>> 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
Well, no. Like I said, Kolakowski saw Stalinism as the natural outcome of Leninism and Leninism as a possible and legitimate interpretation of Marx's thought - but only one among others left open by Marx's writings. I'm not quite sure what you mean by the "movement to resolve dialectical contradictions of capitalism and democracy."
I think some of the main features of Marx's writings that K felt opened the path to Leninism were, e.g., Marx's vision of the communist future as a society of total social unity. K was very clear that in Marx's own mind this society would be infinitely libertarian, as far as possible from Stalinism. But K saw it (rightly, I think) as hopelessly utopian, in the commonsense meaning of the term. More importantly, if you posit a future utopia of perfect social unity and explicitly reject any system of transcendent political ethics, as Marx did, there's nothing to stop someone coming along and using your thought to argue that the state and police should be used as ruthlessly coercive instruments to force history to advance to that point. Why shouldn't they? Again, K made clear that much points to Marx himself rejecting such any such conclusion, but the texts leave open that path and indeed offer it some pillars of support.
Another point along the same lines, though less foreseeable by Marx, was the concept of the unity of theory and practice. Lenin could easily use this to formulate a model of the party that led inexorably to the Stalinist concept of the CP as sole arbiter of truth. K, by the way, seems quite convinced that on most points Lenin sincerely believed he was merely faithfully applying the master's works. As K wrote, Marx's writings, like all thinkers', were incomplete and contradictory; as a result, even when Lenin's opponents could point to some passage in Marx refuting Lenin's interpretation (such as the fact that Marx's concept of "dictatorship" of the p did not actually mean a lawless tyranny) they were merely exposing Marx's own contradictions (in this case because Marx deliberately eschewed any normative theory of law), which they themselves, as devout Marxists, found discomfiting.
Over all, I think there's a misunderstanding when K is referred to as "anti-Marxist." The work (and I'm only referring to that one work, Main Currents of Marxism) often takes a very hostile tone, but the hostility is never directed to Marx, only to various aspects of "Marxism" - for different reasons, depending on the particular target. He's highly respectful to Marx and Engels, Gramsci, and Jaures, somewhat indulgently condescending toward Kautsky and other 2nd Int'lists, deeply hostile to Lenin, both dazzled and appalled by Lukacs, etc. It's a variegated lot. He finished the book in 1978 and his judgment then was that 20th century Marxism had largely degenerated into a sterile, cult-like form of scholasticism or religion, or else an intellectually empty fetish object for academics, or a contentless pidgin for the flotsam of the world's disgruntled and dispossessed. Rather than screaming at the messenger, Marxists should have (as Jon Elster did in a contemporaneous review) taken it as a challenge to do better.
SA