The greatest analyst of Marxism who ever lived

OBITUARY: "Leszek Kolakowski: Leszek Kolakowski, a Polish-born Oxford philosopher, died on July 17th, aged 81," The Economist, 1 August 2009.

Kolakowski's Main Currents of Marxism, a three-volume set, is the single best critique of Marxism known to man, rivaling in every sense the seminal three-volume work Das Kapital by Marx himself. The two trios sit side-by-side on my bookshelves, and I have to tell you that, after reading both (first) cover to (last) cover, Kolakowski's books are far superior in logic and readability (then again, a good phonebook beats Marx on the latter).

As The Economist argues, Main Currents "calmly and expertly demolished the pillars of Marxist thought: the labour theory of value, the idea of class struggle, historical materialism and the like." As for real world practice, Stalinism was not the exception but the inevitable apogee, says Kolakowski:

"The only medicine communism has invented--the centralized, beyond social control, state ownership of the national wealth, and one-party rule--is worse than the illness it is supposed to cure; it is less efficient economically and it makes the bureaucratic character of social relations an absolute principle."

The guy was no great fan of free markets, as one might expect of a lapsed communist. He just judged the "material and spiritual desolation" of communist rule to be worse than the materialism and religiosity of democratic market states.

His most famous statement:

We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are.

Hard to beat that.

I was introduced to Kolakowsky by my Harvard mentor, Adam Ulam, another Polish intellectual who knew well how to dissect communism's many and egregious faults.