![]() ![]() In what way? as yes i would agree (as would basically any philosopher) that Marx and therefore marxists, don't use the term dialectical materialism as literally dialectics +materialism.Īs for modern marxists its because many (not all) simply don't truly know what those words mean when separate. ![]() To focus on career and family and such instead is definitely a good option in my opinion. From Kolakowski one learns to think clearly about things.īut it also depends on your time and interests: if you have better things to do then to bother about old, failed political ideas (even though they are revived nowadays in many places), do that. And if you want to stick to humanism you also need good arguments for it. But a lot of its ideas and arguments are, even though they sound convincing at first to many, not so logical when you think about them in a thorough way as Kolakowski did. It did have a lot of appeal for good reasons. Also not all of it is wacky nonsense or obscurantism. But how and why is a quite interesting story at least for me. Marxism failed in reality because of itself, not because of bad luck. But I was all my live interested in history and political ideas, so this book was definitely very interesting for me. (I did have a hunch about those things before though and wasn't an active communist or something.) I also learned a lot of things about Marxism that as a Marxist I didn't know. Then, Kolakowski is good for you, because he describes their arguments much better then they themselves do and also explains convincingly where they got things wrong.įor me this was very interesting because I used to be somekind of a Marxist, but realized that there are many things wrong with the way it argues, reading Kolakowski helped me to realize why and exactly how that is the case. So you have read some of the source texts, Marx, maybe Lenin and others, and you know a bit the history of the socialist/communist movement. I've been trying to read and understand Marxism for about a year now. as a critic, but I think also for Marxists it should be useful to deal with criticism) this is your handbook and guide. It's a commitment, but if you are serious about studying Marx and Marxism (esp. Kolakowski was an academic philosopher and his subject is to deal with the entirety of Marxism, so don't expect an always easy read. And read chapter by chapter and then think about the chapter and maybe get back to the source texts about it. It also makes sense to take notes while reading and to write down a synopsis of what you have read to get back to it later and to remember it better. The chapter about Adorno though was the best thing I have ever read about the Frankfurt school, Kolakowski getting really to the point and dissecting a lot of pompously written stuff in a few pages. Also when he gets into Marxist philosophers like Lukacs, I had to reread paragraphs and sometimes whole chapters to understand what was being said (about reification) etc.). ![]() That said, the beginning of the book about the origins of the dialectic I mainly skimmed, there was a lot of information about ancient philosophy that I found a bit tiring and not so relevant for me. Kolakowski has a way of making apparently complicated things easier to understand. If it's a good read for you it's hard to say, some parts are quite "technical", but if you have read Marx and such himself, you might find that his style writing about the subject is quite refreshing, clear and logical (especially as opposed to the obscurantist lingo of many neo-Marxist and post-Marxist thinkers). I however prefer reading real books though and own both the English and the German language editions. ![]() Apparently if you subscribe to scribd, you can find here the old editions as pdf. You can find excerpts online easily, like here the foreword and epilogues of the 2005 edition. ![]()
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