Rob Schaap wrote:
> >
> What do the Penpals think of Leszek Kolakowski's *Main Currents of Marxism*
> trilogy. Only just got my mits on it, but it reads pretty silkily -
> especially for a translation.
>
Good on philosophy, poor on economics and politics. His interpretations
are questionable and there is a lot of cold-war style anti-communism and
unfashionable British Empiricism. K discusses a lot of stuff that hasn't
been translated into English such as pre-WWII Polish Marxists and
figures like like Otto Bauer who tried to synthesize Kant and Marx. K in
general, is very arrogant and his treatments of the Marxist tradition
are unduely harsh. To take one example, Mao's writings are dismissed as
"infantile" and "childlike" yet the fact that Mao led a successful
revolution in the most populated and harshest (climate-wise) countries
in the world and the fact that the subsequent system that was set up led
to great improvements in the lives of most Chinese receives no attention
let alone explanation even though the Chinese system has its
intellectual foundation in the writings of Chairman Mao. Mao's military
writings receive a lot of attention from a lot of people though I guess
that isn't Kolakowski's area. Kolakowski let his dogmatic
anti-Stalinism,
anti-Marxism and anti-Socialism got in the way of his better
intellectual judgement at times I think.
There are some fierce criticisms of Kolakowski that contain a lot of ad
hominem stuff. Jonathan Ree, Ralph Miliband and E.P Thompson to name a
few. Kolakowski's reply to Miliband was "My Correct Views on Everything"
(apparently he wasn't being ironic) that appeared in an early 70's
Socialist Register, a pretty scathing attack on academic Marxists.
Still,IMO,M.C.M. is very much worth reading and a good reference text.
The Kolakowski of the 80's and 90's was Jon Elster.
Sam Pawlett
