RATIONALISM RENDERS SUCH PRISTINE SYSTEMS....:

Kolakowski began writing Main Currents of Marxism in the late sixties during the so-called revisionist period in Poland, still believing in "Marxist humanism." He had been one of the pioneers of Polish Marxist humanism from the early days of the post-war social order. But after some time, he became disillusioned with Marxist dogma after the short-lived revolution of 1956, when his progressive journal Po Prostu (Straightforward) was discontinued.

After the first widespread social uprisings occurred, Kolakowski, then a young philosopher and still an idealist, in one of his essays entitled "What is Socialism?" summarized the real nature of the system. Using Rabelaisian negations to express "what socialism is not," Kolakowski unveiled its real face describing it as a state

in which a person who has not committed any crime sits at home waiting for the police, in which there are more spies than nurses and more people in prisons than in hospitals, in which one is forced to resort to lies...in which a person who does not think at all lives better -- and which wants all citizens to have the same opinions in philosophy, economics, literature, and ethics, in which the philosopher and writers always say the same thing as the generals and ministers, but always after them, in which one must each day refute what one affirmed the day before and always believe it to be the same.

Kolakowski concluded his essay by sardonically stating that this was "the first point. But now listen attentively, we will tell you what socialism is -- well then, socialism is a good thing."

Kolakowski's support of the student movement in the Spring of 1968 cost him the chair of philosophy at Warsaw University. Ultimately he was expelled from the university and the Party. Stripped of livelihood, he was compelled to leave the country. He became a visiting professor at various universities: Montreal, Yale, Chicago, California at Berkeley, and Oxford.

In Main Currents of Marxism, Kolakowski wrote that "Marxism has been the greatest fantasy of our century." According to him, socialism signifies giving the solution which can never exist. "At present," the author pointed out, "Marxism neither interprets the world nor changes it; it is merely a repetition of slogans." And this is because the ruling elite does not represent the society's needs, but places empty ideology above anything else. Clearly the most important premise of the socialist rule is that it can be exercised by those who possess power. The system which exacts stern order and blind obedience may only triumph through violence, fear, and military coercion. At the same time this system generates only alienation, and stagnation. The sad story of our times is that the system which claims to embody the rights, privileges and welfare of the working class is the same system whose biggest enemy is its very citizens. Kolakowski jokes that socialism would be a splendid idea if only there were no people.

Follow @brothersjudd