Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz

Who was Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz?

Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz was a Polish philosopher and sociologist, member of the Polish Socialist Party. He was one of the most significant Marxist thinkers at the end of the 19th century.

Kelles-Krauz was born in Szczebrzeszyn, Russian Empire.

His greatest contribution to sociology is the "law of retrospective revolution" according to which "the ideals with which each reform movement tries to replace existing social norms are always similar to the norms of a more or less distant past".

Yale's Timothy Snyder argues that Kelles-Krauz, writing two decades before Hans Kohn and Carlton Hayes, ought to be among the small cluster of turn-of-the-century thinkers regarded as the pioneers of the modern study of nationalism.