The origins of consciousness in later soviet neomarxism

Abstract

The article deals with a group of Soviet philosophers (active primarily in the 1960s and 1970s) who sought a non-dogmatic, innovative interpretation of Marxism. The key figures were Evald Ilyenkov (1924-1979), Felix Mikhailov (1930-2006) and Genrikh Batishchev (1932-1990). Drawing on the recently published writings of "early" Marx that dealt with subjects going beyond the official tenets of dialectical and historical materialism, they (1) attempted to reconsider the concept of the ideal, seeking to amend its status within the doctrine, (2) stressed the fundamental difference between the natural and the social and hence the irreducibility of the latter to the former, (3) emphasised activism as man’s essential quality; (4) and, first and foremost, came with an ingenious hypothesis of the origins of consciousness