Kolakowski, Leszek / Колаковский, Лешек - Main Currents of Marxism / Основные направления марксизма [1978, DjVu, ENG]

Main Currents of Marxism is a handbook and a thorough survey of the varieties of Marxism; it will be published in three volumes. The author delineates the development of Marx's own thought and the contributions of his best-known followers.
No survey of the doctrines of the Marxist tradition could fail to be controversial but Professor Kolakowski's treatment is detached and pluralistic and he does not attempt to identify a pure or essentially Marxist strand in the tradition as a whole. There is no better example of the variety of Marxism than the diversity which results from the tension between the Utopian and fatalist impulses in Marx's thought. In Professor Kolakowski's own words 'The surprising diversity of views expressed by Marxists in regard to Marx's so-called historical determinism is a factor which makes it possible to present and schematize with precision the trends of twentieth-century Marxism. It is also clear that one's answer to the question concerning the place of human consciousness and will in the historical process goes far towards determining the sense one ascribes to socialist ideals and is directly linked with the theory of revolutions and of crises'.
In Volume One, The Founders, Professor Kolakowski examines the origins of Marxism. The author traces the philosophical tradition, through Hegel and the Enlightenment, back to the Neo-Platonists. Professor Kolakowski both examines the development of Marx's thought and draws attention to its divergence from other forms of socialism.
In Volume Two, The Golden Age, Professor Kolakowski discusses the doctrines of the leading Marxists in the era of the Second International The controversies which divided Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Bernstein, Plekhanov and Lenin are all examined. At this time there were many interesting varieties of Marxism and the author discusses the contributions of George Sorel, Ludwik Krzywicki, Stanislaw Brzozowski and the Kantian Austro-Marxists.
In Volume Three, The Breakdown, Professor Kolakowski begins with an analysis of Stalinism and a discussion of the impact of Marxism on the culture of the Soviet Union. There are Chapters on Trotsky, Gramsci, Lukács, Korsch and developments in Marxism since the Second World War.

PREFACE v
CONTENTS ix
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE xiv
INTRODUCTION 1
I. THE ORIGINS OF DIALECTIC 7
1. The contingency of human existence 11
2. The soteriology of Plotinus 12
3. Plotinus and Christian Platonism. The search for the reason of creation 17
4. Eriugena and Christian theogony 23
5. Eckhart and the dialectic of deification 31
6. Nicholas of Cusa. The contradictions of Absolute Being 33
7. Böhme and the duality of Being 36
8. Angelus Silesius and Fénelon: salvation through annihilation 37
9. The Enlightenment. The realization of man in the schema of naturalism 39
10. Rousseau and Hume. Destruction of the belief in natural harmony 41
11. Kant. The duality of man’s being, and its remedy 44
12. Fichte and the self-conquest of the spirit 50
13. Hegel. The progress of consciousness towards the Absolute 56
14. Hegel. Freedom as the goal of history 70
II. THE HEGELIAN LEFT 81
1. The disintegration of Hegelianism 81
2. David Strauss and the critique of religion 84
3. Cieszkowski and the philosophy of action 85
4. Bruno Bauer and the negativity of self-consciousness 88
5. Arnold Ruge. The radicalization of the Hegelian Left 92
III. MARX’S THOUGHT IN ITS EARLIEST PHASE 96
1. Early years and studies 96
2. Hellenistic philosophy as understood by the Hegelians 99
3. Marx’s studies of Epicurus. Freedom and self-consciousness 100
IV. HESS AND FEUERBACH 108
1. Hess. The philosophy of action 108
2. Hess. Revolution and freedom 111
3. Feuerbach and religious alienation 114
4. Feuerbach’s second phase. Sources of the religious fallacy 116
V. MARX’S EARLY POLITICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS 120
1. The state and intellectual freedom 120
2. Criticism of Hegel. The state, society, individuality 122
3. The idea of social emancipation 125
4. The discovery of the proletariat 127
VI. THE PARIS MANUSCRIPTS. THE THEORY OF ALIENATED LABOUR. THE YOUNG ENGELS 132
1. Critique of Hegel. Labour as the foundation of humanity 133
2. The social and practical character of knowledge 134
3. The alienation of labour. Dehumanized man 138
4. Critique of Feuerbach 141
5. Engels’s early writings 144
VII. THE HOLY FAMILY 147
1. Communism as a historical trend. The class-consciousness of the proletariat 148
2. Progress and the masses 149
3. The world of needs 150
4. The tradition of materialism 151
VIII. THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY 153
1. The concept of ideology 153
2. Social being and consciousness 155
3. The division of labour, and its abolition 159
4. Individuality and freedom 161
5. Stirner and the philosophy of egocentrism 163
6. Critique of Stirner. The individual and the community 168
7. Alienation and the division of labour 172
8. The liberation of man and the class struggle 173
9. The epistemological meaning of the theory of false consciousness 174
IX. RECAPITULATION 177
X. SOCIALIST IDEAS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AS COMPARED WITH MARXIAN SOCIALISM 182
1. The rise of the socialist idea 182
2. Babouvism 184
3. Saint-Simonism 187
4. Owen 193
5. Fourier 198
6. Proudhon 203
7. Weitling 211
8. Cabet 213
9. Blanqui 214
10. Blanc 216
11. Marxism and ‘utopian socialism’ 218
12. Marx’s critique of Proudhon 224
13. The Communist Manifesto 227
XI. THE WRITINGS AND STRUGGLES OF MARX AND ENGELS AFTER 1847 234
1. Developments in the 1850s 234
2. Lassalle 238
3. The First International. Bakunin 244
XII. CAPITALISM AS A DEHUMANIZED WORLD. THE NATURE OF EXPLOITATION 262
1. The controversy as to the relation of Capital to Marx’s early writings 262
2. The classical economic tradition and the theory of value 268
3. The double form of value and the double character of labour 271
4. Commodity fetishism. Labour-power as a commodity 276
5. The alienation of labour and of its product 281
6. The alienation of the process of socialization 285
7. The pauperization of the working class 288
8. The nature and historical mission of capitalism 291
9. The distribution of surplus value 294
XIII. THE CONTRADICTIONS OF CAPITAL AND THEIR ABOLITION. THE UNITY OF ANALYSIS AND ACTION 297
1. The falling rate of profit and the inevitable collapse of capitalism 297
2. The economical and political struggle of the proletariat 302
3. The nature of socialism, and its two phases 305
4. The dialectic of Capital: the whole and the part, the concrete and the abstract 312
5. The dialectic of Capital: consciousness and the historical process 319
6. Comments on Marx’s theory of value and exploitation 325
XIV. THE MOTIVE FORCES OF THE HISTORICAL PROCESS 335
1. Productive forces, relations of production, superstructure 335
2. Social being and consciousness 338
3. Historical progress and its contradictions 346
4. The monistic interpretation of social relationships 351
5. The concept of class 352
6. The origin of class 358
7. The functions of the state and its abolition 358
8. Commentary on historical materialism 363
XV. THE DIALECTIC OF NATURE 376
1. The scientistic approach 376
2. Materialism and idealism. The twilight of philosophy 378
3. Space and time 381
4. The variability of nature 382
5. Multiple forms of change 383
6. Causality and chance 384
7. The dialectic in nature and in thought 387
8. Quantity and quality 389
9. Contradictions in the world 390
10. The negation of the negation 392
11. Critique of agnosticism 393
12. Experience and theory 393
13. The relativity of knowledge 395
14. Practice as the criterion of truth 396
15. The sources of religion 397
XVI. RECAPITULATION AND PHILOSOPHICAL COMMENTARY 399
1. Marx’s philosophy and that of Engels 399
2. Three motifs in Marxism 408
3. Marxism as the source of Leninism 416
SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY 421
INDEX 429

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ix
I. MARXISM AND THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL 1
II. GERMAN ORTHODOXY: KARL KAUTSKY 31
1. Life and writings 32
2. Nature and society 34
3. Consciousness and the development of society 40
4. Revolution and socialism 43
5. Critique of Leninism 50
6. Inconsistencies in Kautsky’s philosophy 51
7. A note on Mehring 57
III. ROSA LUXEMBURG AND THE REVOLUTIONARY LEFT 61
1. Biographical information 61
2. The theory of accumulation and the inevitable collapse of capitalism 65
3. Reform and revolution 76
4. The consciousness of the proletariat and forms of political organization 82
5. The national question 88
IV. BERNSTEIN AND REVISIONISM 98
1. The concept of revisionism 98
2. Biographical information 100
3. The laws of history and the dialectic 102
4. The revolution and the ‘ultimate goal’ 105
5. The significance of revisionism 111
V. JEAN JAURÈS: MARXISM AS A SOTERIOLOGY 115
1. Jaurès as a conciliator 115
2. Biographical outline 117
3. The metaphysics of universal unity 120
4. The directing forces of history 125
5. Socialism and the republic 125
6. Jaurès’s Marxism 138
VI. PAUL LAFARGUE: A HEDONIST MARXISM 141
VII. GEORGES SOREL: A JANSENIST MARXISM 151
1. The place of Sorel 151
2. Biographical outline 154
3. Rationalism versus history. Utopia and myth. Criticism of the Enlightenment 156
4. Ricorsi. The separation of classes and the discontinuity of culture 162
5. Moral revolution and historical necessity 164
6. Marxism, anarchism, Fascism 170
VIII. ANTONIO LABRIOLA: AN ATTEMPT AT AN OPEN ORTHODOXY 175
1. Labriola’s style 175
2. Biographical note 177
3. Early writings 179
4. Philosophy of history 183
IX. LUDWIK KRZYWICKI: MARXISM AS AN INSTRUMENT OF SOCIOLOGY 193
1. Biographical note 194
2. Critique of the biological theory of society 197
3. Prospects of socialism 198
4. Mind and production. Tradition and change 201
X. KAZIMIERZ KELLES-KRAUZ: A POLISH BRAND OF ORTHODOXY 208
XI. STANISŁAW BRZOZOWSKI: MARXISM AS HISTORICAL SUBJECTIVISM 215
1. Biographical note 217
2. Philosophical development 219
3. The philosophy of labour 223
4. Socialism, the proletariat, and the nation 231
5. Brzozowski’s Marxism 236
XII. AUSTRO-MARXISTS, KANTIANS IN THE MARXIST MOVEMENT, ETHICAL SOCIALISM 240
1. The concept of Austro-Marxism 240
2. The revival of Kantianism 243
3. Ethical socialism 245
4. Kantianism in Marxism 247
5. The Austro-Marxists: biographical information 254
6. Adler: the transcendental foundation of the social sciences 258
7. Adler’s critique of materialism and the dialectic 268
8. Adler: consciousness and social being 272
9. What is and what ought to be 274
10. The state, democracy, and dictatorship 276
11. The future of religion 282
12. Bauer: the theory of the nation 285
13. Hilferding: the controversy on the theory of value 290
14. Hilferding: the theory of imperialism 297
XIII. THE BEGINNINGS OF RUSSIAN MARXISM 305
1. Intellectual movements during the reign of Nicholas I 305
2. Herzen 311
3. Chernyshevsky 313
4. Populism and the first reception of Marxism 316
XIV. PLEKHANOV AND THE CODIFICATION OF MARXISM 329
1. The origins of Marxist orthodoxy in Russia 329
2. Dialectical and historical materialism 336
3. Marxist aesthetics 345
4. The struggle against revisionism 347
5. The conflict with Leninism 350
XV. MARXISM IN RUSSIA BEFORE THE RISE OF BOLSHEVISM 354
1. Lenin: early journalistic writings 356
2. Struve and ‘legal Marxism’ 362
3. Lenin’s polemics in 1895-1901 373
XVI. THE RISE OF LENINISM 381
1. The controversy over Leninism 381
2. The party and the workers’ movement. Consciousness and spontaneity 384
3. The question of nationality 398
4. The proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the democratic revolution. Trotsky and the ‘permanent revolution’ 405
XVII. PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS IN THE BOLSHEVIK MOVEMENT 413
1. Factional struggles at the time of the 1905 Revolution 413
2. New intellectual trends in Russia 419
3. Empiriocriticism 424
4. Bogdanov and the Russian empiriocritics 432
5. The philosophy of the proletariat 441
6. The ‘God-builders’ 446
7. Lenin’s excursion into philosophy 447
8. Lenin and religion 459
9. Lenin’s dialectical Notebooks 461
XVIII. THE FORTUNES OF LENINISM: FROM A THEORY OF THE STATE TO A STATE IDEOLOGY 467
1. The Bolsheviks and the War 467
2. The Revolutions of 1917 473
3. The beginnings of socialist economy 481
4. The dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the party 485
5. The theory of imperialism and of revolution 491
6. Socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat 497
7. Trotsky on dictatorship 509
8. Lenin as an ideologist of totalitarianism 513
9. Martov on the Bolshevik ideology 517
10. Lenin as a polemicist. Lenin’s genius 520
SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY 529
INDEX 537

PREFACE v
CONTENTS vii
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE xi
I. THE FIRST PHASE OF SOVIET MARXISM. THE BEGINNINGS OF STALINISM 1
1. What was Stalinism? 1
2. The stages of Stalinism 5
3. Stalin’s early life and rise to power 9
4. Socialism in one country 21
5. Bukharin and the N.E.P. ideology. The economic controversy of the 1920s 25
II. THEORETICAL CONTROVERSIES IN SOVIET MARXISM IN THE 1920s 45
1. The intellectual and political climate 45
2. Bukharin as a philosopher 56
3. Philosophical controversies: Deborin versus the mechanists 63
III. MARXISM AS THE IDEOLOGY OF THE SOVIET STATE 77
1. The ideological significance of the great purges 77
2. Stalin’s codification of Marxism 91
3. The Comintern and the ideological transformation of international Communism 105
IV. THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF MARXISM-LENINISM AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR 117
1. The wartime interlude 117
2. The new ideological offensive 121
3. The philosophical controversy of 1947 125
4. The economic debate 130
5. Marxism-Leninism in physics and cosmology 131
6. Marxist-Leninist genetics 136
7. General effect on Soviet science 139
8. Stalin on philology 141
9. Stalin on the Soviet economy 142
10. General features of Soviet culture in Stalin’s last years 144
11. The cognitive status of dialectical materialism 151
12. The roots and significance of Stalinism. The question of a ‘new class’ 157
13. European Marxism during the last phase of Stalinism 166
V. TROTSKY 183
1. The years of exile 183
2. Trotsky’s analysis of the Soviet system, the bureaucracy, and ‘Thermidor’ 190
3. Bolshevism and Stalinism. The idea of Soviet democracy 194
4. Criticism of Soviet economic and foreign policy 201
5. Fascism, democracy, and war 206
6. Conclusions 212
VI. ANTONIO GRAMSCI: COMMUNIST REVISIONISM 220
1. Life and works 221
2. The self-sufficiency of history; historical relativism 228
3. Critique of‘economism’. Prevision and will 231
4. Critique of materialism 237
5. Intellectuals and the class struggle. The concept of hegemony 240
6. Organization and mass movement. The society of the future 244
7. Summary 249
VII. GYÖRGY LUKÁCS: REASON IN THE SERVICE OF DOGMA 253
1. Life and intellectual development. Early writings 255
2. The whole and the part: critique of empiricism 264
3. The subject and object of history. Theory and practice. What is and what ought to be. Critique of neo-Kantianism and evolutionism 269
4. Critique of the ‘dialectic of nature’ and the theory of reflection. The concept of reification 273
5. Class-consciousness and organization 280
6. Critique of irrationalism 284
7. The whole, mediation, and mimesis as aesthetic categories 287
8. Realism, socialist realism, and the avant-garde 292
9. The exposition of Marxist mythology. Commentary 297
10. Lukács as a Stalinist, and his critique of Stalinism 300
VIII. KARL KORSCH 308
1. Biographical data 309
2. Theory and practice. Movement and ideology. Historical relativism 310
3. Three phases of Marxism 316
4. Critique of Kautsky 318
5. Critique of Leninism 321
6. A new definition of Marxism 322
IX. LUCIEN GOLDMANN 324
1. Life and writings 324
2. Genetic structuralism, Weltanschauung, and class-consciousness 325
3. The tragic world-view 330
4. Goldmann and Lukâcs. Comment on genetic structuralism 334
X. THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL AND ‘CRITICAL THEORY’ 341
1. Historical and biographical notes 343
2. Principles of critical theory 352
3. Negative dialectics 357
4. Critique of existential ‘authenticism’ 369
5. Critique of‘enlightenment’ 372
6. Erich Fromm 380
7. Critical theory (continued). Jürgen Habermas 387
8. Conclusion 395
XI. HERBERT MARCUSE: MARXISM AS A TOTALITARIAN UTOPIA OF THE NEW LEFT 396
1. Hegel and Marx versus positivism 397
2. Critique of contemporary civilization 402
3. ‘One-dimensional man’ 407
4. The revolution against freedom 410
5. Commentary 415
XII. ERNST BLOCH: MARXISM AS A FUTURISTIC GNOSIS 421
1. Life and writings 422
2. Basic ideas 426
3. Greater and lesser day-dreams 428
4. Marxism as a ‘concrete Utopia’ 431
5. Death as an anti-Utopia. God does not yet exist, but he will 436
6. Matter and materialism 439
7. Natural law 441
8. Bloch’s political orientation 442
9. Conclusion and comments 445
XIII. DEVELOPMENTS IN MARXISM SINCE STALIN’S DEATH 450
1. ‘De-Stalinization’ 450
2. Revisionism in Eastern Europe 456
3. Yugoslav revisionism 474
4. Revisionism and orthodoxy in France 478
5. Marxism and the ‘New Left’ 487
6. The peasant Marxism of Mao Tse-tung 494
EPILOGUE 523
SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY 531
INDEX 543

The present work is intended to serve as a handbook. In saying this I am not putting forward the absurd claim to have succeeded in presenting the history of Marxism in a non-controversial manner, eliminating my own opinions, preferences, and principles of interpretation. All I mean is that I have endeavoured to present that history not in the form of a loose essay but rather so as to include the principal facts that are likely to be of use to anyone seeking an introduction to the subject, whether or not he agrees with my assessment of them. I have also done my best not to merge comment with exposition, but to present my own views in separate, clearly defined sections.
Naturally an author’s opinions and preferences are bound to be reflected in his presentation of the material, his selection of themes, and the relative importance he attaches to different ideas, events, writings, and individuals. But it would be impossible to compile a historical manual of any kind—whether of political history, the history of ideas, or the history of art—if we were to suppose that every presentation of the facts is equally distorted by the author’s personal views and is in fact a more or less arbitrary construction, so that there is no such thing as a historical account but only a series of historical assessments.
This book is an attempt at a history of Marxism, i.e. the history of a doctrine. It is not a history of socialist ideas, nor of the parties or political movements that have adopted one or another version of the doctrine as their own ideology. I need not emphasize that this distinction is a difficult one to observe, especially in the case of Marxism where there is manifestly a close link between theory and ideology on the one hand and political contests on the other. However, a writer on any subject is bound to extract from the ‘living whole’ separate portions which, as he is well aware, are not wholly self-contained or independent. If this were not permitted we should have to confine ourselves to writing histories of the world, since all things are interconnected in one way or another.
Another feature that gives the work the character of a handbook is that I have indicated, though as briefly as possible, the basic facts showing the connection between the development of the doctrine and its function as a political ideology. The whole is a narrative strewn with my glosses.
There is scarcely any question relating to the interpretation of Marxism that is not a matter of dispute. I have tried to record the principal controversies, but it would altogether exceed the scope of this book to enter into a detailed analysis of the views of all historians and critics whose works I have studied, but whose opinions or interpretations I do not share. The book does not pretend to propose a particularly original interpretation of Marx. And it is easy to see that my reading of Marx was influenced more by Lukács than by other commentators, though I am far from sharing his attitude to the doctrine.
It will be observed that the book is not subdivided according to a single principle. It proved impossible to adhere to a purely chronological arrangement, as I found it necessary to present certain individuals or tendencies as part of a self-contained whole. The division into volumes is essentially chronological, but here too I had to permit myself some inconsistency in order, as far as possible, to treat different trends in Marxism as separate themes.
The first volume was originally drafted in 1968, during the leisure time at my disposal after dismissal from my professorship at Warsaw University. Within a year or two it became clear that the draft required a good deal of supplementing, amendment, and alteration. The second and third volumes were written in 1970-6, during my Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, and I am almost certain that it could not have been written but for the privileges I enjoyed as a Fellow.
The book does not contain an exhaustive bibliography, but only indications for the reader who wishes to refer to the sources and principal commentaries. In the works I have mentioned it will be easy for anyone to find references to literature which today, unfortunately, is altogether too extensive for a single reader to master.
The second volume has been read in typescript by two of my Warsaw friends, Dr. Andrzej Walicki and Dr. Ryszard Herczyński. The former is a historian of ideas, the latter a mathematician; both have made many valuable critical remarks and suggestions. The whole work has been read, prior to translation, only by myself and my wife, Dr. Tamara Kołakowska, who is a psychiatrist by profession; like all my other writings, it owes much to her good sense and critical comments.
Oxford Leszek Kołakowski

IntroductionKarl Marx was a German philosopher. This does not sound a particularly enlightening statement, yet it is not so commonplace as it may at first appear. Jules Michelet, it will be recalled, used to begin his lectures on British history with the words: ‘Messieurs, l’Angleterre est une île.’ It makes a good deal of difference whether we simply know that Britain is an island, or whether we interpret its history in the light of that fact, which thus takes on a significance of its own. Similarly, the statement that Marx was a German philosopher may imply a certain interpretation of his thought and of its philosophical or historical importance, as a system unfolded in terms of economic analysis and political doctrine. A presentation of this kind is neither self-evident nor uncontroversial. Moreover, although it is clear to us that Marx was a German philosopher, half a century ago things were somewhat different. In the days of the Second International the majority of Marxists considered him rather as the author of a certain economic and social theory which, according to some, was compatible with various types of metaphysical or epistemological outlook; while others took the view that it had been furnished with a philosophical basis by Engels, so that Marxism in the proper sense was a body of theory compounded of two or three parts elaborated by Marx and Engels respectively.
We are all familiar with the political background to the present-day interest in Marxism, regarded as the ideological tradition on which Communism is based. Those who consider themselves Marxists, and also their opponents, are concerned with the question whether modern Communism, in its ideology and institutions, is the legitimate heir of Marxian doctrine. The three commonest answers to this question may be expressed in simplified terms as follows: (1) Yes, modern Communism is the perfect embodiment of Marxism, which proves that the latter is a doctrine leading to enslavement, tyranny, and crime; (2) Yes, modern Communism is the perfect embodiment of Marxism, which therefore signifies a hope of liberation and happiness for mankind; (3) No, Communism as we know it is a profound deformation of Marx’s gospel and a betrayal of the fundamentals of Marxian socialism. The first answer corresponds to traditional anti-Communist orthodoxy, the second to traditional Communist orthodoxy, and the third to various forms of critical, revisionistic, or ‘open’ Marxism. The argument of the present work, however, is that the question is wrongly formulated and that attempts to answer it are not worth while. More precisely, it is impossible to answer the questions ‘How can the various problems of the modern world be solved in accordance with Marxism?’, or ‘What would Marx say if he could see what his followers have done?’ Both these are sterile questions and there is no rational way of seeking an answer to them. 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.
Those who hold that Communism is a ‘betrayal’ or ‘distortion’ of Marxism are seeking, as it were, to absolve Marx of responsibility for the actions of those who call themselves his spiritual posterity. In the same way, heretics and schismatics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries accused the Roman Church of betraying its mission and sought to vindicate St. Paul from the association with Roman corruption. In the same way, too, admirers of Nietzsche sought to clear his name from responsibility for the ideology and practice of Nazism. The ideological motivation of such attempts is clear enough, but their informative value is next to nothing. There is 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. We may therefore be certain in advance that no political or religious movement is a perfect expression of that movement’s ‘essence’ as laid down in its sacred writings; on the other hand, these writings are not merely passive, but exercise an influence of their own on the course of the movement. What normally happens is that the social forces which make themselves the representatives of a given ideology are stronger than that ideology, but are to some extent dependent on its own tradition.
The problem facing the historian of ideas, therefore, does not consist in comparing the ‘essence’ of a particular idea with its practical ‘existence’ in terms of social movements. The question is rather how, and as a result of what circumstances, the original idea came to serve as a rallying-point for so many different and mutually hostile forces; or what were the ambiguities and conflicting tendencies in the idea itself which led to its developing as it did? It is a well-known fact, to which the history of civilization records no exception, that all important ideas are subject to division and differentiation as their influence continues to spread. So there is no point in asking who is a ‘true’ Marxist in the modern world, as such questions can only arise within an ideological perspective which assumes that the canonical writings are the authentic source of truth, and that whoever interprets them rightly must therefore be possessed of the truth. There is no reason, in fact, why we should not acknowledge that different movements and ideologies, however antagonistic to one another, are equally entitled to invoke the name of Marx —except for some extreme cases with which this work is not concerned. In the same way, it is sterile to inquire ‘Who was a true Aristotelian—Averroës, Thomas Aquinas, or Pomponazzi?’, or ‘Who was the truest Christian—Calvin, Erasmus, Bellarmine, or Loyola?’ The latter question may have a meaning for Christian believers, but it has no relevance to the history of ideas. The historian may, however, be concerned to inquire what it was in primitive Christianity that made it possible for men so unlike as Calvin, Erasmus, Bellarmine, and Loyola to appeal to the same source. In other words, 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.
The relationship between the Marxism of Marx and that of the Marxists is a legitimate field of inquiry, but it does not enable us to decide who are the ‘truest’ Marxists.
If, as historians of ideas, we place ourselves outside ideology, this does not mean placing ourselves outside the culture within which we live. On the contrary, the history of ideas, and especially those which have been and continue to be the most influential, is to some extent an exercise in cultural self-criticism. I propose in this work to study Marxism from a point of view similar to that which Thomas Mann adopted in Doktor Faustus vìs-à-vìs Nazism and its relation to German culture. Thomas Mann was entitled to say that Nazism had nothing to do with German culture or was a gross denial and travesty of it. In fact, however, he did not say this: instead, he inquired how such phenomena as the Hitler movement and Nazi ideology could have come about in Germany, and what were the elements in German culture that made this possible. Every German, he maintained, would recognize with horror, in the bestialities of Nazism, the distortion of features which could be discerned even in the noblest representatives (this is the important point) of the national culture. Mann was not content to pass over the question of the birth of Nazism in the usual manner, or to contend that it had no legitimate claim to any part of the German inheritance. Instead, he frankly criticized that culture of which he was himself a part and a creative element. 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. The Nazis told their supermen to read The Will to Power, and it is no good saying that this was a mere chance and that they might equally well have chosen the Critique of Practical Reason. It is not a question of establishing the ‘guilt’ of Nietzsche, who as an individual was not responsible for the use made of his writings; nevertheless, the fact that they were so used is bound to cause alarm and cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to the understanding of what was in his mind. 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. Our attitude to the problem of Marx and Marxism should be the same, and in this sense the present study is not only a historical account but an attempt to analyse the strange fate of an idea which began in Promethean humanism and culminated in the monstrous tyranny of Stalin.
The chronology of Marxism is complicated for the chief reason that many of what are now considered Marx’s most important writings were not printed until the twenties and thirties of the present century or even later. This applies, for example, to the full text of The German Ideology; the full text of the doctoral thesis on the Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature; Contribution to the Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Law; the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844; Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Grundrisse); and also Engels’s Dialectic of Nature. These works could not affect the epoch in which they were written, but today they are regarded as important not only from the biographical point of view but also as integral components of a doctrine which cannot be understood without them. It is still disputed whether, and how far, what are considered to be Marx’s mature ideas, as reflected especially in Capital, are a natural development of his philosophy as a young man, or whether, as some critics hold, they represent a radical intellectual change: did Marx, in other words, abandon in the fifties and sixties a mode of thought and inquiry bounded by the horizon of Hegelian and Young Hegelian philosophy? Some believe that the social philosophy of Capital is, as it were, prefigured by the earlier writings and is a development or particularization of them, while others maintain that the analysis of capitalist society denotes a breakaway from the utopian and normative rhetoric of the early period; and the two conflicting views are correlated with opposing interpretations of the whole body of Marx’s thought.
It is a premiss of this work that, logically as well as chronologically, the starting-point of Marxism is to be found in philosophic anthropology. At the same time, it is virtually impossible to isolate the philosophic content from the main body of Marx’s thought. Marx was not an academic writer but a humanist in the Renaissance sense of the term: his mind was concerned with the totality of human affairs, and his vision of social liberation embraced, as an interdependent whole, all the major problems with which humanity is faced. It has become customary to divide Marxism into three fields of speculation— basic philosophic anthropology, socialist doctrine, and economic analysis—and to point to three corresponding sources in German dialectics, French socialist thought, and British political economy. Many are of the opinion, however, that this clear-cut division is contrary to Marx’s own purpose, which was to provide a global interpretation of human behaviour and history and to reconstruct an integral theory of mankind in which particular questions are only significant in relation to the whole. As to the manner in which the elements of Marxism are interrelated, and the nature of its internal coherence, this is not something which can be defined in a single sentence. It would seem, however, that Marx endeavoured to discern those aspects of the historical process which confer a common significance on epistemological and economic questions and social ideals; or, to put it another way, he sought to create instruments of thought or categories of knowledge that were sufficiently general to make all human phenomena intelligible. If, however, we attempt to reconstruct these categories and display Marx’s thought in accordance with them, we run the risk of neglecting his evolution as a thinker and of treating the whole of his work as a single homogeneous block. It seems better, therefore, to pursue the development of his thought in its main lines and only afterwards to consider which of its elements were present from the outset, albeit implicitly, and which may be regarded as transient and accidental.
The present conspectus of the history of Marxism will be focused on the question which appears at all times to have occupied a central place in Marx’s independent thinking: viz. how is it possible to avoid the dilemma of utopianism versus historical fatalism? In other words, how can one articulate and defend a viewpoint which is neither the arbitrary proclamation of imagined ideals, nor resigned acceptance of the proposition that human affairs are subject to an anonymous historical process in which all participate but which no one is able to control? The surprising diversity of views expressed by Marxists in regard to Marx’s so-called historical determinism is a factor which makes it possible to present and schematize with precision the trends of twentieth-century Marxism. It is also clear that one’s answer to the question concerning the place of human consciousness and will in the historical process goes far towards determining the sense one ascribes to socialist ideals, and is directly linked with the theory of revolutions and crises.
The starting-point of Marx’s thinking, however, was provided by the philosophic questions comprised in the Hegelian inheritance, and the break-up of that inheritance is the natural background to any attempt at expounding his ideas.

The present volume deals with the evolution of Marxism in the last half-century. Writing it has involved especial difficulties, one of which is the sheer bulk of the available literature: no historian can be fully acquainted with it, and it is therefore, so to speak, impossible to do everyone justice. Another difficulty is that I am not able to treat the subject with the desirable detachment. Many of the people mentioned in this volume I know or have known personally, and some of them are or were my friends. Moreover, in describing the controversies and political struggles in Eastern Europe in the later 1950s I am writing about events and issues in which I myself took part, so that I appear in the invidious role of a judge in my own cause. At the same time, I could not pass over these matters in silence. The upshot is that the most recent period, which is the one I know best from my own experience, is treated less fully than any other. The last chapter, which deals with this period, could be expanded into a further volume; but, setting aside the difficulties already mentioned, I am not convinced that the subject is intrinsically worthy of treatment at such length.

Kolakowski, Leszek - Main Currents of Marxism. Vol 1. The Founders - Oxford: Clarendon Press - 1978
Kolakowski, Leszek - Main Currents of Marxism. Vol 2. The Golden Age - Oxford: Clarendon Press - 1978
Kolakowski, Leszek - Main Currents of Marxism. Vol 3. The Breakdown - Oxford: Clarendon Press - 1978