The Hungarian Transylvanian Marxist philosopher Gáspár Miklós Tamás (also known as “TGM”) passed away this Sunday, January 15th. He was an insightful theorist on power, capital, class, and fascism, among many other topics. His intellectual career was diverse and complicated, moving from dissident libertarian socialism, to liberalism, to conservatism, and then to back to Marxism. In an era when many socialist thinkers in CEE had drifted further and further right, he became a rare symbol of an enduring and self-critical left. He was a kind teacher, a compassionate comrade, and a stalwart public face for the Hungarian left even into his later years.
He will be missed.
This is a lecture he gave on the occasion of his 70th anniversary hosted by the Sociology Department and the Radical Student Collective of the Central European University in 2018, courtesy of the Karl Polanyi Research Center. If you are interested in reading Tamás’s work, this interview with New Left Review is an excellent introduction to his work and life.
We published, translated, or republished a number of Tamás’s articles and interviews with him, some of which you can read here:
Interview: G. M. Tamás on the Anti-Immigration Referendum in Hungary
Hungary: the Népszabadság Affair