Quotes from Leszek Ko?akowski

There are no rational means of predicting 'the future of humanity' over a long period or foretelling the nature of 'social formations' in ages to come. The idea that we can make such forecasts 'scientifically', and that without doing so we cannot even understand the past, is inherent in the Marxist theory of 'social formations'; it is one reason why that theory is a fantasy, and also why it is politically effective.

It would be absurd to maintain that Marxism was, so to speak, the efficient cause of present-day Communism; on the other hand, Communism is not a mere 'degeneration' of Marxism but a possible interpretation of it, and even a well-founded one, though primitive and partial in some respects.

Marx championed technical progress and his attitude was strongly Eurocentric, including a lack of interest in the problems of underdeveloped countries.

we may safely predict that Marx himself will become more and more what he already is: a chapter from a textbook of the history of ideas, a figure that no longer evokes any emotions, simply the author of one of the 'great books' of the nineteenth century—one of those books that very few bother to read but whose titles are known to the educated public.

Stalin's dethronement meant not only the collapse of one authority, but that of a whole institution.

Communism has ceased in general to be an intellectual problem, remaining simply a matter of governmental power and repression.

There is probably no part of the civilized world in which Marxism has declined so completely and socialist ideas have been so discredited and turned to ridicule as in the countries of victorious socialism.

Leninism raised political opportunism to the dignity of a theory.

The question of the possibility and prospects of industrial democracy has come to be of key importance in discussions on democratic socialism; it has in itself nothing in common with the apocalyptic dreams of the New Left as inspired by Marcuse or Wilhelm Reich, and is historically and logically independent of Marxism.

Measured by European standards the ideological documents of Maoism, and especially the theoretical writings of Mao himself, appear in fact extremely primitive and clumsy, sometimes even childish; in comparison, even Stalin gives the impression of a powerful theorist.

Maoism in its final shape is a radical peasant Utopia in which Marxist phraseology is much in evidence but whose dominant values seem completely alien to Marxism.

The importance of Chinese Communism does not depend on the intellectual level of its dogmas. Mao was one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, manipulator of large masses of human beings in the twentieth century, and the ideology he used for the purpose is significant by reason of its effectiveness, not only in China but in other parts of the Third World.

The Sino-Soviet conflict was not due to any ideological heresy but to the independence of the Chinese Communists and the fact that, as we may suppose, the Chinese revolution was contrary to the interests of Russian imperialism.

The general principle of equality is undoubtedly Marxist, but it is hard to suppose that Marx would have seen it as embodied in the policy of packing off intellectuals to the rice-fields.

In a certain limited sense Chinese Communism is more egalitarian than the Soviet variety; not, however, because it is less totalitarian, but because it is more so.

At a time when the ideological prestige of Soviet Russia had collapsed, utopian longings fixed themselves on the exotic East, the more easily because of the general ignorance of Chinese affairs.

From the point of view of the history of Marxism, Maoist ideology is noteworthy not because Mao 'developed' anything but because it illustrates the unlimited flexibility of any doctrine once it becomes historically influential.

Marxism does not provide any specific method of solving questions that Marx did not put to himself or that did not exist in his time. If his life had been prolonged for ninety years he would have had to alter his views in ways that we have no means of conjecturing.

There is a abundant evidence that all social movements are to be explained by a variety of circumstances and that the ideological sources to which they appeal, and to which they seek to remain faithful, are only one of the factors determining the form they assume and their patterns of thought and action.

no political or religious movement is a perfect expression of that movement's 'essence' as laid down in its sacred writings

the historian treats ideas seriously and does not regard them as completely subservient to events and possessing no life of their own (for in that case there would be no point in studying them), but he does not believe that they can endure from one generation to another without some change of meaning.

It is indeed not enough to say that Nazi ideology was a 'caricature' of Nietzsche, since the essence of a caricature is that it helps us to recognize the original.

St. Paul was not personally responsible for the Inquisition and for the Roman Church at the end of the fifteenth century, but the inquirer, whether Christian or not, cannot be content to observe that Christianity was depraved or distorted by the conduct of unworthy popes and bishops; he must rather seek to discover what it was in the Pauline epistles that gave rise, in the fullness of time, to unworthy and criminal actions.

intellectual trends that originate with a given person have a prehistory of their own