Cornelius Castoriadis

Early life in Athens

Cornelius Castoriadis was born on 11 March 1922 in Constantinople (then part of the Ottoman Empire), the son of fabric merchant Kaisar and Sophia Kastoriadis, née Papachela (Παπαχελά). His family had to move in July 1922 to Athens, the home of Castoriadis' mother, due to the Greco-Turkish War (1919–22). Castoriadis developed an interest in politics after he came into contact with Marxist thought at the age of 13. At the same time, he began studying traditional philosophy after purchasing a copy of the book History of Philosophy (Ιστορία της Φιλοσοφίας, Istoria tis Filosofias, 2 vols., 1933) by historian of ideas Nikolaos Louvaris.

Sometime between 1932 and 1935, Maximiani Portas (later known as "Savitri Devi"), a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Lyon, was Castoriadis' French tutor. During the same period, he attended the 8th Gymnasium of Athens in Kato Patisia, from which he graduated in 1937 at age 15.

His first active involvement in politics occurred during the Metaxas Regime in 1937, when he joined the Athens Communist Youth (Κομμουνιστική Νεολαία Αθήνας, Kommounistiki Neolaia Athinas), a section of the Young Communist League of Greece (OKNE). In 1938, Castoriadis and fellow student Andreas Papandreou were arrested for leftist affiliations. In 1941, Castoriadis joined the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), only to leave one year later in order to become an active Trotskyist—at the time, he was under the influence of the Archeio-Marxist/Trotskyist revolutionary militant Agis Stinas who was the founder of KDKE, a party that rejected the Communist-led National Liberation Front and promoted revolutionary defeatism. The latter action resulted in his persecution by both the Germans and the Communist Party (through its secret police, OPLA).

In 1937, he also enrolled in the School of Law, Economics and Political Sciences of the University of Athens (where, at the University Club, he met and collaborated with the "Heidelberg Circle", namely the Heidelberg School neo-Kantian intellectuals Konstantinos Despotopoulos, Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, Konstantinos Tsatsos), from which he graduated in 1942.

In early 1944, he wrote his first essays on social science and Max Weber, which he published in the journal Archive of Sociology and Ethics (Αρχείον Κοινωνιολογίας και Ηθικής, Archeion Koinoniologias kai Ithikis; published by the Greek Association for Sociological Studies – Εταιρεία Κοινωνιολογικών Σπουδών). The journal was initially headed by the sociologist Avrotelis Eleftheropoulos, but later by Castoriadis and his fellow law students Dimitrios Tsakonas and Mimika Kranaki.

Castoriadis heavily criticized the actions of the KKE during the December 1944 clashes (the prelude to the 1946–49 Greek Civil War) between the communist-led ELAS on one side, and the Georgios Papandreou government aided by British troops on the other.

In December 1945, he boarded the RMS Mataroa, a New Zealand ocean liner, to go to Paris (where he remained permanently) to continue his studies under a scholarship offered by the French Institute of Athens. The same voyage—organized by Octave Merlier—also brought from Greece to France a number of other Greek writers, artists and intellectuals (the "Mataroa Generation"), including Constantine Andreou, Kostas Axelos, Georges Candilis, Costa Coulentianos, Mimika Kranaki, Emmanuel Kriaras, Adonis A. Kyrou, Kostas Papaïoannou, Miltiadès Papamiltiadès, Virgile Solomonidis, and Nikos Svoronos.

In France, he was known to intimates as "Corneille".

Career as an economist

At the same time (starting in November 1948), he worked as an economist at the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation / Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OEEC/OECD) until 1970, which was also the year when he obtained French citizenship. His last position at the OECD was Director of Statistics, National Accounts, and Growth Studies.

Political theorist

In his 1949 essay "The Relations of Production in Russia", Castoriadis developed a critique of the supposed socialist character of the government of the Soviet Union. According to Castoriadis, the central claim of the Stalinist regime at the time was that the mode of production in Russia was socialist, but the mode of distribution was not yet a socialist one since the socialist edification in the country had not yet been completed. However, according to Castoriadis' analysis, since the mode of distribution of the social product is inseparable from the mode of production, the claim that one can have control over distribution while not having control over production is meaningless.

Castoriadis was particularly influential in the turn of the intellectual left during the 1950s against the Soviet Union, because he argued that the Soviet Union was not a communist but rather a bureaucratic capitalist state, which contrasted with Western powers mostly by virtue of its centralized power apparatus. His work in the OECD substantially helped his analyses. Castoriadis regarded the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 as the first genuine uprising against bureaucratic regimes.

His reflections on organization within a militant framework led him to confront the irreducible element of creation that cannot be described or anticipated in advance. The most explicit articulation of these ideas appears in his article "Proletarian Leadership" (1952), where he argues that Marxist revolutionary practice is marked by a profound contradiction: on the one hand, it depends on a scientific understanding of social structures; on the other, its very possibility hinges on the inventive and transformative actions of countless individuals.

To prevent visa complications, his pre-1970 political writings were published under a pseudonym, as "Pierre Chaulieu" (early S. ou B. writings, 1949–1958) "Paul Cardan" (later S. ou B. writings, 1959–1965) or "Jean-Marc Coudray" (Fayard, 1968).

Later, Castoriadis reissued most of his Socialisme ou Barbarie texts in ten volumes through the 10/18 publishing house between 1973 and 1979.