Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism

[Anonymous No.18200094]

Worth picking up? Looks comprehensive and well situated: 1970s Eastern Bloc philosopher reflecting on Marxism without excess attachment or resentment, at a histoical moment when the socialist states were stagnating but still alive, in power, and not yet defeated.

Not yet an autopsy on a dead subject that contemporary Marxist works must begin with (albeit some with hopes of resurrection or transmutation) but a philsophical history and critque of a living thing.

[Anonymous No.18200111]

>>18200094
Yes. Get the three volume set though. You can find them for cheap on eBay.

[Anonymous No.18200118]

>>18200111
Is there a particular reason for that?

[Anonymous No.18200438]

Vid on him
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL9MHoYdiJE

[Anonymous No.18200457]

>>18200094
Good for an overview, but biased against marxism.

[Anonymous No.18200464]

It's pretty good
>>18200457
Reality is biased against Marxism

[Anonymous No.18200480]

>(George) Steiner takes particular exception to Kolakowski’s final judgment of Lukács, the Frankfurt School members, and Ernst Bloch. According to Steiner, Kolakowski failed to appreciate “the messianic hunger for justice, the prophetic obsession with a kingdom of equity on earth, which is central to Judaism,” and, by extension, to those Jewish intellectuals who embraced Marxism such as Lukács, Horkheimer, Adorno, and Bloch.
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/david-gress/main-currents-of-marxism-by-leszek-kolakowski/

[Anonymous No.18200594]

>>18200464
Based status quo defender

[Anonymous No.18201383]

>>18200111
just more comfortable to read than 1300 pg book

[Anonymous No.18201446]

>>18200094
Yes, an excellent book. The best on Marxism.

>>18200457
>The greatest book ever written on Marxism ends up thinking Marxism is a failure

[Anonymous No.18201520]

Excerpt from volume 3 about Gramsci and how imprisoning him allowed him to keep his shoes dry of the petty communist politics of his day (that would have seen him condemed and purged) and become a philosopher hermit king. NEETs take note.

[Anonymous No.18201581]

>>18201520
Don't most Marxists seethe at Gramsci and consider him not real Marxism? I think the alt-right likes him too for some reason.

[Anonymous No.18201646]

>>18201581
>alt-right
autrights see him as the "author of cultural marxism".

[Anonymous No.18201685]

>>18201581
I'm reading the Gramsci section now in volume three, it's really good, I don't think you could get a better introduction to him. He's an anti-scientific idealist, or rather absolute historicist, in that all truths, thoughts, and acts, are historical relations (praxis) of subjects, acts of people in time. So Marxist materialism, instead of being a scientific truth where Marx discovered the objective laws of the universe, is rather a subjective historical expression of proletarian praxis. That doesn't make it less real because the only thing that is real are human acts situated in time, and thoughts are just another type of human act, including writing volumes of Das Kapital.

Berkeley meets Herder to revise Marxism and come up with a practical philosophy of political technique. Easy to label it solipsism or relativism but it does have great explanatory and utility value.

t. my hot take a dozen pages in.

[Anonymous No.18201701]

>>18201685
>instead of being a scientific truth where Marx discovered the objective laws of the universe
That's not what Marxism is or claims to be.

[Anonymous No.18201712]

>>18201646
Reading it you see Gramsci's strong influence in modern left thought, but stripped of the Marxist goals it appears more a developed theory of magical idealism; that our thoughts and acts create the world, that there is no objective world outside our thoughts and acts, and therefore our thoughts and acts can create a different world. Gays can get married, men can become women, workers can run factories, etc. if we think and act differently (and manipulate peoples implicit consiousness behind their acts that they are not cognisant of).

But you could turn the same ideas to any goal, obviously gays and trannies did.

[Anonymous No.18201718]

>>18201701
Engels and Lenin certainly thought so, Marx made a big deal about being scientific socialism and discovering laws of historical materialism. The materialist Hegel discovered the unfolding of the ecomonic spirit of the world.

[Anonymous No.18201729]

>>18201701
>my Marx wasn't scientific
Okay, good for you anon, ask the teacher for a gold star sticker.

[Anonymous No.18201736]

>>18201718
>Marx made a big deal about being scientific socialism
This does not equal discovering fundamental laws of the universe. It just means uncovering (still inductive) facts about human society up until that date, and how it has worked and progressed.

[Anonymous No.18201772]

>>18201729
You will never pass.

[Anonymous No.18201826]

>>18201736
Science means objective knowledge and was used by Marx in that sense. Orthodox Marxism took historical materialism as a law of nature discovered by Marx and planned a future based on it. Obviously it was wildly off and forver subject to revision and abandonment within Marxism as the predictions failed.

[Anonymous No.18201838]

>>18200094
I read it earlier this year. It made me respect marxism even less than I did before. Also made me realize that most of it is just completely outdated and holds zero relevance to the modern world. Even leftists movements like blm and critical race theory and decolonization are just using pseudo marxist language and aesthetics.

As to whether you should read it or not, would you enjoy reading about the history and ideas of a religion that has been dead for thousands of years? If not you're gonna hate this book. I like that sort of thing, so for me it was an enjoyable read.

[Anonymous No.18201949]

>>18201838
>>18201446
>>18200464
>>18200457
>>18200111
Thanks lads, pushed me over the edge to read it.

>enjoy reading about the history and ideas of a religion that has been dead for thousands of years
I do too, thanks for the framing.

[Anonymous No.18201958]

>>18201838
>I read it earlier this year. It made me respect marxism even less than I did before. Also made me realize that most of it is just completely outdated and holds zero relevance to the modern world. Even leftists movements like blm and critical race theory and decolonization are just using pseudo marxist language and aesthetics.
My take away from Schumpeter too. Marxism today is mostly a cockade.

[Anonymous No.18202002]

>>18201685
Yes, I've read it. I honestly don't see the appeal in Gramsci beyond what the alt-right apparently admires in him (or at least the french New Right) is that he believes you need to change the culture rather than attempt a coup whenever you have the chance (Lenin).

Normie Marxists are right to consider him not real Marxism. A project like Gramsci's could never pan out or motivate anyone.

[Anonymous No.18202067]

>>18202002
His idealist organicism has real power. It's not Marxist in the sense that the goals don't flow from the theory, and you can subsitute any mythology for the Marxist one that Gramsci still clung to. But I think it describes organic society well and how force of ideas tethered to action can produce new worlds, how else would you explain the success of gay and transsexual politics we've recently witnessed?

What your ascribing to Lenin is strictly more Blanquist, who was always outside the Marxist tent and not liked by Orthodox Marxists before Lenin smuggled him in (while disavowing Blanqui and pretending he wasn't).

[Anonymous No.18202088]

>>18202067
Gramsci is useful because of the success of gay and transsexual politics?

[Anonymous No.18202116]

>>18202088
Yeah, if you like success. He's the master political salesman, or rather his techniques are. Imagine being tasked with normalising men in dresses as being acutal women and getting government, society, and business on board to support it in law and sanction. What magician could pull of that task?

And from more than mere utility, imagine if you dream grander for humanity and want your vision to become reality. He has the way to achieve it, to get society to enact your vision for a new world and a new man.

[Anonymous No.18202261]

>>18202116
So he's satanic.

[Anonymous No.18202309]

>>18202261
Well if wasn't for a small group of Christians recruiting rich Roman heiresses and establishing hegemony over their children a Christain world would never have been born. For anyone who dreams of a different world Gramsci has the means to makes your LARP real.

[Anonymous No.18202339]

I like his works on religion