A trilogy titled Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth, and Dissolution seems unlikely to strike many as a beach book. Yet the book is not only profitable and enlightening but, yes, entertaining -- and it removes the sand from eyes irritated by ideology.
Leszek Kolakowski wrote his masterpiece from experience. A native of Poland, he believed in communism even as he lived under it. He left Marxism eventually, and became one of its clearest critics. Stalinism caused his split. Kolakowski at first tried to find a somewhat softer application of Marx, yet grew to understand Stalin not as aberration but as culmination.
Kolakowski embraced liberal concepts of liberty and respected humanity's transcendental pursuit of truth. Western civilization to him was not a cultural contrivance but a treasure. Christianity was not idle, either, but a foundational rock of something very good.
Kolakowski was a philosopher, a teacher of great gifts beloved by his protégés. He wrote vast works and pithy monographs. As a public intellectual, he belonged to a vanishing breed. History, particularly in a pictorial age, emphasizes action. Thought receives rather less attention. As individuals and nations, however, we are shaped by the thoughts of those whose names we have forgotten or never knew. The world is abandoning the word for the image, and is re-entering the cave. A remnant remembers. Ideas have consequences, said Richard Weaver. Leszek Kolakowski was consequential. He died last month at 81.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement