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P. S. Falla

Leszek Kołakowski

Main Currents Of Marxism: The Founders, The Golden Age, The Breakdown Hardcover – November 7, 2005

by Leszek Kolakowski (Author), P. S. Falla (Author)

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A single-volume edition of the three-part study of Marxism provides a comprehensive history of the origins, structure, and posthumous development of the Marxist thought system, tracing its intellectual foundations from Plotonius through the philosophies of such figures as Lenin, Sarte, and Mao, in an publication complemented by a new preface and epilogue.

Print length

1284 pages
Language

English
Publisher

W W Norton & Co Inc
Publication date

November 7, 2005
Dimensions

6.5 x 2.5 x 9.5 inches
ISBN-10

0393060543
ISBN-13

978-0393060546
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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

From scattered previous editions, this volume unites the author's opus on Marxism, which he wrote in the 1970s. Kolakowski is a historian of philosophy and treats Marxism as such; that is, he does not address the history of Marxist movements, parties, and leaders. For those interested in Marxist doctrine, Kolakowski dissects it within a chronological framework, laying out its antecedents in Hegelian philosophy and varieties of socialism current in the 1830s and 1840s. Conceding Karl Marx's originality in formulating his precepts, seminally in The German Ideology (1846), Kolakowski subjects them to withering analysis, especially in their relation to Marx's claim to have discovered a science of human history. There is no mistaking Kolakowski for a Marxist, but his grasp of the interrelationship of Marxian concepts from alienated labor to historical materialism to revisionism is complete. Kolakowski also understands Marxism's propensity for schismatic development, justifying the author's description of this history as a handbook of the principal Marxist theoreticians. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

His three volume dissection of Marxism is considered the definitive work on the subject. -- Sarah Lyall, New York Times

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W W Norton & Co Inc; First edition (November 7, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 1284 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393060543
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393060546
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.81 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 2.5 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,199,748 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,270 in Communism & Socialism (Books)
- #5,261 in Philosophy Movements (Books)
- #6,978 in European Politics Books

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5 star		77%
4 star		16%
3 star		2%
2 star		3%
1 star		3%

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Hugo Johnson

The best book on Marxist theory out there

Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2015

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Kolakowski presents you with the best summary of Marxist thought: its origins, development, strengths and weaknesses. Kolakowski was a Polish dissident, a scholar of Marxism who became disenchanted with the socialist bloc. He's fair, however, and while he makes some devastating criticisms of Marxist ideas, he will acknowledge the many places where Marx, Engels, and others contributed mightily to our understanding of the world. Highly recommended.

19 people found this helpful

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Lee

Enlightening

Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2021

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Scary, yet enlightening - the mind of a mad man or genius?

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Conrad Johnson

Another Brilliant, Polish Mind at Work

Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2010

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Kolakowski reviews and summarizes the history of Marxism with as much nuance and precision to detail as Chopin dealt with music in his piano concertos. The author is a maestro of holistic interpretation while at the same time paying excruciating detail to references and influences that shaped, transformed, radicalized and pragmatically utilized Marxist philosophy from its very inception until the 1970's. I would be willing to bet that most people who call themselves Socialists or attack Socialism have no idea behind the complex debates that formed this humanistic philosophy. Drawing from an extensive collection of manifestos and books on the subject from mostly European sources, Kolakowski is brilliantly able to paint an eloquent picture of this often, misunderstood and misapplied philosophy. My favorite line of his in this work (which I here paraphrase) is that Marxism can be compared to Christianity because of the multitude of interpretations derived from core beliefs of both ethical systems of thought. My only criticism of his approach, which reflects his Polish background, is the heavy handed contempt that he attributes to Marxism/Leninism and its resultant growth into Stalinism. Yet he expounds upon his seemingly biased view with credible facts which are hard to deny. After reading this tome, it is unavoidable to come to the conclusion that Marxism fails ultimately because of the frailties of human nature. There can be no worldwide, worker's Utopia because man is inherently exploitive and, to believe otherwise, is sheer folly. If "religion is the opiate of the people," then Marxism is the rabbit hole of philosophical thought and offers no definitive solution to the societal dilemma faced by modern man.

14 people found this helpful

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Jan Doxrud

A must read to understand Marxism within a wide context

Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2010

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First of all, Leszek Ko³akowski was a superb intellectual, philosopher and historian of ideas. After the Second World War he devoted himself to marxism, but after visiting Moscow he left stalinism and became a revisionist marxist. Stalinism as a subreligion within a religion (Marxism) condemned the heretic, no schism was allowed. Ko³akowski was expelled from the Polish United Workers' Party.
Now, lets go to the book that made Ko³akowski famous. The purpose of the book in the words of Ko³akowski: "to understand Marx's basic thoughts as answers to questions that have long excercised the minds of philosophers, but at the same time to comprehend them in their uniqueness both as emanations of Marx's genius and as phenomena of a particular age." Ko³akowski did not write a history of Western philosophy to understand Marx, but as he said "a brief account of the questions in regard to which Marxism can be described as constituting a new step in the development of European philosophy." Therefore Ko³akowski does a real genealogy of marxism, you can not study Martxism as an isolated ideology. "The phrase Marxism before Marx has no meaning, but Marx's thought would be emptied of its content if it were not considered in the setting of European culltural history as a whole..." Thus, Ko³akowski begin analysing the origins of dialectitic BRIEFLY (but not lacking of depth) Plotinus, Saint Augustine and the contingency of human existence, the concept of the "One" before and after Christianity and how can men can reach non duality or the union with the One, which in the followers of Plato is in one way and in christianity (influenced by Plato) in another way. The he examined interesting figures like Meister Eckhart and the dialectif of deification, Nicolas de Cusa and the coincidentia oppositorum, the Enlightenment, Rousseau, Hume, the Germans: Kant (Prussian), Fichte, Hegel (as you should know and important part of the book) and the Hegelian Left. Young Hegelians: Ludwig Feurbach (The essence of Christianity) and Moses Hess and his philosophy of action. Then starts the analysis of Marx writting (and Engel's) Marxism before and after the Russian "Revolution" (was it a Revolution?. Lev Trotsky, the marriage between Marxism-Leninsm-Stalinism. Also interesting the part about Antonio Gramsci, Györg Lukács and other "perhaps" less known: German Marxist theorist Karl Korsch (Marxism and Philosophy)and French philosopher and sociologist, Lucien Goldmann. The Frankfurt school is obviously included with some of their leading figures and former figures: Horckheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Fromm. The book finish with Ernst Bloch and Marxism after De-Stalinization.
If you want to understand Marxism you should have this book in your room and combine it with the original works of the authors. This is more a philosophical work than a history book about marxism. You should have a philosophical basis to read some parts of the book. You can read a really good history book about marxism and communism, better than Robert Service's "Comrades", its called The Red Flag (David Priestland)

31 people found this helpful

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Will Gomes

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2016

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There are no words to express my satisfaction for buying it! I really appreciate that. Thks

3 people found this helpful

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Georgios

A balance in-depth analysis

Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2011

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An analysis incomparable both in philosophical insight and historical extent. Balanced, it pays justice both to the theoritical (and practical) breakthrougs of socialist and communist thought and to the practical (and theoritical) drawbacks of its "existent" version(s). Not by chance characterised a life-time achivement of its author, Leszek Kolakowski.

3 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

best book on Marxism

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 23, 2018

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this was a fantastic book, my experience was reading the first two parts as someone who was still somewhat a 'believer' in Marxism, at least in it's more modern form. By the time I had reached the third book I coincidentally was re-visiting Poland for the first time since the Berlin Wall had fallen. To read Kolakowski's third book on the ugly reality of Marxism from Stalin onward, whilst seeing the contrast of a free and vibrant Poland compared to the soviet nightmare I remembered from my childhood was truly a spiritual experience. I was enthralled by Kolakowski's acute philosophical criticism of the various modern outgrowths of Marx - so idealised by both myself and my friends on the Left. By the time the third book was finished, so was my faith in Marxism, a philosophy found to be untenable when subjected to the kind of thorough breakdown that this book facilitates. A five star book by any measure.

5 people found this helpful

syd

Kolakowski

Reviewed in Italy on December 27, 2016

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Prima di tutto bisogna mettere in chiaro, come nemmeno tanto surrettiziamente fa Kolakowski stesso già dalla prefazione, che i tre volumi che compongono "main currents of marxism" sono e vogliono essere una storia filosofica "di parte". Non potrebbe essere altrimenti, data la biografia dell'autore: polacco, passa da comunista ortodosso a comunista dissidente dopo aver toccato con mano la ripugnante realtà della Russia stalinista durante un viaggio ufficiale; da dissidente sviluppa un'interessante visione umanistica del marxismo duramente avversa allo stalinismo (che in Italia susciterà una certa euforia negli ambienti della sinistra critica verso il PCI) e di conseguenza viene perseguitato dal regime polacco, licenziato e bandito a vita dall'Accademia. Riparato all'estero Kolakowski abbandona ogni velleità marxista e abbraccia una visione liberaldemocratica senza compromessi. Va da sé quindi che quella proposta in questo volume non è assolutamente un'interpretazione "generosa" della storia dei marxismi (e a dire il vero neanche con il socialismo democratico o non marxista), l'autore cerca di collegare con un filo rosso "totalitario" le primissime radici filosofiche hegeliane con il leninismo, il "marxismo-leninismo" (ovvero lo stalinismo) dottrina ufficiale del blocco sovietico, e addirittura la teoria critica della scuola di Francoforte; fornendo sempre l'interpretazione in grado di condannare più radicalmente il marxismo e i marxisti, senza distinzione tra moderati e radicali, revisionisti e ortodossi (una certa pietà è dimostrata solo nei confronti di Bernstein e di parti del pensiero luxemburghiano). Addirittura pezzi di "socialismo utopistico" finiscono nel calderone delle critiche, quando l'autore parla di supposti predecessori del marxismo: Owen, Fourier, Cartisti e simili fanno immeritatamente la figura della banda di stolti. In questo furore molte delle critiche levate da Kolakowski colpiscono nel segno e sono indiscutibili, ma molte altre sono o esagerate - ai due opposti temporali l'idealismo tedesco presentato nei caricaturali panni di copertura per il totalitarismo, la solita solfa ideologica che tornerà in Popper, oppure Marcuse "ideologo dell'oscurantismo" per aver osato criticare la scienza contemporanea e per aver criticato l'ideale della tolleranza indiscriminata, quando già un Locke a suo tempo aveva posto dei paletti volti a tutelare la tolleranza dagli intolleranti - oppure sono semplicemente caricature non degne di un pensatore del livello del Filosofo polacco. Critiche a parte "main currents of marxism" è un libro da leggere e da meditare, l'opera principale dell'ultimo grande pensatore politico dell'est Europa e un'opera irrinunciabile anche per chi continua a studiare il marxismo come pensiero vivente e a sognare un mondo diverso e più democratico e una società più equa della società capitalista.

One person found this helpful

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Arthur Barreto

Reviewed in Brazil on March 6, 2020

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Excelente livro revelando todas as nuances dessa religião politica diabolica

One person found this helpful

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Luciano Machado Tomaz

Great book!

Reviewed in Italy on June 10, 2016

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This is a essential work to understand the roots and the development of the Marxism. Kolakowski is one the great philosophers of the 20th century and writer able to expose the ideas in a clearly way.

Zorglub

LA somme sur l'histoire du marxisme

Reviewed in France on May 4, 2014

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Seuls les deux premiers tomes du tryptique sont parus en France, traitant de Marx et Engels pour le premier et du marxisme classique pour le second; d'une manière synthétique et critique extrêmement pertinente. Le troisième livre des présentations critiques et magistrales d'auteurs comme Lukacs, Adorno, Bloch, etc.et en généra du marxisme "contemporain" de l'auteur (années 70).Le climat français de l'époque a empêché la parution de ce troisième tome. La présente version anglaise reprend en un seul volume les trois tomes. Il s'agira de la somme sur le marxisme théorique, sans laquelle celui-ci ne peut être compris dans toute sa signfication.

3 people found this helpful

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