disillusion: From Critical Marxism to
Postcommunism in Eastern Europe (Armonk and London: M.E. Sharpe), p. 46.
10. Castoriadis ‘The Hungarian Source’, p. 254.
Notes 151
11. Arendt ‘Epilogue: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution’, p. 482.

13. R. Luxemburg (1970) ‘The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade
Unions’ in M. A. Waters (ed.) Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (New York: Pathfinder
Press), p. 172.
15. Ibid., p. 494.
16. K. Korsch (1970) Marxism and Philosophy (London: NLB), p. 143.
18. W. Benjamin (1999) The Arcades Project (New York: Belknap Press), p. 13.
19. Fehér and Heller Hungary 1956 Revisited, p. 90. On the idea that the
Hungarian Uprising was a spontaneous revolution in accordance with
Rosa Luxemburg’s analysis, see also Arendt ‘Epilogue: Reflections on the
Hungarian Revolution’, p. 482.
20. Castoriadis ‘The Hungarian Source’, p. 260. See also Fehér and Heller
Hungary 1956 Revisited, p. 157.
21. Ibid., p. 113.
22. A. de Tocqueville (1988) Democracy in America (New York: Harper Perennial),
p. 346.
24. Ibid., p. 480.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., p. 254.
28. Luxemburg ‘The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions,
p. 173.
29. Balázs, N. (1980) ‘Budapest 1956: The Central Workers Council’ in
B. Lommax (ed.) Eye-witness in Hungary: The Soviet Invasion of 1956
(Nottingham: Spokesman), p. 174.
33. H. Arendt (1990) On Revolution (London: Penguin), p. 271.
34. Ibid., p. 267.
35. Ibid., p. 273.
On this, see also Arendt, H. (1972) ‘Thoughts on Politics and Revolution’,
in H. Arendt, Crises of the Republic (Harcourt Brace), p. 231.
37. Agnes Heller criticized Arendt’s concept of workers’ councils as politi-
cal institutions and argued that Arendt ‘didn’t understand the Hungarian
workers’ councils, she believed they were just like the Soviet workers’ coun-
cils or the communes in the French Revolution, but this was not the case.
The Hungarian workers’ councils were basically an organization of self-
management rather that real political organizations. But if there were no
political organizations at this point then obviously the self-governing bod-
ies also took over political roles. But they were not conceived first and
foremost as political institutions’. A. Heller and S. Auer (2009) ‘An Interview
With Agnes Heller’, Thesis Eleven, 97, p. 104.
38. Arendt On Revolution, p. 218.
152 Notes
39. For a criticism of Arendt’s emphasis on the autonomy of the political and
her distinction between the political and the economic, see J. F. Sitton
(1987) ‘Hannah Arendt’s Argument for Council Democracy’, Polity, XX: 1,
pp. 80–100.
40. E. J. Hobsbawn (2006) ‘Hannah Arendt on Revolution’, in G. Williams (ed.)
Hannah Arendt: Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers, Vol. II,
Arendt and Political Philosophy (London: Routledge), p. 175.
42. Ibid., p. 254. In a similar vein and theorizing Negri’s analysis of the
international social struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, Harry Cleaver argued:
Negri’s concept of self-valorization thus designates what I find useful to
characterize as the positive moments of working class autonomy – where
the negative moments are made up of workers’ resistance to capitalist
domination. Alongside the power of refusal or the power to destroy capi-
tal’s determination, we find in the midst of working-class recomposition
the power of creative affirmation, the power to constitute new practices.
Cleaver, H. (1992) ‘The Inversion of Class Perspective in Marxian The-
ory: From Valorisation to Self-Valorisation’, in W. Bonefeld, R. Gunn and
K. Psychopedis (eds.) Open Marxism, Vol. II, Theory and Practice (London:
Pluto), p. 129.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., p. 260.
46. Ibid., p. 263.
47. Ibid., p. 261.
48. Kαστoριάδης, K. (1983) ‘Eρωτήματα στα μέλη τoυ .K.K’, in A. Vega, PH.
Guillaume, K. Kαστoριάδης, R. Maille, Λαϊκ ές Eξ εργ έσ εις σ τ ην Aνατ oλικ ή
Eυρ ώπ η (Aθήνα: Yψιλoν), p. 67.
50. P. Levi (1989) The Drowned and the Saved (London: Abacus), p. 129.
51. M. Canovan (1992) Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of her Political Thought
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 237.
52. Masaryk expressed his views in his book entitled Otάzka sociάlní (The Social
Question) with the subtitle ‘Philosophical and Sociological Foundations of
Marxism’ (Prague, 1898). For a synopsis of his views, see T.G. Masaryk, ‘The
Philosophical and Scientific Crisis of Contemporary Marxism’ presented
by E. Kohak (1964) in ‘T.G. Masaryk’s Revision of Marxism’, Journal of the
History of Ideas, Xxv: 4, October–December, pp. 519–542.
53. In his words, ‘We shall limit our examination to Marxism, that is, to the
scientific and philosophical views of Marx and Engels. Marx is predom-
inantly the economist of Marxism, Engels its philosopher.’ T.G. Masaryk
‘The Philosophical and Scientific Crisis of Contemporary Marxism’, in
E. Kohak (1964) ‘T.G. Masaryk‘s Revision of Marxism’, Journal of the History
of Ideas, vol. xxv, 4: 519–542.
54. Ibid., p. 540.
55. For example, see Townshend, J. (1998) ‘The Communist Manifesto and
the Crises of Marxism’, in M. Cowling (ed. ) The Communist Manifesto: New
Interpretations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), pp. 181–183.
Notes 153
56. On this, see E. Bernstein (1975) Evolutionary Socialism: A Criticism and

Affirmation (New York: Schocken Books).
57. Luxemburg made an interesting observation of the stagnation of Marxism.
In her words,
The actual fact is that – apart from one or two independent contribu-
tions which mark a certain theoretical advance – since the publication
of the last volume of Capital and the last of Engels’s writings there have
appeared nothing more than a few excellent popularizations and exposi-
tions of Marxist theory. The substance of that theory remains just where
the two founders of scientific socialism left it.
Luxemburg R. (1970) ‘Stagnation and Progress of Marxism’, in M. A. Waters

(ed.) Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (New York: Pathfinder Press), p. 107. She also
pointed out that even the ‘theory of historical materialism’, which has left
Marx and Engels open to deeper investigation and further developments,
‘remains as unelaborated and sketchy as it was when first formulated by
its creators’. Luxemburg ‘Stagnation and Progress of Marxism,’ p. 108. For
a more extended analysis of Luxemburg’s insights, see C. Memos (2012)
‘Crisis of Theory, Subversive Praxis and Dialectical Contradictions: Notes on
Luxemburg and the Anti-capitalist Movement’, Critique, 40: 3, pp. 405–421.
58. Luxemburg ‘Stagnation and Progress of Marxism’, p. 107.
59. Ibid., p. 111.
60. Korsch, K. (1977) ‘The Crisis of Marxism’ in D. Kellner (ed.), Karl Korsch:
Revolutionary Theory (Austin and London: University of Texas Press),
p. 171.
61. Ibid., p. 172.
62. Ibid., pp. 172–173.
63. D. Kellner (1989) Critical Theory, Marxism, and Modernity (Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University Press), p. 12.
64. According to Kellner, ‘in the early days of the Institute Horkheimer planned
to write a book on “Die Krise des Marxismus” ’ but he did not write it.
Kellner Critical Theory, Marxism, and Modernity, p. 236.
65. For a more detailed analysis of how ‘critical theory’ has dealt with the
‘crisis of Marxism’, see D. Kellner (1984) Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis
of Marxism (Berkeley and Los Angels: University of California Press), esp.
pp. 5–9, 125–129.
66. It is also worth mentioning here the contributions made, among oth-
ers, by Georges Sorel, Georgi Plekhanov and Leon Trotsky. On this, see
Sorel, G. (1961) ‘The Decomposition of Marxism’, in I. L. Horowitz (ed.)
Radicalism and Revolt Against Reason (London: Routledge), pp. 207–254; G.
Plekhanov (1898) On the Alleged Crisis in Marxism available at http://www.
marxists. org/archive/plekhanov/1898/xx/crisis.htm; L. Trotsky (1939)
Once Again on the ‘Crisis of Marxism’ available at http://www.marxists.
org/archive/Trotsky/1939/03/marxism.htm.
67. C. Castoriadis (2005) The Imaginary Institution of Society (Cambridge: Polity
Press), pp. 56–57.
68. Ibid., pp. 11–12. On Castoriadis’ contention that Marxism ‘is dead as
theory’, see also Castoriadis The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 62.
154 Notes
69. Similarly, Castoriadis ascribed the philosophical foundation of Marxism’s

decay to its reduction to a closed theoretical system. Castoriadis The
Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 68–70.
70. Castoriadis The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 42.
71. Ibid., p. 59.
72. Ibid., p. 68.
73. Ibid., p. 69.
74. Ibid., p. 70.
75. Ibid., p. 66.
76. Ibid., p. 58.
77. Ibid., p. 58.
78. L. Althusser (1979) ‘The Crisis of Marxism’, in P. Camiller and J. Rothschild
(ed.) Power and Opposition in Post-revolutionary Societies (London: Ink Links),
p. 225.
79. Ibid., p. 226. See also pp. 231 and 236.
80. Ibid., p. 225.
81. Ibid., p. 229.
82. Ibid., p. 229.
83. Ibid., p. 226.
84. E. Altvater and O. Kallscheuer (1979) ‘Socialist Politics and the “Crisis of
Marxism” ’, The Socialist Register, pp. 106–107.
85. Althusser ‘The Crisis of Marxism’, p. 227.
86. N. Poulantzas (1979) ‘Is There a Crisis in Marxism?’, Journal of the Hellenic
Diaspora, 6: 3, p. 11.
87. P. Sweezy (1979) ‘A Crisis in Marxian Theory’, Monthly Review, 31: 2, p. 24.
89. For an interesting presentation of the critical aspects of Marxism in Eastern
Europe, see J. Satterwhite (1992) Varieties of Marxist Humanism: Philosoph-
ical Revision in Postwar Eastern Europe (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press).
90. See, for example, Zwan, A. (1979) ‘Ecstasy and Hangover of a Revolution’,
in M. Markovic and G. Petrovic (eds.) PRAXIS: Yugoslav Essays in the Phi-
losophy and Methodology of the Social Sciences (Boston: Reidel Publishing
Company), pp. 361–369. In this vein, see also Karel Kosik’s texts in James
Satterwhite (1995) (ed.) The Crisis of Modernity. Essays and Observations from
the 1968, especially, ‘Reason and Conscience’ (pp. 13–15), ‘Our Present Cri-
sis’ (pp. 17–51), ‘Socialism and the Crisis of Modern Man’ (pp. 53–62) and
‘The Dialectics of Morality and the Morality of Dialectics’ (pp. 63–76).
91. For instance, it was no by coincidence that Kosik was persecuted and
sentenced to imprisonment, and his books were banned.
93. Ibid., p. 231.
94. Ibid., p. 232.
95. Ibid., p. 233.
96. N. Poulantzas, ‘Is There a Crisis in Marxism?’, p. 15. According to
Poulantzas, the theoretical inadequacies of Marxism could be traced to
the areas of ideology, law, justice, human rights, representative and direct
democracy.
97. Althusser ‘The Crisis of Marxism’, pp. 234–235.
Notes 155
98. Ibid., p. 235.

99. Ibid., p. 237.
100. C. Castoriadis (1978) ‘Les crises d’Althusser: De la langue de bois à la
langue de caoutchouc’, Libre, 4, pp. 239–254. Republished in E. Escobar,
M. Gondicas and P. Vernay (2013) (ed.) C. Castoriadis, Quelle Démocratie?,
Vol. 1 (Paris: Éditions du Sandre), pp. 675–690.
101. Castoriadis ‘Les crises d’Althusser’, 240–241.
102. Ibid., 220.
103. Ibid., 222.
104. Ibid., 243–244.
105. Ibid., p. 245.
106. Korsch, K. (1977) ‘The Passing of Marxian Orthodoxy: Bernstein-Kautsky-
Luxemburg-Lenin’, in D. Kellner (ed.) Karl Korsch: Revolutionary Theory
(Austin: University of Texas Press), p. 180.
107. A. Pannekoek (1936) Party and Working Class, available at http://www.
marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1936/party-working-class.htm.
108. Castoriadis ‘Les crises d’Althusser’, 245.
109. Ibid., 245–251.
110. Ibid., 254.
111. Ibid.
112. Ibid.
114. See on this, among others, Ibid., pp. 58, 70.
115. B. Singer (1979) ‘The Early Castoriadis: Socialism, Barbarism and the
Bureaucratic Thread’, Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, 3: 3,
p. 51.
116. Backhaus, H. G. (2005) ‘Some Aspects of Marx’s Concept of Critique in
the Context of his Economic-Philosophical Theory’, in W. Bonefeld and
K. Psychopedis (eds.) Human Dignity: Social Autonomy and the Critique of
Capitalism (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 13–14.
118. Ibid., p. 60.
119. On the idea of Marxism as a theory of the contradictions of oppression,
see J. Holloway (1993) ‘The Freeing of Marx’, Common Sense, 14, p. 19;
J. Holloway (2005) Change the World Without Taking Power (London: Pluto),
p. 160.
120. See on this distinction J. Holloway (1994) ‘The Relevance of Marxism
Today’, Common Sense, 15, p. 38; J. Holloway (2005) Change the World
Without Taking Power, pp. 135–136 and R. Gunn (1994) ‘Marxism and
Contradiction’, Common Sense, 15, p. 53.
121. W. Bonefeld, R. Gunn and K. Psychopedis (ed.) (1992) Open Marxism:
Dialectics and History, vol. 1 (London: Pluto Press), p. x.
122. According to Ernst Bloch, ‘in Marxism a cold stream and a warm stream
run parallel’.
M. Landmann (1975) ‘Talking with Ernst Bloch: Korčula, 1968’, Telos, 25,
p. 167.
123. S. Clarke (1994) Marx’s Theory of Crisis (London: Macmillan), p. 13.
124. C. Castoriadis (1992) ‘The Crisis of Marxism, The Crisis of Politics’, Dissent,
pp. 221–25.
156 Notes

4 Marx in Question
1. Both Axelos and Papaioannou (especially the latter) remain largely
unknown to the Anglo-Saxon world, and even for Castoriadis there have
been just a few works which deal with his critique of Marxism and Marx.
For Axelos’ critique of Marx, see K. Axelos (1964) Vers la pensée plané-
taire (Paris: Minuit); K. Axelos (1966) Einführung in ein künftiges Denken:
Über Marx und Heidegger (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag); See also the
Spanish translation: K. Axelos Introducción a un pensar futuro: Sobre Marx
y Heidegger (Buenos Aires: Amorrortu editors); K. Axelos (1969) Arguments
d’Une Recherche (Paris: Minuit); K. Axelos (1970) ‘Marx, Freud, and the
Undertakings of Thought in the Future’, Diogenes,18: 72, 96–111; K. Axelos
(1976) Alienation, Praxis and Techne in the Thought of Karl Marx (Austin: Uni-
versity of Texas Press); K. Axelos (1982) ‘Theses on Marx’, in N. Fischer,
L. Patsouras, N. Georgopoulos (eds.) Continuity and Change in Marxism (New
Jersey: Humanities Press).
For Papaioannou’s critical approach to Marx, see K. Papaioannou (1963)
‘Regnum Hominis-Some Observations on Modern Subjectivism’, Diogenes,
41, 26–50; K. Papaioannou (1966) ‘History and Theodicy’, Diogenes,
53, 38–63; K. Papaioannou (1968) ‘The “Associated Producers”: Dicta-
torship, Proletariat, Socialism’, Diogenes, 64, 141–164; K. Papaioannou
(1983) De Marx et du Marxisme (Paris: Gallimard); K. απαϊωάννoυ
(1986) H Ψ υχρ ή Iδεoλoγ ία (Aθήνα: Yψιλoν); K. απαϊωάννoυ (1988)
O Mαρξ ισ μóς σ αν Iδεoλoγ ία (Aθήνα: Eναλλακτικές Eκδóσεις); K. απαϊωάννoυ
(1990) Kρ άτ oς και Φιλoσ oϕία (Aθήνα: Eναλλακτικές Eκδóσεις); K. απαϊωάννoυ
(1991) H Γ ένεσ η τ oυ Oλoκληρωτ ισ μoύ (Aθήνα: Eναλλακτικές Eκδóσεις);
K. απαϊωάννoυ (1994) Φιλoσ oϕία και Tεχ νικ ή (Aθήνα: Eναλλακτικές Eκδóσεις).
2. Axelos Alienation, Praxis and Techne in the Thought of Karl Marx, p. 33.
3. Ibid., p. 34.
4. Ibid., p. 292.
5. Ibid., p. 85.
6. Ibid., p. 130.
7. Ibid., p. 202.
8. Ibid., p. 46.
9. Ibid., p. 327.
10. K. Papaioannou (1983) ‘Le mythe de la dialectique’, in K. Papaioannou (ed.)
De Marx et du Marxisme (Paris: Gallimard), pp. 147–150.
11. K. απαϊωάννoυ (1990) Kρ άτ oς και Φιλoσ oϕία (Aθήνα: Eναλλακτικές Eκδóσεις),
p. 56.
12. K. Marx (1992) Early Writings (Harmondsworth: Penguin), p. 355. Quoted
in K. Papaioannou (1983), ‘La fondation du marxisme’, in K. Papaioannou
De Marx et du Marxisme (Paris: Gallimard), p. 49.
13. Ibid., pp. 49, 52, 54.
Notes 157
14. Ibid., pp. 75–77.

15. Ibid., p. 56.
16. Ibid., p. 82.
Press), pp. 29–32, 56–68.
(ed.) Cornelius Castoriadis: Political and Social Writings, Vol. 2, 1955–1960:
From the Workers’ Struggle Against Bureaucracy to Revolution in the Age
of Modern Capitalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), p. 249.
20. Ibid., p. 28.
21. C. Castoriadis (1984), ‘Marx Today: An Interview’, Thesis Eleven, 8, 1:
pp. 124–32.
22. C. Castoriadis (1984), ‘Technique’, in C. Castoriadis Crossroads in the
Labyrinth (Brighton: The Harvester Press), p. 247. On this see also
Castoriadis The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 21.
23. K. απαϊωάννoυ (1990) Kρ άτ oς και Φιλoσ oϕία, pp. 66–67.
24. Ibid., p. 67.
25. Ibid., p. 66.
26. Ibid., p. 70.
27. Ibid., p. 70.
28. Ibid., p. 72.
29. St. Paul (2003) ‘The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians’ The Holy Bible,
The New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 13:8–12, p. 187.
Quoted in K. απαϊωάννoυ (1990) Kρ άτ oς και Φιλoσ oϕία, p. 76.
30. Ibid., p. 76.
31. Ibid., p. 77.
32. Ibid., p. 79.
33. K. Papaioannou (1963) ‘Regnum Hominis-Some Observations on Modern
Subjectivism’, Diogenes, 41, Spring, p. 29.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., pp. 30, 32, 33.
37. K. Marx and F. Engels (1991) ‘Manifesto of the Communist party’, in
K. Marx and F. Engels (ed.) Selected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart),
p. 39.
38. For an extensive analysis of this, see K. Papaioannou ‘L’Occident et la
Russie. Introduction à la Russophobie de Marx’ and K. Papaioannou ‘Marx
et la politique internationale’ in K. Papaioannou (1983) De Marx et du
Marxisme (Paris: Gallimard), pp. 462–562.
40. Ibid., p. 10.
41. Ibid., p. 105.
42. Ibid., p. 70.
43. Ibid., p. 63.
44. Ibid., p, 63.
158 Notes
45. C. Castoriadis (1984) Crossroads in the Labyrinth (Brighton: The Harvester

Press), p. 247.
46. H. Grotius (2005) Rights of War and Peace (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund)
p. 420.
47. C. Castoriadis (1984) ‘Value, Equality, Justice, Politics: From Marx to
Aristotle and from Aristotle to Ourselves’, in C. Castoriadis (ed.) Crossroads
in the Labyrinth (Brighton: The Harvester Press) p. 263.
48. Ibid., p. 279.
49. Ibid., p. 279.
50. Ibid., pp. 277–278.
51. Ibid., p. 278.
53. Ibid., p. 56.
54. Ibid., p. 57.
55. K. Marx (1990) Capital, Vol. I (Harmondsworth: Penguin), p. 165.
For Papaioannou’s discussion of fetishism, see K. απαϊωάννoυ (1994)
Φιλoσ oϕία και Tεχ νικ ή, pp. 50–53.
57. K. Marx (1990) Capital, Vol. I (Harmondsworth: Penguin), p. 92.
59. Ibid.
61. Ibid., p. 136.
62. Ibid., p. 217.
63. Ibid., p. 135.
64. On the concept of alienation as a ‘process’ and a ‘constant struggle’, see,
among others, J. Holloway (1997) ‘A Note on Alienation’, Historical Mate-
rialism, 1: Autumn, 146–149; Holloway, J. (2002) ‘Class and Classification:
Against, in and beyond Labour’, in A. Dinerstein and M. Neary (eds.) The
Labour Debate (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 27–33.
65. H. Reichelt (2005) ‘Social Reality as Appearance: Some Notes on Marx’s
Conception of Reality’, in W. Bonefeld and K. Psychopedis (eds.) Human
Dignity, p. 33.
66. J. Holloway (2002) ‘Class and Classification: Against, in and beyond
Labour’, in A. Dinerstein and M. Neary (eds.) The Labour Debate, p. 31.
68. Ibid., pp. 56–57.
69. Castoriadis ‘Modern Capitalism and Revolution’, p. 256.
70. Papaioannou ‘History and Theodicy’, p. 58.
71. Ibid.
72. K. Marx and F. Engels (1998) The German Ideology (Prometheus Books),
p. 457.
73. Marx Capital, Vol. I, p. 92. See Castoriadis The Imaginary Institution of Society,
p. 57.
74. K. Marx (1990) Capital, Vol. I, p. 929. According to Papaioannou, Marx’s
theory that people liberate themselves through the development of the
productive forces and his fetishist conviction about the ‘natural laws’
which determine the movement of capitalist society was used by ortho-
dox Marxism, but only at the expense of Marx’s theory of class struggle
Notes 159
as ‘motive force’ of society. K. απαϊωάννoυ (1990) Kρ άτ oς και Φιλoσ oϕία,

p. 139.
75. Marx Capital, Vol. I, p. 101. Quoted in Castoriadis The Imaginary Institution
of Society, pp. 57, 378.
77. Ibid., p. 58.
78. C. Castoriadis (2000) Interview in the Italian Journal Metropoli (30 Novem-
ber 1978). I use here the Greek translation, K. Kαστoριάδης, ‘Mετάβαση’ in
K. Kαστoριάδης, Kαιρ óς (Aθήνα: Yψιλoν), p. 13.
79. Castoriadis ‘Marx Today: An Interview’, p. 128.
80. Ibid.
82. Castoriadis ‘Technique’, p. 235.
83. Ibid.
84. Ibid., p. 237.
85. Ibid.
86. Ibid., p. 245.
87. Ibid., p. 249.
88. Ibid.
90. M. Reinfelder (1980) ‘Introdution: Breaking the Spell of Technicism’, in
P. Slater (ed.) Outlines of a Critique of Technology (London: Ink Links),
p. 35.
91. Castoriadis ‘Technique’, p. 251.
92. Ibid., pp. 251, 252.
93. Ibid.
94. Ibid., p. 247. On this, see also Castoriadis The Imaginary Institution of Society,
p. 21.
95. C. Memos (2009) ‘For Marx and Marxism: An Interview with Kostas Axelos’,
Thesis Eleven, 98:129–39.
96. H. G. Backhaus (1992) ‘Between Philosophy and Science: Marxian Social
Economy as Critical Theory’, in W. Bonefeld, R. Gunn and K. Psychopedis
(ed.) Open Marxism: Dialectics and History, vol. 1 (London: Pluto Press), p. 58.
97. M. Reinfelder (1980) ‘Introdution: Breaking the Spell of Technicism’ in
pp. 35–36.
98. Marx Capital, Vol. I, p. 548.
99. Ibid., pp. 544–545.
100. R. Panzieri (1980) ‘The Capitalist Use of Machinery: Marx Versus the
“Objectivists” ’, in P. Slater (ed.) Outlines of a Critique of Technology (London:
Ink Links), p. 64.
102. Ibid., pp. 30–31.
104. K. Marx (1991) ‘Marx to Joseph Weydemeyer, 5/3/1852’, in K. Marx and
F. Engels (eds.) Selected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart), p. 638.
106. Ibid.
107. Ibid., p. 30.
160 Notes
108. J. Holloway (1992) ‘Crisis, Fetishism, Class Composition’, in W. Bonefeld,

R. Gunn and K. Psychopedis (ed.) Open Marxism: Theory and Practice , vol. 2
(London: Pluto Press), p. 150.
109. J. Holloway (1991) ‘The Great Bear: Post-Fordism and Class Struggle.
A Comment on Bonefeld and Jessop’, in W. Bonefeld and J. Holloway (eds.)
Post-Fordism and Social Form (London: Macmillan), p. 99.
110. Holloway ‘Crisis, Fetishism, Class Composition’, p. 150.
111. K. Marx (1990) Capital, Vol. I, p. 92.
113. Ibid., p. 58.
114. K. Marx (2000) Capital, Vol. I, p. 283 quoted in H. Cleaver Reading Capital
Politically (London: AK Press), p. 88.
115. Ibid.
116. Papaioannou ‘Le mythe de la dialectique’ p. 176.
117. Ibid., pp. 176–177.
118. See J. Holloway (1994) ‘The Relevance of Marxism Today’, Common Sense,
15, 38–39; R. Gunn (1994) ‘Marxism and Contradiction’, Common Sense, 15,
53–58.
119. J. Holloway (2005) Change the World Without Taking Power (London: Pluto
Press), p. 135.
121. Ibid., p. 249.
123. Backhaus, H.G. (2005) ‘Some Aspects of Marx’s Concept of Critique in
the Context of his Economic-Philosophical Theory’, in W. Bonefeld and
K. Psychopedis (eds.) Human Dignity: Social Autonomy and the Critique of
Capitalism (Aldershot: Ashgate), p. 22.
124. S. Clarke (1994) Marx’s Theory of Crisis (London: Macmillan), p. 10.
125. Backhaus ‘Some Aspects of Marx’s Concept of Critique in the Context of
his Economic-Philosophical Theory’, pp. 13–14.
126. H. Marcuse (2000) Reason and Revolution (London: Routlege), p. 281.
127. Ibid., p. 281.
128. For a relatively recent use of Castoriadis’ and Axelos’ critique of Marx’s
Western humanism, see T. Serequeberhan (1990) ‘Karl Marx and African
Emancipatory Thought: A Critique of Marx’s Euro-centric Metaphysics’,
Praxis International, 10, 161–181.
129. Marx Capital, Vol. I, p. 102.
130. Axelos ‘Theses on Marx’, p. 67.
131. Castoriadis Crossroads in the Labyrinth, p. 280.
132. P. Murray and J. Schuler (1988) ‘Post-Marxism in a French Context’, History
of European Ideas, 9: 3, pp. 324.
133. Papaioannou ‘The “Associated Producers”: Dictatorship, Proletariat, Social-
ism’, p. 164.
134. Axelos ‘Marx, Freud, and the Undertakings of Thought in the Future’,
p. 105.
135. Ibid., pp. 107–108.
136. F. Bordes (2004) ‘Le Rire de Kostas Papaïoannou’ in L. Catteeuw and
F. Bordes (eds.) L’ Amitié: Les Travaux et les Jours: Cahier Kostas Papaïoannou
(Paris: Didier Sedon/Acedia), p. 144.
Notes 161

138. K. Kαστoριάδης O Θρυμματ ισ μένoς Kóσ μoς (Aθήνα: Yψιλoν, 1992),
p. 159.
139. C. Castoriadis (1992) ‘The Crisis of Marxism, The Crisis of Politics’,
p. 223.
141. Castoriadis ‘The Crisis of Marxism, The Crisis of Politics’, p. 221.
142. C. Castoriadis (1997) ‘Recommencing the Revolution’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.)
The Castoriadis Reader, p. 107.
144. Ibid., p. 60.
145. Ibid.
148. Castoriadis ‘Recommencing the Revolution’, p. 109.
150. Castoriadis, C. ‘Presentation of Socialisme ou Barbarie. An organ of Critique
and Revolutionary Orientation’, p. 36.
151. Ibid., p. 36.
152. M. Horkheimer (1972) ‘The Social Function of Philosophy’, in
M. Horkheimer (ed.) Critical Theory: Selected Essays (New York: Herder and
Herder), p. 271.
153. T. S. Eliot (1969) ‘Little Gidding’, in The Complete Poems and Plays of T.S. Eliot
(London: Faber and Faber), p. 197.
154. Memos ‘For Marx and Marxism’, p. 134.
155. J. Fracchia. and C. Ryan (1992) ‘Historical-Materialist Science, Crisis and
Commitment’ in R. Gunn and K. Psychopedis (eds.) Open Marxism:
Dialectics and History, Vol. II (London: Pluto, 1992), pp. 56, 58, 60.
156. Memos ‘For Marx and Marxism’, p. 136.
157. Quoted in M. Landmann (1975) ‘Talking with Ernst Bloch: Korcula, 1968’,
Telos, 25, p. 170.
158. Fracchia and Ryan ‘Historical-Materialist Science, Crisis and Commitment’,
p. 65.
159. R. Luxemburg (1970) ‘Stagnation and Progress of Marxism’, in M.A. Waters
(ed.) Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (New York: Pathfinder Press), p. 107.
160. Horkheimer ‘The Social Function of Philosophy’, p. 268.
161. C. Cavafy (1992) ‘Theodotos’, in G. Savidis (ed.) Collected Poems (New
Jersey: Princeton University Press), p. 54.
5 The Crisis of Modern Societies and the Revival

of Emancipatory Politics
1. R. Aron (1969) The Elusive Revolution: Anatomy of a Student Revolt (New York:
Praeger), p. ix, quoted in K. Ross (2002) May ’68 and its Afterlives (Chicago
and London: University of Chicago Press), p. 67.
2. Quoted in K. Ross (2002) May ’68 and its Afterlives, p. 186.
3. H. Samuel (2007) ‘Sarkozy Attacks “Immoral” Heritage of 1968’, Daily
Telegraph, 1 May.
162 Notes
4. On this, see C. Castoriadis (1997) ‘The Movements of the Sixties’, in

D. A. Curtis (ed.) World in Fragments (Stanford: Stanford University Press),
p. 47 and K. Ross (2002) May ’68 and its Afterlives, p. 182.
5. K. Marx and F. Engels (1975) The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism
(Progress Publishers), p. 110.
6. Ernst Bloch, quoted in M. Landmann (1975) ‘Talking with Ernst Bloch:
Korčula, 1968’, Telos, 25, p. 179.
7. H. Marcuse (1964) One-Dimensional Man (London: Routledge), p. 98.
8. W. Benjamin (2003) ‘On the Concept of History’, in W. Benjamin (ed.)
Selected Writings, Vol. 4, 1938–1940 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press), p. 390.
9. J. Holloway ‘1968 and Doors to New Worlds’, Turbulence, no. 2, pp. 9–14.
10. C. Castoriadis (1993) ‘The Anticipated Revolution’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.)
Cornelius Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings, Vol. 3, 1961–1979,
Recommmencing the Revolution: From Socialism to Autonomous Society
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), p. 125.
11. T. W. Adorno (2000) Introduction to Sociology (Cambridge: Polity Press),
p. 150.
12. Castoriadis ‘The Movements of the Sixties’, p. 49.
13. See on this M. Löwy (2000) ‘The Revolutionary Romanticism of May 1968’,
Thesis Eleven, 68, February, p. 96; R. Viénet (1992) Enrages and Situationists
in the Occupation Movement: France, May 1968 (New York and London:
Autonomedia and Rebel Press), p. 121.
14. Castoriadis ‘The Anticipated Revolution’, p. 126.
15. R. Viénet (1992) Enrages and Situationists in the Occupation Movement: France,
May 1968, p. 121.
16. For Holloway, 1968 was ‘the crisis of the working class as abstract labour,
its birth as useful-creative doing’, in J. Holloway, ‘1968 and Doors to New
Worlds’.
18. Ibid., p. 125.
19. Ibid., p. 127.
20. For Castoriadis’ critique and reference to Althusser, Foucault, Lévi-Strauss,
Lacan, Barthes, see Castoriadis, ‘The Movements of the Sixties’, pp. 50–52.
His views could be epitomized in the following words of his: ‘The well-
known writing on the Sorbonne walls, “Althusser à rien” needs no
commentary’. Castoriadis, ‘The Movements of the Sixties’, p. 51. Also,
Castoriadis, C. (1993) ‘The Diversionists’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) Cornelius
Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings, Vol. 3, 1961–1979, p. 274.
24. Quoted in K. Ross (2002) May ’68 and its Afterlives, p. 193.
25. C.L.R James (2001) The Black Jacobins (London: Penguin Books), p. xix.
27. M. Horkheimer (1972) ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’, in M. Horkheimer
(ed.) Critical Theory: Selected Essays (New York: Herder and Herder), p. 218.
29. Ibid., p. 133.
30. Ibid., p. 132.
Notes 163
31. Ibid., p. 132.

32. R. Luxemburg ‘The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions’,
in M. A. Waters (ed.) Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (New York: Pathfinder Press),
p. 197.
33. Ibid., p. 182.
35. R. Viénet (1992) Enrages and Situationists in the Occupation Movement: France,
May 1968, p. 77.
37. Ibid., p. 55.
38. J. Agnoli (2002) ‘Emancipation: Paths and Goals’, in W. Bonefeld and
S. Tischler (eds.) What Is to Be Done? Leninism, Anti-Leninist Marxism and
the Question of Revolution Today (Aldershot: Ashgate) p. 194.
40. Castoriadis ‘The Anticipated Revolution’, pp. 130–131.
41. Ibid., p. 150.
42. R. Viénet, Enragés and Situationists in the Occupation Movement, France, May
’68, p. 71.
44. Ibid., p. 151.
47. Ibid., p. 288.
48. C. Castoriadis (1988) ‘On the Content of Socialism, II’, in D. A. Curtis
49. Ibid., pp. 155–156.
50. D. A. Curtis (1989) ‘Socialism or Barbarism: The Alternative Presented in the
Work of Cornelius Castoriadis’, in G.Busino (ed.) Autonomie et autotransfor-
mation de la société. La philosophie militante de Cornelius Castoriadis (Geneva:
Droz) 1989, p. 305. For Curtis’ analysis of Castoriadis’ views on crisis, see
especially pp. 303–307.
52. C. Castoriadis (1993) ‘The Crisis of Modern Society’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.)
Cornelius Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings, Vol. 3, 1961–1979, p. 115.
53. Ibid., p. 115.
Press), p. 16.
56. Ibid., p. 16.
57. Castoriadis ‘Modern Capitalism and Revolution’, p. 259. And again, in the
same essay, he notes that the fundamental contradiction of capitalism is
inherent in the fundamental relation that constitutes the capitalist

organization of production and of work. In the capitalist method of
164 Notes
organizing these areas, the system is constantly trying to reduce just

about every worker into a pure and simple executant. But this system
would collapse as soon as workers were completely reduced to such a
status. It therefore is obliged simultaneously to solicit the participation
of the executants in the labor process and to forbid them from showing
any initiative.
Castoriadis ‘Modern Capitalism and Revolution’, p. 282.

58. Castoriadis ‘On the Content of Socialism, II’, p. 93.
59. J. Holloway (2005) Change the World Without Taking Power (London: Pluto
Press), p. 188.
60. Ibid., p. 173.
61. Castoriadis ‘On the Content of Socialism, II’, pp. 93, 92.
64. T. Adorno (2006) History and Freedom (Cambridge: Polity Press), p. 50.
On this, see also pp. 51, 52, 56.
65. T. Adorno (2003) Negative Dialectics (London: Continuum), p. 320.
66. H. Cleaver (1992) ‘The Inversion of Class Perspective in Marxian Theory:
From Valorisation to Self-Valorisation’, p. 116.
67. C. Castoriadis (1993) ‘Recommencing the Revolution’ in D. A. Curtis
Recommencing the Revolution: From Socialism to Autonomous Society
68. Ibid., pp. 49–50.
69. Adorno Negative Dialectics, p. 143.
71. M. Hardt and A. Negri (2000) Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press), p. 202.
72. Ibid., p. 222.
73. H. Lefebvre(2004) ‘Modernity and Modernism’, in B. Buchloh, S. Guilbaut
and D. Solkin (eds.) Modernism and Modernity. The Vancouver Conference
Papers (Halifax Nova Scotia: The Press of NSCAD), p. 2.
76. Ibid., p. 306.
77. C. Castoriadis (1997) ‘The Retreat from Autonomy: Postmodernism as Gen-
eralized Conformism’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) World in Fragments (Stranford:
Stanford University Press), p. 36.
78. Ibid., p. 36.
79. Ibid. On this see also C. Castoriadis (2003) ‘The Dilapidation of the West’,
in C. Castoriadis, The Rising Tide of Insignificancy (The Big Sleep), pp. 81–83.
80. Castoriadis ‘The Retreat from Autonomy: Postmodernism as Generalized
Conformism’, p. 39. For the conflict between these two significations
and their significance for the development and function of capitalism,
see also C. Castoriadis (2003) ‘The Crisis of the Identification Process’ in
C. Castoriadis, The Rising Tide of Insignificancy (The Big Sleep), pp. 215–216.
Conformism’, p. 39.
Notes 165
82. Castoriadis ‘The Dilapidation of the West’, p. 83.

84. J. Hyppolite (1969) ‘The Significance of the French Revolution in Hegel’s
Phenomenology’, in J. Hyppolite Studies on Marx and Hegel (New York: Basic
Books), p. 42.
85. K. Papaioannou (1966) ‘History and Theodicy’, Diogenes, Spring: 53, p. 46.
86. Ibid., p. 47.
87. Ibid, p. 48.
88. K. Kosik (1976) Dialectics of the Concrete (Boston: D. Reidel Publishing
Company), p. 111.
89. As Klooger plausibly asks,
To what extent is it legitimate to speak of a singular “project of auton-

omy” emerging in different societies, when each of these instances is
conceived as being a creation of the specific society in question? On the
other hand, if there are multiple projects, on what basis are we justified
in calling them all projects of “autonomy”?
J. Klooger (2009) Castoriadis: Psyche, Society, Autonomy (Leiden and Boston:

Brill), p. 273.
91. Ibid., p. 43.
92. Castoriadis ‘The Crisis of Modern Society’, p. 107.
93. See on this C. Castoriadis (2003) ‘Between the Western Void and the Arab
Myth’, in C. Castoriadis (ed.) The Rising Tide of Insignificancy (The Big
Sleep), p. 67; C. Castoriadis (2003) ‘The Rising Tide of Insignificancy’ in
C. Castoriadis (ed.) The Rising Tide of Insignificancy (The Big Sleep), p. 133;
Castoriadis ‘The Crisis of the Identification Process’, pp. 211, 214–215;
Castoriadis, ‘The Dilapidation of the West’, p. 78; C. Castoriadis (1997)
‘The Crisis of Western Societies’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) The Castoriadis Reader
(Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 255, 260, 262.
94. Castoriadis ‘The Crisis of the Identification Process’, p. 228.
95. Ibid., p. 208.
96. C. Castoriadis and C. Lasch (2011) ‘Beating the Retreat into Private Life’, in
C. Castoriadis (ed.) Postscript on Insignificancy, p. 69. Translated from the
French and edited anonymously as a public service. Available at http://
www.notbored.org/cornelius-castoriadis.html.
98. Ibid., p. 88. On this, see also Castoriadis ‘The Rising Tide of Insignificancy’,
pp. 137–138.
99. On Castoriadis’ views concerning the ‘anthropological type’ or the ‘anthro-
pological question’ and their correlation with the respective social regime
that they have sprung from see Castoriadis ‘The Dilapidation of the West’,
pp. 86–89; Castoriadis ‘The Rising Tide of Insignificancy’, pp. 137–138;
Castoriadis ‘The Crisis of the Identification Process’, pp. 213, 216–217.
100. K. Polanyi (1957) The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press),
pp. 57, 77.
166 Notes
101. See C. Castoriadis (2003) ‘The Vacuum Industry’, in Cornelius Castoriadis

(ed.) The Rising Tide of Insignificancy (The Big Sleep), pp. 2–13.
102. G. W. F. Hegel (1963) Hegel’s Lectures on The History of Philosophy, Vol. 3
(London: Routledge), p. 425.
103. For Castoriadis’ positions on the cultural crisis of modern societies, see
C. Castoriadis (1993) ‘Social Transformation and Cultural Creation’, in D. A.
Curtis (ed.) Cornelius Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings, Vol. 3, esp.
pp. 303–311 and C. Castoriadis (1991) ‘The Crisis of Culture and the State’,
in D. A. Curtis (ed.) Cornelius Castoriadis: Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy
(Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 218–242.
107. C. Castoriadis (1991) ‘Reflections on “Rationality” and “Development” ’,
in D. A. Curtis (ed.) Cornelius Castoriadis: Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy,
p. 180.
108. Ibid., p. 186.
109. Ibid., p. 186.
110. C. Castoriadis (2011) ‘The Crisis of the Imaginary?’, in C. Castoriadis (ed.)
Postscript on Insignificancy. Translated from the French and edited anony-
mously as a public service. Available at http://www.notbored.org/PSRTI.pdf,
p. 108.
111. Castoriadis (2003) ‘The Rising Tide of Insignificancy’, p. 130.
113. Castoriadis ‘The Crisis of Western Societies’, p. 262.
114. Ibid., pp. 262, 263.
115. C. Castoriadis (2003) ‘Between the Western Void and the Arab Myth’, in
C. Castoriadis (ed.), The Rising Tide of Insignificancy (The Big Sleep). Trans-
lated from the French and edited anonymously as a public service. Available
at http://www.costis.org/x/castoriadis/Castoriadis-rising_tide.pdf, p. 71.
117. Castoriadis ‘The Crisis of Culture and the State’, p. 220.
118. Castoriadis ‘The Rising Tide of Insignificancy’, pp. 135–136. For Castoriadis’
account regarding the decadence and decay of modern societies, see also,
among others, Castoriadis ‘The Crisis of Western Societies’, pp. 253–254;
Castoriadis ‘The Rising Tide of Insignificancy’, p. 143 and Castoriadis ‘The
Vacuum Industry’, p. 6.
119. Castoriadis ‘The Rising Tide of Insignificancy’, p. 153.
123. Ibid., p. 229.
124. Ibid., p. 228.
125. On this, see Castoriadis ‘Social Transformation and Cultural Creation’,
pp. 301, 303.
126. Ibid., p. 300.
129. Castoriadis ‘The Crisis of Culture and the State’, p. 220.
Notes 167
130. Castoriadis ‘On the Content of Socialism, III: The Workers’ Struggle against
the Organization of the Capitalist Enterprise’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) Cornelius
Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings, Vol. 2, p. 156.
132. Ibid., p. 304.
133. Castoriadis makes the same point in Castoriadis ‘Recommencing the
Revolution’, p. 48.
134. Castoriadis ‘On the Content of Socialism, II’ in D. A. Curtis (ed.) Cornelius
Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings, Vol. 2, p. 92.
135. H. Marcuse (2000) Reason and Revolution (London: Routledge), p. 283.
137. Castoriadis, C. (1993) ‘Socialism and Autonomous Society’, in D. A. Curtis
(ed.) Cornelius Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings, Vol. 3, p. 317.
139. C. Castoriadis (2011) ‘A Thoroughgoing Shakeup of All Forms of Social
Life: An Introductory Interview’, in C. Castoriadis (ed.) Postscript on
Insignificancy, pp. 53, 57.
140. C. Castoriadis (2011) ‘Perish the Church, the State, the Universities,
the Media, and the Consensus’, in C. Castoriadis (ed.) Postscript on
Insignificancy, p. 88.
141. J. Burnham (1943) The Machiavellians (London: Putnam and Company),
p. 184.
142. Castoriadis ‘Perish the Church, the State, the Universities, the Media, and
the Consensus’, p. 88.
143. K. Marx and F. Engels (1991) ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, in
K. Marx and F. Engels (ed.) Selected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart),
p. 44.
144. Ibid., p. 33.
145. K. Axelos (1982) ‘Theses on Marx’ in N. Fischer, L. Patsouras,
N. Georgopoulos (ed.) Continuity and Change in Marxism (New Jersey:
146. R. M. Rilke (1946) Letters to a Young Poet (London: Sidgwick and Jackson),
p. 21.
147. R. Luxemburg (1970) ‘The Russian Revolution’, in M. A. Waters (ed.) Rosa
Luxemburg Speaks (New York: Pathfinder Press), p. 393.
148. C. Castoriadis (1997) ‘The Pulverization of Marxism-Leninism’, in
D. A. Curtis (ed.) World in Fragments (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press), p. 64.
149. C. Castoriadis (1997) ‘The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Auton-
omy’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) The Castoriadis Reader, p. 310.
151. C. Castoriadis (2013) ‘Democracy and Relativism. Discussion with the
“Mauss” Group’, p. 40. Translated from the French and edited anony-
mously as a public service. Available at http://www.notbored.org/cornelius-
castoriadis.html.
153. Ibid., p. 102.
154. Castoriadis The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 75. For the issue of auton-
omy as a project in Castoriadis’ thought, see J. Klooger ‘The Meaning
168 Notes
of Autonomy: Project, Self-Limitation, Democracy and Socialism’, Thesis

Eleven, 108: 1, pp. 84–86.
156. Ibid., p. 111.
157. K. Psychopedis (1991) ‘Crisis of Theory in the Contemporary Social Sci-
ences’, in W. Bonefeld and J. Holloway (eds.) Post-Fordism and Social Form
(London: Macmillan), p. 187.
158. Castoriadis ‘Perish the Church, the State, the Universities, the Media, and
the Consensus’, p. 88.
159. C. Castoriadis (1990) ‘Does the Idea of Revolution Still Make Sense?’, Thesis
Eleven, 26, p. 138.
160. Castoriadis ‘Recommencing the Revolution’, p. 48.
161. A. Honneth (1986) ‘Rescuing the Revolution with an Ontology:
On Cornelius Castoriadis’ Theory of Society’, Thesis Eleven, 14, p. 62.
162. C. Castoriadis (1993) ‘The Hungarian Source’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.)
Cornelius Castoriadis: Political and Social Writings, Vol. 3, 1961–1979:
163. C. Castoriadis (2010) ‘What Revolution Is’, in E. Escobar, M. Gondicas,
and P. Vernay (eds.) A Society Adrift: Interviews and Debates, 1974–1997
(New York: Fordham University Press), p. 144.
Conclusions
1. K. Kosik (1995) ‘Socialism and the Crisis of Modern Man’, in J. H. Satterwhite
(ed.) The Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Observations from the 1968 Era
(Lanham and London: Rowman and Littlefield), p. 59.
2. K. Axelos (1982) ‘Theses on Marx’, in N. Fischer, L. Patsouras,
N. Georgopoulos (ed.) Continuity and Change in Marxism (New Jersey:
3. H. Marcuse (1968) ‘Philosophy and Critical Theory’, in H. Marcuse, Negations
(London: Penguin), p.143.
4. C. Castoriadis ‘Recommencing the Revolution’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) Cornelius
Castoriadis: Political and Social Writings, Vol. 3, 1961–1979: Recommencing
the Revolution: From Socialism to Autonomous Society (Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press), p. 109.
5. K. Korsch (1977) ‘Ten Theses on Marxism Today’, in D. Kellner (ed.) Karl
Korsch: Revolutionary Theory, (Austin: University of Texas Press), p. 281.
6. On this, see E. P. Thompson (1978) The Poverty of Theory (London: Merlin
Press), pp. 360–361.
7. For Castoriadis’ influence on the Italian radical and libertarian move-
ment, see A. Mangano, ‘Castoriadis e il Marxismo’, in G. Busino (ed.)
Autonomie et autotransformation de la société. La philosophie militante de
Cornelius Castoriadis, pp. 60–1.
8. See International Communist Current (2001) The Dutch and German Commu-
nist Left (London: Porcupine Press), pp. 351–358.
Notes 169
9. C. Castoriadis, ‘The Crisis of Marxism, The Crisis of Politics’, Dissent, Spring

1992, p. 224.
10. C. Castoriadis ‘The Movements of the Sixties’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) World in
Fragments (Stanford: Stanford University Press), p. 53.
11. According to Khilnani, these ‘self-proclaimed New Philosophers’ were
former gauchistes who took history to be little more than the playing out
of ideas, and to whom the Marxist conception of revolution inevitably
resulted in terror and violence administrated by the State. Trumpeting
arguments appropriated from Popper, Talmon and Arendt (each had until
that point received little attention in France), the New Philosophers
asserted the impossibility of revolutionary innocence: there was no lost
treasure to recover. This ferociously negative argument – anti-statist, anti-
totalitarian, anti-Soviet gained wide diffusion. The obsessional centre of
their reflections was the notion of “totalitarianism”.
Sunil Khilnani, Arguing Revolution, pp. 123–124. For the ideas of the
‘New Philosophers’, see P. Dews, ‘The ‘New Philosophers’ and the end of
Leftism’, Radical Philosophy, spring 1980: 24, p. 2–11; P. Dews, ‘The Nouvell
Philosophie and Foucault’, Economy and Society, 8: 2, May 1979, pp. 127–171.
12. C. Castoriadis ‘The Diversionists’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) Cornelius Castoriadis:
Political and Social Writings, Vol. 3, 1961–1979: Recommmencing the Revo-
lution: From Socialism to Autonomous Society (Minneapolis: University of
13. Ibid., p. 277.
14. Ibid., p. 275.
15. Ibid., p. 276.
16. Ibid., p. 276.
17. Ibid., p. 276.
18. C. Castoriadis (1997) ‘Recommencing the Revolution’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.)
The Castoriadis Reader, p. 130.
19. M. Landmann, ‘Talking with Ernst Bloch: Korčula, 1968’, Telos 25: 165–185.
20. K. Kosík (1995) ‘Reason and Conscience’, in J. Satterwhite (ed.) The Crisis of
Modernity: Essays and Observations from the 1968 Era, pp. 13, 15.
21. C. Castoriadis ‘The Anticipated Revolution’, in D. A. Curtis (ed.) Cornelius
Castoriadis: Political and Social Writings, Vol. 3, 1961–1979: Recommmencing
the Revolution: From Socialism to Autonomous Society (Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press), p. 132.
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Index
Adorno, T., 18, 103, 113, 114, 141, Engels, F., 13, 30, 57, 83, 88, 127, 146,
150, 162, 164, 170 152, 153, 157, 158, 159, 162, 167,
Agnoli, J., 106, 141, 149, 150, 163, 170 177, 178
Alienation, 20, 21, 72, 80, 81, 82, 109,
110, 113, 118, 129, 156, 157, 158, Fehér, F., 41, 150, 151, 152, 175
170, 176 fetishism, 32, 80, 81, 82, 93, 110, 158,
Althusser, L., iv, 5, 6, 20, 46, 60, 61, 160, 176
62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 90, 135, Foucault, M., 21, 144, 145, 162,
144, 154, 155, 162, 170, 171, 179 169, 175
Arendt, H., iv, 5, 6, 41, 43, 45–9, 51–5, Fragmented bureaucratic capitalism,
142, 150–2, 169–70, 176, 180 38, 43
Aristotle, 79, 95, 158, 171 Frankfurt School, 3, 17, 57, 71, 144,
Aron, R., 96, 102, 161, 170 150, 179
Axelos, K., iv, viii, 5, 6, 17, 70, 71, 72,
74, 78, 79, 80, 81, 86, 88, 91, 93, Gramsci, A., 3, 13, 62, 94
95, 96, 97, 133, 150, 156, 157, Guerin, D., 147, 175
158, 159, 160, 167, 168, 170, 178
Hegel, G.W.F., 20, 21, 22, 23, 72,
Backhaus, H.G., 94, 155, 159, 160, 175, 179
170, 171 Hegelianism, 58
base-superstructure, 43, 65, 89 Heidegger, M., 21, 96, 145, 156, 170
Benjamin, W., 50, 151, 162, 171 Heller, A., 49, 150, 151, 152, 175
Bernstein, E., 55, 64, 153, 155, Holloway, J., 82, 91, 94, 103, 155, 158,
171, 177 160, 162, 164, 168, 176, 179, 182
Bloch, E., 34, 98, 139, 148, 155, 161, Honneth, A., 131, 168, 176
162, 169, 177 Horkheimer, H., 44, 99, 150, 153,
Bolshevism, 10, 32, 34, 135, 148 161, 162
Bureaucracy, 6, 25, 26, 27, 30, 32, 35, Husserl, E., 21, 145
36–45, 64, 115, 116, 122, 133, Hyppolite, J., 176
141, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 156,
157, 163, 171, 172, 174, 177 Ideal-type, 48
civil disobedience, 50 James, C.L.R., 24, 162, 176

Clarke, S., 67, 94, 155, 160, 174
Cleaver, H., 92, 152, 160, 164, 174 Koestler, A., 17, 19, 44, 176
Korsch, K., 13, 22, 50, 56, 57, 60, 64,
dialectic(s), 20, 51, 58, 66, 74, 77, 78, 135, 151, 153, 155, 168, 176, 177
89, 94, 105, 128, 150, 154, 155, Kosik, K., 61, 118, 133, 139, 150, 154,
159, 161, 164, 165, 170, 171, 175, 165, 168, 169, 177
177, 178 Kronstadt rebellion, 49
direct democracy, 104, 126, 129,
140, 154 Lasch, C., 120, 165, 174
Dunayevskaya, R., 24 Lefebvre, H., 115, 164
182
Index 183
Lefort, C., iv, 5, 22, 23, 26, 27, 32, 33, Poulantzas, N., 61, 62, 90, 154, 179
145, 147 Proudhon, P.J., 20, 29, 146, 177
Levi, P., 55, 152, 177
Liberal Oligarchies, 122 Reification, 67, 80, 81, 82, 100, 103,
Lukács, G., 11, 13, 22, 110 108, 110, 111, 124
Luxemburg, R., 10, 11, 13, 50, 51, 56, Rilke, R. M., 167, 179
60, 98, 105, 127, 128, 151, 153,
155, 161, 163, 167, 177, 178 Self-determination, 45, 106, 129
Self-institution, 53, 54, 69, 101, 131
Marcuse, H., 95, 102, 126, 134, 153, Self-management, 31, 50, 53, 54,
160, 162, 167, 168, 85, 105
176, 177 Self-organization, 39, 53, 58, 69, 83,
Masaryk, T.G., 46, 55, 152, 178 105, 106, 127, 129, 131
Merleau-Ponty, M., 22, 145 Social imaginary significations, 38, 39,
Morin, E., 148, 178 44, 75, 84, 117
Socialisme ou Barbarie, 23, 24, 35, 47,
Negri, T., 115, 152, 164, 175 133, 145, 146, 148, 161, 173, 175
New Philosophers, 137, 169, 175 Sorel, G., 153, 180
Spanish civil war (1936), 51
Orwell. G., 19 State capitalism, 35, 37, 38, 149, 179
Stinas, S., 10, 11, 142
Pannekoek, A., iv, 5, 6, 26, 33, 34, 35, Stratocracy, 41, 42, 44, 48
36, 64, 148, 155, 178 Structuralism, 104
Panzieri, R., 90, 159, 178
Papaioannou, K., iv, viii, 5, 6, 17, 31, Third historical solution, 37, 148, 172
33, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, Thompson, E.P., 135, 147, 168,
78, 80, 83, 86, 88, 91, 93, 94, 96, 177, 180
118, 147, 156, 157, 158, 160, Total bureaucratic capitalism, 38, 42,
171, 178 43, 48
Paris Commune (1871), 51
Paz, O., 24, 146, 179 Vaneigem, R., 141, 180
Plato, 31, 76, 147 Viénet, R., 141, 162, 163, 180
Polanyi, K., 121, 165, 179
Pollock, F., 43, 149, 150, 171, 179 Weber, M., 36, 43, 94, 111, 132, 148
Postone, M., 150, 171, 179 Workers’ councils, 51, 52, 53, 151

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1. Castoriadis, Cornelius, 1922–1997. 2. Critical theory. I. Title.

Introduction: Reading Castoriadis Politically 1

1 Origins: Early Years in Greece, Migration and Life in

2 The Critique of Totalitarianism 26

3 Subversive Praxis, Open Crisis and Critique 46

5 The Crisis of Modern Societies and the Revival of

I should like to express my deep gratitude to my sisters, Chrysa and

In the crisis-ridden contemporary world, the prevailing theoretical,

appeared in academic journals are marked by an uncritical admiration

those who discourse about the rights of man, the indeterminacy of

incipient privatization while also retaining some sort of “radical sensibil-

‘provoking insubordination and destroying horrors’.11 In contradis-

possibilities for transforming the established order, as a ‘moment of

happened and on the reasons why it happened, and who, as is

The aim of this chapter is to illuminate Castoriadis’ early stages and

1.1 Formative years and the historicopolitical

Cornelius Castoriadis was born on 11 March 1922 in Constantinople

who had joined the underground Greek Communist Youth in 1937.

not accord with Trotsky’s theory of the USSR as a ‘degenerated work-

1.2 Cultural milieu and intellectual inﬂuences

contribution that these political groups made was the transmission of

Lenin’s What is to be Done?, Bogdanov’s Short Course of Economic Science

1.3 The peculiarity of Castoriadis’ migration

The post-liberation period in Greece did not amount to a new phase of

were prosecuted and ﬁred because of their participation in the Greek

In higher education the situation was even worse, at least in the

22 December 1945 travelled in a ship called Mataroa from Piraeus to

can be conducive to producing critical and original thought and writ-

Likewise, one could ascribe to the experience of migration the ‘polem-

1.4 Castoriadis in France

vacuum’.43 During the post-liberation period, this theoretical void was

Contrary to the situation in Britain, where the much more immedi-

however, insisted on ignoring profound social and economic changes.

chez Hegel and Michel Foucault’s La Constitution d’un transcendental dans

The Molitor translations began in 1927 with Marx’s doctoral disserta-

Such a belated introduction and translation of Marx’s writings in France

of Marxism in post-war France was also fostered by the foreign intel-

after the defeat of fascism, in an atmosphere thick with accusations

Hyppolite and Alexandre Kojève,62 should be considered in order to

proved signiﬁcant as the only vehicle for a systematic gauchiste cri-

The group Socialisme Ou Barbarie developed close relationships with the

expression in the particular way in which he attempted to interpret and

Castoriadis’ political and theoretical trajectory started as an immanent

2.1 Castoriadis, Lefort and the questioning of Trotsky

The analysis of the political situation in Greece made by the Greek

means of the industrial production, transport and exchange, together

Today the ‘Fourth International’ uses a spurious faithfulness to the

Castoriadis extended his questioning of Trotsky’s insights and disputed

claim that nationalization and planning constitute the socialist bases of

production and that the statiﬁcation and exploitation of the working

‘Nationalization’ and ‘nationalized property’ are anti-Marxist and

In addition, for Castoriadis, another controversial issue in Trotsky’s ideas

By separating distribution from production in his analysis of the Soviet

In addition to the above, Castoriadis put particular stress upon Trotsky’s

2.2 An exchange of letters between Castoriadis

Russian Revolution resulted not in the restoration of the bourgeoisie but

2.3 ‘Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR: Four Letters,

Castoriadis’ statement, used as the heading of this section, character-

As traditional forms of property and the bourgeoisie of the classical

Castoriadis acknowledged all of these global developments as hav-

bureaucratization of societies. All of these trends were likely to lead

presented the continuity between some elements of Marx’s theoriz-