Due to the tumultuous sociopolitical conditions in the 1960s, the affirmation of 'authentic' Marxist theory and praxis, and its humanist and dialectical aspects in particular, was an urgent task for philosophers working across the SFRY.
Organizing Korčula Summer School and publishing the international edition of Praxis were ways to promote open inquiry in accordance with these postulates.
Erich Fromm's collection of articles from 1965 entitled Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium has been of much help in promoting the Praxis school abroad.
As many as six members of the Praxis school have published articles in this collection: Marković, Petrović, Danilo Pejović, Veljko Korać, Rudi Supek and Predrag Vranicki.
[4] It was established as the successor to a previous political journal, Pogledi, which was published in Zagreb for three years in the 1950s before being disbanded due to state suppression.
Its founders were Branko Bošnjak, Danko Grlić, Milan Kangrga, Rudi Supek, Gajo Petrović, Predrag Vranicki, Danilo Pejović and Ivan Kuvačić.
It drew inspiration from the works of Antonio Gramsci, Karl Korsch, Georg Lukács, Ernst Bloch, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm and Lucien Goldmann.
The summer school was organized by the publishers of the journal Praxis from 1964 to 1974 in the Croatian island of Korčula, with the exception of 1966, when the gathering was cancelled due to the intense attacks by the League of Communists of Croatia.
Some of the prominent attendees included Ernst Bloch, Eugen Fink, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, Henri Lefebvre, Richard J. Bernstein and Shlomo Avineri, to name a few.
[4] Another peculiarity is that one of the attendants was from the Vatican, Father Gustav Wetter, which testifies to the fact that Korčula Summer School was not merely a Marxist symposium – the attendees held interests ranging from phenomenology to theology.
Each summer, the gathering focused on a particular topic: Due to its critical nature – some party ideologues referred to the editors and authors of Praxis as "professional anti-Communists" and "enemies of self-managing socialism" – the journal was banned on several occasions.
During subsequent years, the Praxisists organised underground meetings in private homes, which they dubbed the "Free University": however these were at risk of police interruption.
He proposed a reduction in financial investment in the province and the introduction of a family planning program, "in a gentle and psychologically acceptable way, and by the Albanians themselves, using primarily educational means".
The outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars shortly afterwards drove a wedge between the Belgrade Praxisists and their western collaborators: by this time Marković had been appointed vice-president of Milošević's Socialist Party of Serbia, and served as its ideologue.
However, some of the Belgrade Praxisists maintained opposition to the nationalist turn: Popov founded the liberal Civic Alliance of Serbia, whilst Životić (who had moved away from Marxism towards post-structuralism in the 1980s) founded the Belgrade Circle, an NGO dedicated to inter-ethnic dialogue and peace activism, in collaboration with Tito protege-turned veteran dissident Milovan Djilas.