--- On Fri, 7/17/09, farmelantj at juno.com
> <farmelantj at juno.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> > We should keep in mind that the
> > obituary provided for us by John
> > is from a Polish news source which
> > have a vested interest in pushing
> > the view that Kolakowski was completely
> > anti-Marxist.
It would be true to call him anti-Marxist. It would not be true to call him anti-socialist. "Marxism has been frozen and immobilized for decades as the ideological superstructure of a totalitarian political movement, and in consequence has lost touch with intellectual developments and social realities. The hope that it could be revived and made fruitful once again soon proved to be an illusion. As an explanatory 'system' it is dead, nor does it offer any 'method' that can be effectively used to interpret modern life, to foresee the future, or cultivate utopian projections. Contemporary Marxist literature, although plentiful in quantity, has a depressing air of sterility and helplessness, in so far as it is not purely historical."
"...
Kolaslowski, Epilogue to "Main Currents of Marxism".
-Thomas