From Neo-Marxism to Democratic Theory

The essays in this volume trace an intellectual odyssey a search for a genuinely critical theory. The book begins with the question of why the Frankfurt School as well as other neo-Marxist and post-Marxist analysts both in the West and in dissident circles in the East failed to produce a critical theory of Soviet socialism or to establish a dynamic relationship with contemporary social movements. As the political struggle in Eastern Europe intensified the author of this book disengaged from his own efforts to reconstruct a critical Marxism. Instead he attempts a reconstruction of democratic theory based on civil society rather than class categories and with a critical relevance not only to the transition from state socialism but more generally to the universal goal of emancipation.