ABSTRACT
Among the major representatives of critical Marxism, a tradition to which he once belonged, Cornelius Castoriadis is without peer as an analyst and critic of the new social formation of the Soviet type. The others have produced only sophisticated apologies (Lukács, Sartre), ambiguous and self-deceptive criticisms (Gramsci), repetitions of Trotskyist illusions (Marcuse) or exercises in avoidance (the Frankfurt School). Even the members of the Budapest School began their various creative analyses of the social structure and dynamics of the society they lived under only in the 1970s. Castoriadis has been on the job since 1946 and remains committed to it down to his latest writings. To be sure, of the four distinct theories of Soviet society he produced, the last two could not be contained within even the most critical and self-critical Marxian perspective. The challenge of the Soviet Union drove him beyond Marx, thus deeply influencing his whole intellectual development. In the face of new unfreedom he created an entirely new and original philosophy of freedom.
