Civil Society School

During the 1950s and 1960s a debate about Marxism took place in Japan. Its key issues were linked to the concept of “civil society”.

This term, which was originally taken from discussions about Adam Smith, Hegel and Marx, was positively developed in the 1960s by Japanese Marxists into an emancipatory perspective and debated within a political-theoretical context that was critical of “real existing socialism”. One of the most important representatives of this school of thought was Kiyoaki Hirata.