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The concept of a »special way into socialism«, seemingly accepted by all communist parties, has not thus restricted itself to a neutral piuralism of ways into socialism and socialist models of society, but has acquired a markedly aggressive charactenstic as a means to over-come a socialism which does not deserve this name, as the rejection of a certain socialist practice and an alternative to statiste and bu-

reaucratic socialism.

In the criticism of statist socialism and Stalinism, its best known deformation, we can distinguish a minimalistic and a maximalistic approach in the contemporary workers movement.

1.    The minimalistic approach stresses the principle of the »special way into socialism«. That means in other words to remonstrate against the negative developments in some other socialist countries, a promise that we will try to solve the same problems in our own country in a morę satisfactory way, but it also implies different models of socialism or a certain piuralism in the Marxist interpretation of political and social reality. The majority of communist parties have adopted this principle, but refuse to take the corresponding theoretical conse-ąuences because of the »unity of the workers movement«.

2.    The maximalistic approach consists of a theoretical endeavor to overcome the statist socialism on the basis of Marx’s theory of the withering away of the State and his theory of alienation (political and State institutions become alienated forms of social life, etc.). This ac-tually happened in Yugoslavia. In this framework the workers’ self-management concept becomes inevitable.

While the minimalistic approach remains on the level of political tactics and tries to justify its opportunism with political and tactical reasons, the maximalistic approach represents a consequent theoretical criticism that questions the naturę of socialism itself, the true content of socialist revolution and the modes of its realisation, and thus has a generał theoretical, political and strategie character. Therefore, it is no wonder that leading Marxist theoreticians from G. Lukacs to R. Garaudy have discarded the dogmatic and apologetic philosophy that under the name of »Marxism-Leninism« serves as the basis of statist socialism, and thus necessarily represents a revision of Marx’ thought. The frequent attacks, especially after the occupation of Czechoslova-kia. by the official Soviet ideologists against the so called »revision-ism« in Marxism, represented by the leading Marxist philosophers such as E. Bloch, E. Fromm, G. Lukacs, E. Fisher, H. Lefebvre, J. Ha-bermas, K. Kosik, L. Goldmann, H. Marcuse, and recently R. Garaudy, and many others (among whom also the Marxists gathered around the periodical »Praxis«) clearly show that statist socialism has lost the battle on the grounds of Marxist theory, at least on this old continent where it was born.

The philosophical criticism of the theoretical basis of statist socialism appeared simultaneously with the strengthening of the idea of workers self-management, which was a logical consequence of already existing forms of workers participation, and it has imposed itself as a request for qualitative changes in the syndical movements in West-

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