Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown

Leszek Kołakowski

W. W. Norton & Company, 2005 - History - 1284 pages

From philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, one of the giants of twentieth-century intellectual history, comes this highly infuential study of Marxism. Written in exile, this 'prophetic work' presents, according to the Library of Congress, 'the most lucid and comprehensive history of the origins, structure, and posthumous development of the system of thought that had the greatest impact on the twentieth century'. Kolakowski traces the intellectual foundations of Marxist thought from Plotonius through Lenin, Lukacs, Sartre and Mao. He reveals Marxism to be 'the greatest fantasy of our century ...an idea that began in Promethean humanism and culminated in the monstrous tyranny of Stalinism'. In a brilliant coda, he examines the collapse of international Communism in light of the last tumultuous decades. Main Currents of Marxism remains the indispensable book in its field.

Contents

• Bibliographical Note: 3
• Introduction: 5
• The Origins of Dialectic: 10
• The contingency of human existence: 12
• The soteriology of Plotinus: 13
• Plotinus and Christian Platonism The search for the reason of creation: 17
• Eriugena and Christian theogony: 21
• Eckhart and the dialectic of deification: 27
• Nicholas of Cusa The contradictions of Absolute Being: 29
• Böhme and the duality of Being: 31
• salvation through annihilation: 32
• The Enlightenment The realization of man in the schema of naturalism: 34
• Rousseau and Hume Destruction of the belief in natural harmony: 36
• Kant The duality of mans being and its remedy: 38
• Fichte and the selfconquest of the spirit: 43
• Hegel The progress of consciousness towards the Absolute: 48
• Hegel Freedom as the goal of history: 59
• Marxs Thought in Its Earliest Phase: 80
• Hess and Feuerbach: 89
• Marxs Early Political and Philosophical Writings: 99
• The Paris Manuscripts The Theory: 109
• The Holy Family: 121
• Progress and the masses: 122
• The world of needs: 123
• The tradition of materialism: 124
• The German Ideology: 126
• Social being and consciousness: 128
• The division of labour and its abolition: 130
• Individuality and freedom: 132
• Stirner and the philosophy of egocentrism: 134
• Critique of Stirner The individual and the community: 138
• Alienation and the division of labour: 141
• The liberation of man and the class struggle: 142
• The epistemological meaning of the theory of false consciousness: 143
• Recapitulation: 146
• Socialist Ideas in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century as Compared with Marxian Socialism: 150
• Babouvism: 152
• SaintSimonism: 154
• Owen: 158
• Fourier: 163
• Proudhon: 167
• Weitling: 173
• Cabet: 175
• Blanqui: 176
• Blanc: 177
• Marxism and utopian socialism: 179
• Marxs critique of Proudhon: 184
• The Communist Manifesto: 186
• The Writings and Struggles of Marx and Engels after 1847: 192
• Lassalle: 195
• The First International Bakunin: 200
• Capitalism as a Dehumanized World The Nature of Exploitation: 215
• The classical economic tradition and the theory of value: 219
• The double form of value and the double character of labour: 222
• Commodity fetishism Labourpower as a commodity: 226
• The alienation of labour and of its product: 230
• The alienation of the process of socialization: 233
• The pauperization of the working class: 236
• The nature and historical mission of capitalism: 239
• The distribution of surplus value: 241
• The Contradictions of Capital and Their Abolition The Unity of Analysis and Action: 244
• The economic and political struggle of the proletariat: 248
• The nature of socialism and its two phases: 251
• the whole and the part the concrete and the abstract: 256
• consciousness and the historical process: 262
• Comments on Marxs theory of value and exploitation: 267
• The Motive Forces of the Historical Process: 275
• Social being and consciousness: 278
• Historical progress and its contradictions: 284
• The monistic interpretation of social relationships: 288
• The concept of class: 289
• The origin of class: 293
• The functions of the state and its abolition: 294
• Commentary on historical materialism: 298
• The Dialectic of Nature: 308
• Materialism and idealism The twilight of philosophy: 309
• Space and time: 312
• The variability of nature: 313
• Multiple forms of change: 314
• Causality and chance: 315
• The dialectic in nature and in thought: 317
• Quantity and quality: 318
• Contradictions in the world: 320
• The negation of the negation: 321
• Critique of agnosticism: 322
• The relativity of knowledge: 324
• Practice as the criterion of truth: 325
• The sources of religion: 326
• Recapitulation and Philosophical Commentary: 327
• Three motifs in Marxism: 335
• Marxism as the source of Leninism: 341
• Selective Bibliography: 345
• Bibliographical Note: 353
• Karl Kautsky: 379
• Rosa Luxemburg and the Revolutionary Left: 403
• Bernstein and Revisionism: 433
• Marxism as a Soteriology: 447
• a Hedonist Marxism: 468
• a Jansenist Marxism: 475
• an Attempt at an Open Orthodoxy: 496
• Marxism as an Instrument of Sociology: 511
• a Polish Brand of Orthodoxy: 523
• Marxism as Historical Subjectivism: 529
• AustroMarxists Kantians in the Marxist Movement: 549
• The Beginnings of Russian Marxism: 601
• Plekhanov and the Codification of Marxism: 620
• Marxism in Russia Before the Rise of Bolshevism: 640
• The Rise of Leninism: 661
• The party and the workers movement Consciousness and spontaneity: 664
• The question of nationality: 674
• The proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the democratic revolution Trotsky and the permanent revolution: 680
• Philosophy and Politics in the Bolshevik Movement: 687
• New intellectual trends in Russia: 692
• Empiriocriticism: 695
• Bogdanov and the Russian empiriocritics: 702
• The philosophy of the proletariat: 709
• The Godbuilders: 713
• Lenins excursion into philosophy: 714
• Lenin and religion: 723
• Lenins dialectical Notebooks: 725
• from a Theory of the State to a State Ideology: 730
• The Revolutions of 1917: 735
• The beginnings of socialist economy: 741
• The dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the party: 744
• The theory of imperialism and of revolution: 749
• Socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat: 754
• Trotsky on dictatorship: 763
• Lenin as an ideologist of totalitarianism: 766
• Martov on the Bolshevik ideology: 770
• Lenin as a polemicist Lenins genius: 772
• Selective Bibliography: 779
• Preface: 787
• Theoretical Controversies in Soviet Marxism in the 1920s: 824
• Marxism as the Ideology of the Soviet State: 849
• The Crystallization of MarxismLeninism: 881
• Trotsky: 934
• Communist Revisionism: 963
• Reason in the Service of Dogma: 989
• Karl Korsch: 1033
• Lucien Goldmann: 1046
• The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory: 1060
• Marxism as: 1104
• Marxism as a Futuristic Gnosis: 1124
• Life and writings: 1125
• Basic ideas: 1128
• Greater and lesser daydreams: 1129
• Marxism as a concrete Utopia: 1132
• Death as an antiUtopia God does not yet exist but he will: 1136
• Matter and materialism: 1138
• Natural law: 1140
• Blochs political orientation: 1141
• Conclusion and comments: 1143
• Developments in Marxism since Stalins Death: 1148
• Revisionism in Eastern Europe: 1153
• Yugoslav revisionism: 1167
• Revisionism and orthodoxy in France: 1170
• Marxism and the New Left: 1177
• The peasant Marxism of Mao Tsetung: 1183
• Epilogue: 1206
• New Epilogue: 1213
• Selective Bibliography: 1215
• Index: 1223

Bibliographic information

• Title: Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown
• Author: Leszek Kołakowski
• Translated by: Paul Stephen Falla
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005
• ISBN: 0393060543, 9780393060546
• Length: 1284 pages
• Subjects: History / General; Philosophy / General; Philosophy / Political; Political Science / History & Theory; Political Science / Political Ideologies / Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism