Luboš Blaha
Encyclopedia
Luboš Blaha is a Slovak
Slovaks
The Slovaks, Slovak people, or Slovakians are a West Slavic people that primarily inhabit Slovakia and speak the Slovak language, which is closely related to the Czech language.Most Slovaks today live within the borders of the independent Slovakia...

 philosopher, political scientist and politician. He works for the former Speaker of the National Council of the Slovak Republic
National Council of the Slovak Republic
The National Council of the Slovak Republic , abbreviated to NR SR, is the national parliament of Slovakia. It is unicameral, and consists of 150 MPs, who are elected by universal suffrage under proportional representation every four years....

 Pavol Paška
Pavol Paška
Pavol Paška is a Slovak politician and was the 20th Speaker of the National Council of the Slovak Republic .-Education and professional career:...

 (SMER).

Blaha worked for the Communist Party of Slovakia
Communist Party of Slovakia
The Communist Party of Slovakia is a communist party in Slovakia, formed in 1992, through the merger of the Communist Party of Slovakia – 91 and the Communist League of Slovakia.According to Luboš Blaha the KSS supported the government of Robert Fico....

 as the Head of the International Department.

After the 2006 Slovak parliamentary election
Slovak parliamentary election, 2006
The 2006 parliamentary elections in Slovakia took place on Saturday June 17, 2006. The voters selected 150 representatives for the National Council of the Slovak Republic. The highest number of seats, 50, was won by left-wing party Direction - Social Democracy led by Robert Fico. In total, six...

 Blaha worked for the Speaker of the National Council of the Slovak Republic
National Council of the Slovak Republic
The National Council of the Slovak Republic , abbreviated to NR SR, is the national parliament of Slovakia. It is unicameral, and consists of 150 MPs, who are elected by universal suffrage under proportional representation every four years....

 Pavol Paška
Pavol Paška
Pavol Paška is a Slovak politician and was the 20th Speaker of the National Council of the Slovak Republic .-Education and professional career:...

 of the social democratic SMER party. Additionally Blaha works as a political scientist at Slovak Academy of Sciences
Slovak Academy of Sciences
The Slovak Academy of Sciences SAV is the main scientific and research institution in Slovakia fostering basic and strategic basic research...

 and as a doctor of philosophy and teaches at a university. In the 2010 Slovak parliamentary election
Slovak parliamentary election, 2010
A parliamentary election took place in Slovakia on 12 June 2010. The elections were contested by eighteen parties, six of which passed the 5% threshold for sitting in parliament...

 Blaha ran as a candidate for the SMER party.

In 2006 Blaha wrote a book called "Social Justice and Identity".

In 2009 Blaha wrote another book with the title "Back to Marx?" which was awarded by the Prize of Slovak Literature Fund as the 2009 best book in Slovakia in the category of Humanities and Social Sciences. Within this book Blaha draws a philosophy of a social security system deriving from conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...

, liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

 and social democratic
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...

 concepts. The book includes a justification of a theory of justice based on the radicalization of the theory of American philosopher John Rawls
John Rawls
John Bordley Rawls was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard University....

 and on the replacing of the Marx’s criterion of labour (one’s skills and abilities) by the criterion of laboriousness (one’s pure effort and will to work). In the book, there are sections about the economic democracy (e.g. the example of Basque cooperative of Mondragon), models of welfare state, including the German one, the British one and the Swedish one, and about the basic left-wing values like social justice, positive freedom, public property and social rights.

"Back to Marx?" is currently translated into English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 and there are some plans to translate the book into Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

.

External links

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