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Quotes from Main Currents Of Marxism — Leszek Kołakowski

1927–2009 Poland

← All quotes by Leszek Kołakowski

6 quotes

Marxism has been the greatest fantasy of our century. It was a dream offering the prospect of a society of perfect unity, in which all human aspirations would be fulfilled and all values reconciled.

Main Currents Of Marxism (1978)

The history of utopias is no less fascinating than the history of metallurgy or of chemical engineering.

Main Currents Of Marxism (1978)

The social conditions that nourished and made use of this ideology can still revive; perhaps - who knows? - the virus is dormant, waiting for the next opportunity. Dreams about the perfect society belong to the enduring stock of civilization.

Main Currents Of Marxism (1978)

In this sense Marxism performs the function of a religion, and its efficacy is of a religious character. But it is a caricature and a bogus form of religion, since it presents its temporal eschatology as a scientific system, which religious mythologies do not purport to be.

Main Currents Of Marxism (1978)

Marxism was a philosophical or semi-philosophical doctrine and a political ideology which was used by the communist state as the main source of legitimacy and the obligatory faith.

Main Currents Of Marxism (1978)

But we may safely predict that Marx himself will become more and more what he already is: a chapter from a textbook of the history of ideas, a figure that no longer evokes any emotions, simply the author of one the 'great books' of the nineteenth century - one of those books that very few bother to read but whose titles are known to the educated public.

Main Currents Of Marxism (1978)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Leszek Kołakowski (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.