What is Left of Socialism

First Things ^ | October 2002 | Leszek Kolakowski

[Cicero]

Probably we all know that Marxism, Communism, and Socialism are bankrupt, but I thought this was an especially good account to pass on to your liberal friends, who still think that Marxist ideas might work.

[KarlInOhio]

mark for future reading

[reformed_democrat]

Thanks, Cicero.
These essays are always handy to have when arguing with democrat relatives.

[weikel]

Marx was not a great mind he just ripped off Plato. Marxist in their more ancient form can more accurately be called Platonist.

[js1138]

My first response to the question "What is left of socialism" is the DNC. Then, of course, I realized, you mean "what remains".

What remains is Islam. The inheritor of totalitarian marxism.

[Capitalist Eric]

I wish I had seen this three months ago. I am just finishing a course given by an avowed Marxist... she seems almost impervious to common sense....

Who says being educated makes you smart?

Most of the professors here, are a bunch of dopes...

Bookmarked as well.... :)

FReegards,

[Davis]

Here is a contemporary analysis of this subject by a modern philosopher...

http://www.atrentino.com/Mene.html

[Republic of Texas]

As far as I can tell, famine is left of socialism.

[Davis]

Y'all might also enjoy reading this essay, "What's left of the Left?"

http://www.atrentino.com/BrainDead.html

[johnny7]

All depends on what your meaning of “educated” is I guess.

For the hell of it, what course is she teaching?

[m1911]

According to the labor theory of value, the only true "means of production" is labor. According to communist theory, the socialist "pre-communist" phase requires state ownership of the "means of production".

I can't believe that anyone could fail to follow the simple logic to state slavery. But obviously, many millions can't.

[Cicero]

Good luck to you. Unfortunately, as your teacher she controls the means of production.

[Cicero]

"Sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice, and your children will be free. The next Five Year Plan should do it. . . ."

[johnny7]

Well Cicero, you got your communism and your nationalist socialism and your totalitarian/nationalist socialism.

All stink up the ying-yang but the latter wants more land and will kill you to get it.

Somehow, they ain't too fond of Jews either.

Now farther left, we have your bonified serial killers who take orders from a dog.

I will be out of the office untill Monday.

[Billthedrill]

Great post, and thanks for offering it. I wouldn't change a word of it, although I do disagree with this statement:

While acknowledging that a perfect society will never be within reach and that people will always find reasons to treat each other badly, we should not discard the concept of “social justice,” much as it might have been ridiculed by Hayek and his followers.

I ridicule it. It is a nonsense phrase kept carefully vague in order to mask its own internal contradictions (now there's a Marxian critique!) and its only real application is its synonym, "theft." "Social justice" always, at least in modern application, involves expropriation of property in pursuit of some "higher law," that generally being class-based and entirely contrary to individual cases. It might be considered unjust, for example, to take a little girl's bicycle from her by force. If, however, you lump a group of kids into girls and boys, and find out that more of the girls have bicycles than do boys, then such an act of theft comes under the rubric of "social justice" no matter how unjust it is to the child involved. The lie begins in the grouping. That is the central falsehood of the collective.

[thucydides]

This is one of the best short critiques of Marxism that I have ever read. Unfortunately, Kolakowski continues to place high hopes in the welfare state, perhaps because it looks so much better than the communism under which he lived. The real evil which communism and the welfare state share is the notion that the coercive powers of the state can be used to bring about a grandiose goal of "social justice." Kolakowski needs to read his Hayek.

[expatpat]

....he had not discovered the class struggle but rather had proved that it leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, which in turn leads ultimately to the abolition of classes.

IMHO, history suggests that it actually leads to Fascistic dictatorship: Rome (Caesar), Germany (Hitler), Russia (Lenin and Stalin), China (Mao), Spain (Franco), etc.

[TopQuark]

Great post, thanks.

I think his account is both correct and insightful on almost all points. The only thing I have found is a bit of confusion regarding the use of slogans during (pre-)revolutionary times of WWI. This leads the author to claim that the Russian revolutions was not that of a proletariat. It was, and it was undertaken in alliance with "peasants," to attract which land was promised (and delivered).

I particularly liked the point that economic thery today would have been the same has Marx never been born. It think this is both true and a great test of importance of his work.

[Fzob]

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[LogicWings]

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