> John E. Norem quoted:
>
> 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
>
>
I have never read Kolakowski first hand, so I really don't know. But it
seems as though I read somewhere Kolakowski being cited for making the
argument that Leninism and Stalinism were the logical outcome of Marxism,
basically as an outcome of the movement to resolve dialectical
contradictions of capitalism and bourgeois democracy or something like that.
It struck me as a bullshit argument from the second hand source I read (sorry, I can't place it). Can somebody fill in the blanks, did Kolakowski make such an argument, and can somebody speak to its strengths or weaknesses? Sheldon
-- http://left-wingwacko.blogspot.com/