Marxist critiques of Slobodan Jovanovic’s study on Marx and Marxism praxis and dialectic

Slobodan Jovanovic?s study on Marx (1935) has been interpreted and evaluated in every history of Serbian philosophy written after the Second World War (1968, 1972, 2002, 2009). This paper discusses Marxist responses to this study and the influence its evaluations had on the post-war reception and critique of Jovanovic?s writings. The treatise on Marx, which came as a result of years of studying and keeping close track of the evolution of Marxism, Socialist thought and the labour movement, may also be seen as a Problem oriented history of Marxism. Jovanovic suggests that essential to understanding Marx?s teaching is its philosophical contents because Marx?s findings in other areas were based on his philosophical insights. The paper also tackles the issue of interwar and post-war interpretations of the concept of praxis. Unlike his critics, what Jovanovic understands by Marxism is not dialectical materialism. The paper shows that Marxist critiques of Jovanovic?s study substantially influenced the philosophical reception of that work in the post-war period.