Publication Details

Abstract

The paper, datet back to 1987 and edited by underground publishers, presents an analysis of weak points of the official Marxist interpretation of the idea of social equality. 1. The idea of social equality was the basic principle of the classical utopian communism. 2. Marxism performed a radical criticism of utopian communism, its equalitarian starting-points. It ressumes the conceptions of utopian socialists who rejected this idea. 3. The Marxist project of social justice was, therefore, not equalitarian [the community of poverty), it did not proclaim abolition of property as such as a precondition of general equality. 4. The refusal of primitive economic equalitarianism, however, is not radical rejection of the idea of social equality. The ideologists of reconstruction put off its realization into distant communist future. 5. A modern ideal of social equality is being realized in the world, however, not in the socialist bloc. It is characterized by the conception of human and civil rights as elaborated in international pact and in the Helsinki process. 6. The so-called socialist bloc accepts this conception distrustfully under outward pressure and it seeks to keep a gulf between its formal declaration and practical steps towards its application and realization. 7. The matter-of-fact state in different socialist countries is characterized by marked social inequality, contrary to the conception of human and civil rights. 8. Certain equalitarian tendencies are an incidental phenomenon of this state (salary, ideological etc. levelling). 9. An important role of Czechoslovak dissent is the defence of human and civil rights and consequently of the idea of social equality. 10. The basic presupposition of its materialization is the real democratization of society.