Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origins, Growth and Dissolution () is a work about Marxism by the political philosopher Leszek Kołakowski. Its three volumes in English are The Founders, The Golden Age, and The Breakdown. It was first published in Polish in Paris in 1976, with the English translation appearing in 1978. In 2005, Main Currents of Marxism was republished in a one volume edition, with a new preface and epilogue by Kołakowski. The work was intended to be a "handbook" on Marxism by Kołakowski, who was once an orthodox Marxist but ultimately rejected Marxism. Despite his critical stand toward Marxism, Kołakowski endorsed the philosopher György Lukács's interpretation of the philosopher Karl Marx.
The book received many positive reviews, praising Kołakowski for his discussion of Marxism in general, as well as historical materialism, Lukács, Polish Marxism, Leon Trotsky, Herbert Marcuse, and the Frankfurt School in particular. Kołakowski was also praised for the quality of his writing. Other reviewers were more critical of his treatment of the Frankfurt School. Reviewers were divided in their evaluations of his treatment of Karl Kautsky, Vladimir Lenin, and Antonio Gramsci. Kołakowski was criticized for omitting discussions of particular authors or topics, his hostility to Marxism, his adherence to Lukács's interpretation of Marx, his failure to explain Marxism's appeal, and for giving a misleading impression of Marxism by focusing on Marxist philosophers at the expense of other Marxist writers.
Summary
Kołakowski discusses the origins, philosophical roots, golden age and breakdown of Marxism, and the various schools of Marxist philosophy. He describes Marxism as "the greatest fantasy of the twentieth century", a dream of a perfect society which became a foundation for "a monstrous edifice of lies, exploitation and oppression." He argues that the Leninist and Stalinist versions of communist ideology are not distortions or degenerate forms of Marxism, but some of its possible interpretations. Despite his rejection of Marxism, his interpretation of Marx is influenced by György Lukács. His first volume discusses the intellectual background of Marxism, examining the contributions of Plotinus, Johannes Scotus Eriugena, Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa, Jakob Böhme, Angelus Silesius, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Ludwig Feuerbach, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Moses Hess, as well as an analysis of the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Though he does not accept that Hegel was an apologist for totalitarianism, he writes of Hegel that, "the practical application of his doctrine means that in any case where the state apparatus and the individual are in conflict, it is the former which must prevail."
The second volume includes a discussion of the Second International and figures such as Paul Lafargue, Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, Georges Sorel, Georgi Plekhanov, Jean Jaurès, Jan Wacław Machajski, Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, and Rudolf Hilferding; it reviews Hilferding's debate about the theory of value with the economist Eugen Böhm von Bawerk. It also discusses Austromarxism.
The third volume deals with Marxist thinkers such as Leon Trotsky, Antonio Gramsci, Lukács, Joseph Stalin, Karl Korsch, Lucien Goldmann, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, and Ernst Bloch, as well as the Frankfurt School and critical theory. Kołakowski critically discusses works such as Lukács's History and Class Consciousness (1923) and Bloch's The Principle of Hope (1954). He also discusses the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Kołakowski criticizes Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960). Kołakowski criticizes dialectical materialism, arguing that it consists partly of truisms with no specific Marxist content, partly of philosophical dogmas, partly of nonsense, and partly of statements that could be any of these things depending on how they are interpreted.
In the preface added to the 2005 edition, Kołakowski attributed the demise of communism in Europe partly to the collapse of Marxism as an ideology. He reaffirmed the value of Marxism as an area of study despite the end of European communism, and suggested that a future revival of Marxism and communism, though far from certain, was still possible. In his added epilogue, Kołakowski concluded that his work on Marxism "may perhaps be useful to the dwindling number of people still interested in the subject."
Background and publication history According to Kołakowski, Main Currents of Marxism was written in Polish between 1968 and 1976, at a time when it was impossible to publish the work in Communist-ruled Poland. A Polish edition was published in France by the Institut Littéraire between 1976 and 1978, and then copied by underground Polish publishers, while the English edition, translated by P. S. Falla, was published in 1978 by Oxford University Press. Translations in German, Dutch, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, and Spanish subsequently appeared. Another Polish edition was published in the United Kingdom in 1988 by the publishing house Aneks. The work was first published legally in Poland in 2000. Kołakowski writes that only the first two volumes appeared in French translation because "the third volume would provoke such an outrage among French Leftists that the publishers were afraid to risk it." A one-volume English edition, with a new preface and epilogue by Kołakowski, was published in 2005.
Reception Main Currents of Marxism has been praised by authors such as the philosophers A. J. Ayer, Roger Scruton, and John Gray, the conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr., and the political scientists Charles R. Kesler and David McLellan. Scruton credited Kołakowski with lucidly describing the main tendencies of Marxism. He expressed agreement with Kołakowski's view of Lukács as "an intellectual Stalinist, one for whom an opponent sacrifices, by his very opposition, the right to exist." Gray called the book "magisterial". Buckley and Kesler called Main Currents of Marxism "excellent" and credited Kołakowski with demonstrating "the connection between Marxist theory and Stalinist reality". McLellan praised Kołakowski for the thoroughness of his philosophical discussion of Marx. Mixed evaluations of the book include those of the Marxist historian G. E. M. de Ste. Croix and the historian of science Roger Smith. De Ste. Croix considered the book overpraised, but nevertheless acknowledged that he was influenced by it. He credited Kołakowski with accurately describing some of the disastrous developments of Marx's thought by many of his followers. Smith wrote that while Main Currents of Marxism is "written by a deeply disabused Polish ex-Marxist intellectual", it is "an invaluable history across an extended range." The philosopher Richard Rorty wrote that eastern and central Europeans who have read Kołakowski suspect that he tells you "pretty much all you will ever need to know about Marx and Marxism–Leninism."
Critical views of the book include those of the political theorist Paul Thomas and the philosophers M. W. Jackson and Jon Stewart. Thomas argued that Kołakowski, motivated by the wish to connect Marx to "his self-appointed disciples", wrongly interprets Marxism as "radical anthropocentrism, a secularization of the (real) religious absolute, a formula for human self-perfectibility, and the self-deification of humankind." Jackson criticized Kołakowski's treatment of Hegel, arguing that Kołakowski is one of many authors who have misleadingly seen Hegel's philosophy as supporting authoritarian politics. Stewart listed Main Currents of Marxism as a work that has promoted "myths" about Hegel.
Reviews Main Currents of Marxism received positive reviews from the economist Mark Blaug in Economica, the historian Martin Jay in The American Historical Review, the philosopher Sidney Hook in The American Scholar, and John E. Elliott in the Journal of Economic Issues. The book received two positive reviews in Library Journal, the first from Robert C. O'Brien, who reviewed the original English edition, and the second from Francisca Goldsmith, who reviewed the one-volume 2005 edition of the work. The book received mixed reviews from the sociologist Craig Calhoun in Social Forces, David Joravsky in Theory & Society, and Franklin Hugh Adler in The Antioch Review. The book received negative reviews from the sociologist Barry Hindess in The Sociological Review and the sociologist Ralph Miliband in Political Studies. The book was also reviewed by William P. Collins in The Journal of Politics, the political scientist Michael Harrington in The New Republic, the sociologist Philip Abrams in Sociology, the philosopher Marx W. Wartofsky in Praxis International, and the historian Tony Judt in The New York Review of Books.
Blaug considered the book "brilliant" and important to the social sciences. He credited Kołakowski with summarizing the strengths and weaknesses of Marxism, and praised his discussions of historical materialism, Engels's Dialectics of Nature, Kautsky, Plekhanov, Leninism, Trotsky, Trotskyism, Lukács, Marcuse, and Althusser. However he believed that, due to his background as a philosopher, Kołakowski treated Marxism primarily in philosophical and political terms, thereby distorting the pivotal role of economic theory in Marxism. He criticized Kołakowski for ignoring and neglecting important elements in Marxian economics, such as Paul Sweezy's revival of the work of Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz in The Theory of Capitalist Development (1942). He also thought that there were several other subjects which Kołakowski could have given greater attention, including "the controversies over Soviet economic policy in the 1920s". He considered Kołakowski's bibliography excellent, though he was surprised at the exclusion of the philosopher H. B. Acton's The Illusion of the Epoch (1955) and the philosopher Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945). He praised the quality of Kołakowski's writing, as well as that of its translation.
Jay described the book as "extraordinarily valuable" and "powerfully written", "an awesome achievement of synthetic scholarship and critical analysis", and a "monument of committed learning". He praised Kołakowski's account of the "origins of dialectic", and his discussion of the philosophical aspects of Marx's theory, though considering them relatively unoriginal. He also praised Kołakowski's discussion of Marxism's economic foundations, and his critique of the labor theory of value. He credited Kołakowski with exposing the fallacies of historical materialism's reliance on the causal power of the economy "in the last resort". However, he criticized Kołakowski's treatment of Lukács, Korsch, Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, Goldmann, and Bloch, calling it "vituperative and ungenerous" and lacking in detachment, though he granted that Kołakowski was aware of this issue. He wrote that while Kołakowski's work contained occasional factual errors or dubious interpretations, there were remarkably few of them considering its length.