From Capitalism to Modernity and Back: Adventures with the Budapest School

• Authors: Beilharz Peter
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The moment of the Budapest School in Australia was vital, for the visitors and for us. Was it still then a school? This is an open question. Here I focus on Melbourne, and on the work and influence of Ferenc Fehér and Ágnes Heller. I will use two essays to focus on the mutual interaction: Class, Democracy, Modernity (1983) and Why We Should Maintain the Socialist Objective (1981/1982). Fehér and Heller made the decisive, in effect Weberian, move away from the category of capitalism to that of modernity as the overarching horizon. At the same time, Heller offered a forgotten political intervention into the discourse of the Australian Labor Party, on the necessity of claims to the values of socialism. Four decades on, the latter essay seems arcane, while the former retains its potency, but is also pressured by the revived centrality of capitalism. After both cases, the core value given to democracy might now also come under question, forty years on.

Keywords

EN

Budapest School; Fehér; Heller; socialism; ALP; modernity

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Warszawski. Wydział Filozofii
• Journal: Edukacja Filozoficzna
• Year: 2022
• Issue: 74
• Pages: 231-238

Contributors

author

Beilharz Peter

References

• Beilharz P., The Budapest School – Travelling Theory?, in: Critical Theories and the Budapest School, eds. J. Pickle, J. Rundell, Routledge, London 2018, pp. 15–33.
• Fan Z., Agnes Heller: Changing Aspects of Her Socialist Theory in the 1980s, “Thesis Eleven” 2022, Vol. 171, No. 1, pp. 58–77.
• Fehér F., Heller A., Class, Democracy, Modernity, in: Eastern Left, Western Left, eds. F. Fehér, A. Heller, Polity, Oxford 1987, pp. 201–242.
• Heller A., Why We Should Maintain the Socialist Objective, “Thesis Eleven” 2022, Vol. 171, No. 1, pp. 91–101.
• Triado J., Corporatism, Democracy, Modernity, “Thesis Eleven” 1984, Vol. 9, pp. 33–51.