Publication Details

Abstract

In our development after the year 1945, besides indisputable positive achievements, there occurred also mistakes and errors of subjectivist character. In the period of people's democracy the replacement of capitalist relations of production, the supression of bourgeoisie’s resistance, the liquidation of their ideology and the securing of the transition to socialism were the matter. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia mobilized the working class, trade union organizations and people’s militia against the impact of reaction in the years 1947—48. It was a historical defeat of reaction in this country. The February 1948 meant the victory of the working class, of our people and socialism. The political system of dictatorship of the proletariat was established, the fundaments of socialist economy were laid, the material and cultural levels of the people were increased. The material-technological basis of socialism was being established by building up heavy industry, engineering, and by socialist reconstruction of our agriculture. The victory in 1948 brought essential changes also in the sphere of culture, science, philosophy, art and education. The author emphasizes that our social sciences, inclusive of philosophy, helped in the theoretical level solve those problems that, from the point of view of socialist development, had a key importance. The author investigates the share of philosophical thinking in realizing the ideas and programme of the February. He points out how before and after the February the struggle for socialist forms of our social development was led on the broad cultural front. He analyzes the two conceptions that encountered in the struggle for the development of marxist philosophical thinking: 1/ the conception of philosophy and science closely connected with the basic social and political changes and 2/ the conception of immanent, „distinctive“ line of development of philosophy. As a result of the latter having overwhelmed, the marxist thinking brought small and problematic contribution and a low measure of political operation and social engagement of philosophy. Besides indisputable successes („material“ studies of the Slovak cultural past, elaboration of some categories of the dialectical and historical materialism, valuable studies in the sphere of logic, methodology, in the theory of science, etc.) there were also attempts at a revision of the fundaments of marxism-leninism, concessions to bourgeois ideology, the class, party and international approaches were being abandoned, „de-ideologization“ of philosophy and „pluralism“ in the framework of marxist-leninist thinking were being declared. Under a mask of a „creative“ development of philosophy various „modern“ philosophical trends (existentialism, phenomenology, neopositivism, structuralism, „philosophical anthropology“, etc.) were being brought into marxism. In the conclusion of his considerations the author sketches the chief tasks which in the spirit of the February 1948 result from the resolution of the 14th congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and from the Enlightenment of the crisis development in the Party and in the society for our philosophy in the next years. It is necessary to elaborate more deeply the categories of the dialectical and historical materialism, to pay attention to the philosophical problems connected with the scientific-technological revolution, to focus at a critical analysis of nonmarxist trends of thought, and to revalue, in the spirit of marxism-leninism, the questions that had been compromised by the opportunists and revisionists. It is necessary to aim especially at a philosophical elaboration and generalization of the basic, key problems of the development of socialist society and, last but not least, to develop and intensify the co-operation in the development of marxist-leninist philosophy with the Czech philosophers as well as with the philosophers from other socialist countries, especially from the Soviet Union.