> After being thrown out of the party and losing his post at Warsaw
> University, Kolakowski became convinced that Stalinism was the logical
> conclusion of Marxism and not its aberration
Not true. Kolakowski wrote that Stalinism was the logical conclusion of *Leninism*. He held that Leninism, in turn, was one *possible* and legitimate interpretation of Marxism (among many others). By leaving that interpretation open, he believed that Marx could be blamed, in an intellectual-history sense, for Leninism. But he also repeated ad infinitum that Marx himself was a committed libertarian and that his own ideal was of a democratic society. He criticized anti-Marxists who depicted Marx as a totalitarian.
SA