School · 37 thinkers
Socialism, Anarchism, Marxism & Critical Theory
37 thinkers of Socialism, Anarchism, Marxism & Critical Theory on the Agora star map, from Ludwig Feuerbach to Rahel Jaeggi, in chronological order.
- 1804–1872Ludwig Feuerbach
God is a projection: humans put their own best qualities into heaven and worship them – so theology is really about humanity.
- 1809–1865Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
For Proudhon, property that lets some live off the work of others is theft; society should be organised from below by free associations, without a state.
- 1812–1870Alexander Herzen
History follows no prescribed script and has no goal that justifies sacrificing living people; freedom must be won for the individual here and now, and Russia’s peasant commune may offer its own path to socialism.
- 1814–1876Mikhail Bakunin
For Bakunin, freedom is impossible as long as there is a state or a church above people – and a revolutionary state would simply create new masters.
- 1818–1883Karl Marx
For Marx, economic conditions shape ideas and politics, history is driven by class struggle, and capitalism exploits workers and must be overcome.
- 1820–1895Friedrich Engels
For Engels, nature, history and thought all develop through contradictions, and the misery of workers under capitalism can be documented and must be ended.
- 1828–1889Nikolai Chernyshevsky
The human being is a single natural being; everyone acts from self-interest, and those who understand it rightly will build a society of cooperative work and of equality between women and men.
- 1842–1921Peter Kropotkin
Animals and humans survive not only by competing but above all by helping one another, so a free society can share its goods according to need.
- 1843–1904Antonio Labriola
For Labriola, historical materialism is not a key that explains everything by economics but a method and a philosophy of praxis: history must be understood from the conditions of human labour and cooperation, through which people change their world and themselves.
- 1856–1918Georgi Plekhanov
History is driven by the development of productive forces, not by the wishes of heroes; individuals matter only within the limits their society sets, and Russia too must pass through capitalism on its way to socialism.
- 1871–1919Rosa Luxemburg
Capitalism survives only by constantly expanding into new regions, and socialism must come through mass action and democracy, never dictatorship.
- 1872–1952Alexandra Kollontai
Votes and property rights will not free women; that needs housework and childcare to become social tasks and a love that rests on equality and comradeship instead of possession.
- 1885–1971Georg Lukács
Under capitalism human relations appear as relations between things, and only the working class, seeing the whole, can break this spell.
- 1891–1937Antonio Gramsci
Ruling classes stay in power not mainly by force but by winning consent through culture, so any revolution must first win the battle of ideas.
- 1892–1940Walter Benjamin
Mechanical reproduction strips art of its aura, and history should be written from the side of the defeated, not the victors.
- 1895–1973Max Horkheimer
Theory should not just describe society but criticise it with the aim of changing it – and reason reduced to a mere tool becomes dangerous.
- 1898–1979Herbert Marcuse
Consumer society keeps people content and conformist, absorbing every form of protest – so real freedom requires refusing the whole system.
- 1900–1980Erich Fromm
Many people find freedom frightening and flee into obedience or conformity; a good life means being and loving rather than having and owning.
- 1903–1969Theodor W. Adorno
Mass culture turns people into passive consumers, and thinking must keep resisting every system that claims to have the whole truth.
- 1918–1990Louis Althusser
Schools, churches and media quietly shape us into subjects who accept the social order – ideology works by addressing us before we can choose.
- 1921–1988Raymond Williams
For Williams, culture means both the arts and a whole way of life, made and remade by ordinary people; in every society a dominant culture coexists with residual and emergent ones, and “structures of feeling” register lived experience before it hardens into fixed ideology.
- 1922–1997Cornelius Castoriadis
Societies are not governed by laws of history or nature but create themselves through imaginary significations; autonomy means that a society and its members recognise themselves as the authors of their institutions and dare to question them.
- 1926–2003Karel Kosík
In everyday life the world appears as a fixed order of things and routines that we take to be natural; only critical thought shows that people made it through their own action (praxis) and can change it.
- 1927–1993Gajo Petrović
The human being is a being of praxis, of free and creative activity; Marxism is not a doctrine of objective laws but a ruthless critique of everything that blocks this freedom – under socialism too.
- 1927–2009Leszek Kołakowski
No doctrine can deliver the final truth about history or redeem humanity; Marxism, which promised both, became the ideology of despotic states. Kołakowski defended doubt and, at the same time, the question of the sacred, which cannot be abolished.
- 1929–2026Jürgen Habermas
Reason lives in the way people reach understanding through open argument, and democracy works when decisions emerge from such free discussion.
- 1929–2019Agnes Heller
Everyday life is where people reproduce themselves and their society; a humane society is one in which each person can relate to it consciously and grow from a merely particular being into an individual personality.
- 1933–2023Antonio Negri
Power does not come from the state but from the creative, cooperative capacity of the multitude; constituted power only captures it, and in a global Empire without a centre this living labour can build a democracy of the common.
- 1936–1979Nicos Poulantzas
The capitalist state is neither the tool of one class nor a neutral arbiter but the condensation of a relation of class forces; a democratic road to socialism must transform it from within while extending direct democracy.
- b. 1942Silvia Federici
Capitalism rests on the unpaid work of reproducing life – housework, care, bearing children – which it presents as women’s nature; this order was imposed through enclosures and witch hunts, and it can be resisted by reclaiming the commons.
- b. 1944Angela Davis
Race, class and gender work together as one system of domination, and prisons hide social problems rather than solving them.
- b. 1947Nancy Fraser
Justice needs both a fairer share of wealth and respect for different identities – and a public sphere with many voices, not one.
- b. 1949Axel Honneth
People need to be recognised by others to become themselves, and social struggles arise where that recognition is denied.
- b. 1949Slavoj Žižek
Ideology is not a lie we believe but a fantasy we live by even when we know better – and Hegel and Lacan help expose it.
- b. 1950Seyla Benhabib
Ethics must see each person in their concrete situation, not just as an abstract equal – and democracies keep renegotiating the rights of outsiders.
- b. 1964Rainer Forst
Every person has a basic right to justification: no rule or power over us is legitimate unless it can be justified to us as free and equal.
- b. 1966Rahel Jaeggi
Alienation is a “relation of relationlessness” to ourselves and the world, and ways of life can be criticised as failing to solve the problems they themselves face.