Rest in peace, professor

It had completely passed my by that one of the truly great philosophers of our time passed away on Friday, July 17 at age 81. Leszek Kolakowski was a Polish thinker whose work Main Currents of Marxism must be seen as one of the most important contributitions to political theory during the 20th century. It constitutes the most thorough and relentless analysis of Marxist thought. Covering the development from the beginnings in the late 18th century to its later incarnations in the 1970s, it clearly exposes fundamental weaknesses in the ideology. In my comprehensive examination paper on comparative politics, I summarized some of his points like this (p. 17):

"My critique is that several central operative terms of these [Marxist] approaches suffers from X-and-Not-X-problems, including ‘human dignity’, ‘higher forms of culture’ and in some cases the use of the term Capitalism itself. Thus the central claim that Capitalism is the historically most dehumanizing mode of production rests on a particular framing of human dignity. This, as Kolakowski argues, can only be substantiated if it has been conceptualized (Kolakowski, 2005, 217). Since this has not been done, the project of its restoration is impeded. The same reservations can be made regarding Marcuse’s higher forms of culture."

In other words, Marx claimed that Capitalism was dehumanizing without ever defining what he meant by human dignity.

The work is a must for anyone interested in political theory in general or Marxism in particular and the significance of this contribution can hardly be over-estimated.

Rest in peace, professor.

P.S. Wolodarski has a good note in Swedish on Kolakowski's contribution here