Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders - The Golden Age - The Breakdown

by Leszek Kolakowski, P. S. Falla

Overview

Leszek Kolakowski’s masterpiece, one of the twentieth century’s most important books—for the first time in a one-volume paperback.

Renowned philosopher Leszek Kolakowski was one of the first scholars to reveal both the shortcomings and the dangers posed by communist regimes. He now presents, for the first time in one paperback volume, his definitive Main Currents of Marxism: “A prophetic work,” according to the Library of Congress, that provides “the most lucid and comprehensive history of the origins, structure, and posthumous development of the system of thought that had the greatest impact on the 20th century.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393329438
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	01/17/2008
Pages:	1312
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 2.20(d)

About the Author

Leszek Kolakowski was the first recipient of the million-dollar John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and he is the recipient of the 2007 Jerusalem Prize. He lives in Oxford, England.

P. S. Falla is an English translator who has brought books over from many languages including French and Polish.

Table of Contents

	Preface to the 1981 Edition	xxiii
Book 1	The Founders	1
	Bibliographical Note	3
	Introduction	5
I	The Origins of Dialectic	10
1	The contingency of human existence	12
2	The soteriology of Plotinus	13
3	Plotinus and Christian Platonism. The search for the reason of creation	17
4	Eriugena and Christian theogony	21
5	Eckhart and the dialectic of deification	27
6	Nicholas of Cusa. The contradictions of Absolute Being	29
7	Bohme and the duality of Being	31
8	Angelus Silesius and Fenelon: salvation through annihilation	32
9	The Enlightenment. The realization of man in the schema of naturalism	34
10	Rousseau and Hume. Destruction of the belief in natural harmony	36
11	Kant. The duality of man's being, and its remedy	38
12	Fichte and the self-conquest of the spirit	43
13	Hegel. The progress of consciousness towards the Absolute	48
14	Hegel. Freedom as the goal of history	59
II	The Hegelian Left	68
1	The disintegration of Hegelianism	68
2	David Strauss and the critique of religion	70
3	Cieszkowski and the philosophy of action	71
4	Bruno Bauer and the negativity of self-consciousness	73
5	Arnold Ruge. The radicalization of the Hegelian Left	77
III	Marx's Thought in Its Earliest Phase	80
1	Early years and studies	80
2	Hellenistic philosophy as understood by the Hegelians	82
3	Marx's studies of Epicurus. Freedom and self-consciousness	83
IV	Hess and Feuerbach	89
1	Hess. The philosophy of action	89
2	Hess. Revolution and freedom	91
3	Feuerbach and religious alienation	93
4	Feuerbach's second phase. Sources of the religious fallacy	96
V	Marx's Early Political and Philosophical Writings	99
1	The state and intellectual freedom	99
2	Criticism of Hegel. The state, society, individuality	101
3	The idea of social emancipation	103
4	The discovery of the proletariat	105
VI	The Paris Manuscripts. The Theory of Alienated Labour. The Young Engels	109
1	Critique of Hegel. Labour as the foundation of humanity	109
2	The social and practical character of knowledge	110
3	The alienation of labour. Dehumanized man	114
4	Critique of Feuerbach	117
5	Engels's early writings	119
VII	The Holy Family	121
1	Communism as a historical trend. The class-consciousness of the proletariat	121
2	Progress and the masses	122
3	The world of needs	123
4	The tradition of materialism	124
VIII	The German Ideology	126
1	The concept of ideology	126
2	Social being and consciousness	128
3	The division of labour, and its abolition	130
4	Individuality and freedom	132
5	Stirner and the philosophy of egocentrism	134
6	Critique of Stirner. The individual and the community	138
7	Alienation and the division of labour	141
8	The liberation of man and the class struggle	142
9	The epistemological meaning of the theory of false consciousness	143
IX	Recapitulation	146
X	Socialist Ideas in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century as Compared with Marxian Socialism	150
1	The rise of the socialist idea	150
2	Babouvism	152
3	Saint-Simonism	154
4	Owen	158
5	Fourier	163
6	Proudhon	167
7	Weitling	173
8	Cabet	175
9	Blanqui	176
10	Blanc	177
11	Marxism and 'utopian socialism'	179
12	Marx's critique of Proudhon	184
13	The Communist Manifesto	186
XI	The Writings and Struggles of Marx and Engels after 1847	192
1	Developments in the 1850s	192
2	Lassalle	195
3	The First International. Bakunin	200
XII	Capitalism as a Dehumanized World. The Nature of Exploitation	215
1	The controversy as to the relation of Capital to Marx's early writings	215
2	The classical economic tradition and the theory of value	219
3	The double form of value and the double character of labour	222
4	Commodity fetishism. Labour-power as a commodity	226
5	The alienation of labour and of its product	230
6	The alienation of the process of socialization	233
7	The pauperization of the working class	236
8	The nature and historical mission of capitalism	239
9	The distribution of surplus value	241
XIII	The Contradictions of Capital and Their Abolition. The Unity of Analysis and Action	244
1	The falling rate of profit and the inevitable collapse of capitalism	244
2	The economic and political struggle of the proletariat	248
3	The nature of socialism, and its two phases	251
4	The dialectic of Capital: the whole and the part, the concrete and the abstract	256
5	The dialectic of Capital: consciousness and the historical process	262
6	Comments on Marx's theory of value and exploitation	267
XIV	The Motive Forces of the Historical Process	275
1	Productive forces, relations of production, superstructure	275
2	Social being and consciousness	278
3	Historical progress and its contradictions	284
4	The monistic interpretation of social relationships	288
5	The concept of class	289
6	The origin of class	293
7	The functions of the state and its abolition	294
8	Commentary on historical materialism	298
XV	The Dialectic of Nature	308
1	The scientistic approach	308
2	Materialism and idealism. The twilight of philosophy	309
3	Space and time	312
4	The variability of nature	313
5	Multiple forms of change	314
6	Causality and chance	315
7	The dialectic in nature and in thought	317
8	Quantity and quality	318
9	Contradictions in the world	320
10	The negation of the negation	321
11	Critique of agnosticism	322
12	Experience and theory	322
13	The relativity of knowledge	324
14	Practice as the criterion of truth	325
15	The sources of religion	326
XVI	Recapitulation and Philosophical Commentary	327
1	Marx's philosophy and that of Engels	327
2	Three motifs in Marxism	335
3	Marxism as the source of Leninism	341
	Selective Bibliography	345
Book 2	The Golden Age	351
	Bibliographical Note	353
I	Marxism and the Second International	355
II	German Orthodoxy: Karl Kautsky	379
1	Life and writings	379
2	Nature and society	382
3	Consciousness and the development of society	386
4	Revolution and socialism	388
5	Critique of Leninism	394
6	Inconsistencies in Kautsky's philosophy	395
7	A note on Mehring	400
III	Rosa Luxemburg and the Revolutionary Left	403
1	Biographical information	403
2	The theory of accumulation and the inevitable collapse of capitalism	407
3	Reform and revolution	415
4	The consciousness of the proletariat and forms of political organization	420
5	The national question	424
IV	Bernstein and Revisionism	433
1	The concept of revisionism	433
2	Biographical information	435
3	The laws of history and the dialectic	436
4	The revolution and the 'ultimate goal"	438
5	The significance of revisionism	443
V	Jean Jaures: Marxism as a Soteriology	447
1	Jaures as a conciliator	447
2	Biographical outline	449
3	The metaphysics of universal unity	451
4	The directing forces of history	455
5	Socialism and the republic	458
6	Jaures's Marxism	466
VI	Paul Lafargue: a Hedonist Marxism	468
VII	Georges Sorel: a Jansenist Marxism	475
1	The place of Sorel	475
2	Biographical outline	479
3	Rationalism versus history. Utopia and myth. Criticism of the Enlightenment	481
4	'Ricorsi.' The separation of classes and the discontinuity of culture	485
5	Moral revolution and historical necessity	487
6	Marxism, anarchism, Fascism	491
VIII	Antonio Labriola: an Attempt at an Open Orthodoxy	496
1	Labriola's style	496
2	Biographical note	498
3	Early writings	499
4	Philosophy of history	502
IX	Ludwik Krzywicki: Marxism as an Instrument of Sociology	511
1	Biographical note	512
2	Critique of the biological theory of society	514
3	Prospects of socialism	515
4	Mind and production. Tradition and change	517
X	Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz: a Polish Brand of Orthodoxy	523
XI	Stanislaw Brzozowski: Marxism as Historical Subjectivism	529
1	Biographical note	531
2	Philosophical development	532
3	The philosophy of labour	536
4	Socialism, the proletariat, and the nation	542
5	Brzozowski's Marxism	546
XII	Austro-Marxists, Kantians in the Marxist Movement, Ethical Socialism	549
1	The concept of Austro-Marxism	549
2	The revival of Kantianism	552
3	Ethical socialism	553
4	Kantianism in Marxism	555
5	The Austro-Marxists: biographical information	560
6	Adler: the transcendental foundation of the social sciences	563
7	Adler's critique of materialism and the dialectic	572
8	Adler: consciousness and social being	574
9	What is and what ought to be	576
10	The state, democracy, and dictatorship	578
11	The future of religion	583
12	Bauer: the theory of the nation	585
13	Hilferding: the controversy on the theory of value	589
14	Hilferding: the theory of imperialism	595
XIII	The Beginnings of Russian Marxism	601
1	Intellectual movements during the reign of Nicholas I	601
2	Herzen	605
3	Chernyshevsky	607
4	Populism and the first reception of Marxism	609
XIV	Plekhanov and the Codification of Marxism	620
1	The origins of Marxist orthodoxy in Russia	620
2	Dialectical and historical materialism	625
3	Marxist aesthetics	632
4	The struggle against revisionism	634
5	The conflict with Leninism	637
XV	Marxism in Russia Before the Rise of Bolshevism	640
1	Lenin: early journalistic writings	641
2	Struve and 'legal Marxism'	646
3	Lenin's polemics in 1895-1901	655
XVI	The Rise of Leninism	661
1	The controversy over Leninism	661
2	The party and the workers' movement. Consciousness and spontaneity	664
3	The question of nationality	674
4	The proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the democratic revolution. Trotsky and the 'permanent revolution'	680
XVII	Philosophy and Politics in the Bolshevik Movement	687
1	Factional struggles at the time of the 1905 Revolution	687
2	New intellectual trends in Russia	692
3	Empiriocriticism	695
4	Bogdanov and the Russian empiriocritics	702
5	The philosophy of the proletariat	709
6	The 'God-builders'	713
7	Lenin's excursion into philosophy	714
8	Lenin and religion	723
9	Lenin's dialectical Notebooks	725
XVIII	The Fortunes of Leninism: from a Theory of the State to a State Ideology	730
1	The Bolsheviks and the War	730
2	The Revolutions of 1917	735
3	The beginnings of socialist economy	741
4	The dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the party	744
5	The theory of imperialism and of revolution	749
6	Socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat	754
7	Trotsky on dictatorship	763
8	Lenin as an ideologist of totalitarianism	766
9	Martov on the Bolshevik ideology	770
10	Lenin as a polemicist. Lenin's genius	772
	Selective Bibliography	779
Book 3	The Breakdown	785
	Preface	787
	Bibliographical Note	788
I	The First Phase of Soviet Marxism. The Beginnings of Stalinism	789
1	What was Stalinism?	789
2	The stages of Stalinism	792
3	Stalin's early life and rise to power	796
4	Socialism in one country	805
5	Bukharin and the N.E.P. ideology. The economic controversy of the 1920s	808
II	Theoretical Controversies in Soviet Marxism in the 1920s	824
1	The intellectual and political climate	824 From the B&N Reads Blog Page 1 of Editorial Reviews This combines the author's The Founders, The Golden Age, and The Breakdown into a single package, with a new preface and epilog. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information. Library Journal Customer Reviews