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Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth and Dissolution. Translated from the Polish by P.S. Falla. Volume 1: The Founders. Pp. xiii + 434. Volume 2: The Golden Age. Pp. viii + 542. Volume 3: The Breakdown. Pp. xii + 548. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press 1978.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

André Liebich*
Affiliation:
Université du Québec à Montréal, Case Postale 8888, Succursale ‘A’, Montréal, P.Q., H3C 3P8

Abstract

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Type
Critical Notice
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1986

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References

1 I recall a talk on Brzozowski given by Kolakowski at Oxford in 1973. After the talk one of the English dons asked me, in all seriousness, whether Brzozowski had really existed or whether Kolakowski had invented him.

2 Kucharzewski, Jan The Origins of Modern Russia (New York: The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America 1948)Google Scholar; abridged version of Od bialego caratu do czerwonego [From White Tsardom to Red], 7 vols. (Warsaw 1923-35); Walicki, Andrzej A History of Russian Thought from the Enlightenment to Marxism (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1979)Google Scholar and The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth-Century Russian Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975). Both books are translated from the Polish by Hilda Andrews-Rusiecka.

3 A recent, rather personal sketch is by Karpinski, WojciechLeszek Kolakowski: A Portrait’ in European Liberty: Four Essays on the Occasion of the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Erasmus Prize Foundation (The Hague: M. Nijhoff Pubs. 1983).Google Scholar An earlier, more rigorous study of Kolakowski's thought is Schwan, Gesine Leszek Kolakowski: eine Philosophie der Freiheit nach Marx [also erroneously sub-titled]: eine marxistische Philsophie der Freiheit (Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer 1971).Google Scholar Kolakowski, 's writings in English translation have been collected in Toward a Marxist Humanism: Essays on the Left Today, translated from the Polish by Peel, Jane Zielonko (New York: Grove Press 1968)Google Scholar; the same essays with a lengthy foreward by Labedz, L. have appeared in a British edition under the name, Marxism and Beyond: On Historical Understanding and Individual Responsibility (London: Pall Mall 1968).Google Scholar Eleven other essays have appeared in ‘A Leszek Kolakowski Reader,’ Triquarterly 22 (1971), which contains a valuable essay by Kline, George L.Beyond Revisionism’ (1348)Google Scholar, and a very thorough bibliography.

4 The Priest and the Jester’ in Toward a Marxist Humanism, 33

5 The Priest and the Jester,’ 35

6 The Concept of the Left’ in Toward a Marxist Humanism, 80

7 Kolakowski, Leszek Husserl and the Search for Certitude. The Cassirer Lectures (New Haven: Yale University Press 1975). 85Google Scholar

8 Schwan, Leszek Kolakowski, points out that sixteen of Kolakowski's first twenty pieces up to 1955 involved disputes over religious questions.

9 Kolakowski, Leszek Chrétiens sans église: la conscience religieuse et le lien confessionnel au XVIle siècle, traduit du polonais par Anna Posner (Paris: Gallimard 1969).Google Scholar The original was published as Swiadomość religijna i więź kościelna: studia nad chrześcijaństwem bezwyznaniowym siedemnastego wieku (Warsaw: PWN 1965).

10 See, for instance, Kolakowski, LeszekChristian Poland and Human Rights,’ Index on Censorship 8 (1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Originally published in Miliband, Ralph and Saville, John eds., The Socialist Register 1973 (London: The Merlin Press 1973)Google Scholar and reprinted with slight modifications in Thompson, E.P. The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (New York and London: Monthly Review Press 1978) 303402.Google Scholar Page references here in parentheses following citations are to the latter edition.

12 In Miliband, Ralph and Saville, John eds., The Socialist Register 1974 (London: The Merlin Press 1974), 120Google Scholar

13 Thompson takes some account of this point in the later version of the ‘Letter’ cited here.

14 Written in 1956 for Po prostu but published only in translation. New Leader 10 February 1957, 9-10 and Stillman, E. ed., Bitter Harvest: The Intellectual Revolt Behind the Iron Curtain (New York: Praeger 1959), 4750Google Scholar

15 Kolakowski, Leszek and Hampshire, Stuart eds., The Socialist Idea: A Reappraisal (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1974)Google Scholar

16 ‘Euro-Communist Illusions’, Encounter 49 (1977) 14-19

17 ‘Introduction’ to The Socialist Idea, 14

18 ‘What is Living (& What is Dead) in the Social-Democratic Idea?’ Encounter 58 (1982). 11-17

19 Jay, MartinReview of Main Currents of Marxism,’ American Historical Review 85 (1980), 82–3Google Scholar; Wartofsky, MarxThe Unhappy Consciousness’ [review of Main Currents of Marxism]. Praxis International 1 (1982), 288306Google Scholar. In the same vein, see for instance, the reviews by Calhoun, Craig in Social Forces 60 (1981), 607–10Google Scholar, Hindess, Barry in The Sociological Review 27 (1979), 839–42.Google Scholar

20 Dissent 26 (1979). 338-43

21 The New Republic 3 (February 1979). 28-32. Michael Harrington is ‘national chairman of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee.’

22 ‘Kolakowski's Anti-Marx.’ Political Studies 29 (1981), 115-22

23 ‘Miliband's Anti-Kolakowski,’ Political Studies 29 (1981), 123-5

24 Hook, SidneySpectral Marxism’ [review of Main Currents of Marxism], The American Scholar (1980) 250–71, 254.Google Scholar

25 Tar, ZoltanIn search of the Real Marx’ [review of Main Currents of Marxism], American Journal of Sociology 87 (1981), 191Google Scholar