Beyond Actually Existing Socialism

Abstract

The Welsh literary and cultural theorist Raymond Williams was, together with Stuart Hall and Richard Hoggart, a founding figure of British Cultural Studies. He is known, among other things, for the unorthodox interpretation of Marxism he called “cultural materi-alism”. We present here a Czech translation of Williams’s reflections on Die Alternative (published in English as The Alternative in Eastern Europe) by Rudolf Bahro. Williams’s text first appeared in the New Left Review under the title “Beyond Actually Existing So-cialism” (NLR I, no. 120, March/April 1980). Translated by Magdaléna Michlová and Jaroslav Michl, introduced by Jaroslav Michl.