Marxism was "like moral catnip"

Catnip? As far as the Babe's concerned, there's no need for philosophical nuances. Just bring it on.

"Why then was Marxism like moral catnip -- not so much among its proposed beneficiaries, the working classes, but among the educated elite? Well, beguiling simplicity was part of it," writes Roger Kimball in a most refreshing New Criterion essay [via Arts & Letters Daily] celebrating former Communist Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski's mugging by reality on the occasion of a new edition of his totalitarianism "pathologist's scrapbook," Main Currents of Marxism:

Maturity brought forth doubts; doubts brought forth criticism; criticism was a dangerous commodity in Soviet-controlled Poland. In 1954, Kolakowski was accused of “straying from Marxist-Leninist ideology.” (True, all too true.)

He was removed from his university chair for "forming the views of the youth in a manner contrary to the official tendency of the country." In 1968, he went into exile.

His patient investigations into the origins and the murderous legacy of Marxism -- culminating in his magnum opus, Main Currents of Marxism (English translation, 1978) -- occupy pride of place in the precious library of philosophical and political disenchantment.

Kolakowski's writings include cogitations on "the fate of religion in a secular age and the prospects of secularism in the hands of an animal as obstinately given to religious preoccupation as homo sapiens sapiens." It calls to mind anthropologist-turned-psychologist Pascal Boyer's tests on children that "go some way to proving our natural tendency to believe, blogged here a couple of months back. You can reject a given religious tradition, but another -- whether sacred or profane -- will rush in to take its place.

Main Currents of Marxism should be required beach reading this summer for pale inside-the-beltway types like Senator Dick "Bush=Hitler" Durbin and certain members of the SCOTUS whose anti-individualist decisions re the use of marijuana for medical purposes and the taking of private property to fatten fat cats' pockets suggest they are out of touch with the City upon a Hill that is the American idea.  Writes Kimball:

This emerges as a theme of the book -- that Marxist doctrine, by calling for the abolition of private property and the more or less total subordination of the market to state control, provided "a good blueprint for converting human society into a giant concentration camp." (“[T]he abolition of the market,” Kolakowski comments elsewhere, 'means a gulag society.") Kolakowski also makes the important point that, notwithstanding the collapse of the Soviet Union, Marxism is still eminently worth studying, not least because its aspirations continue to percolate in the dreams of various utopian planners.

As Tiny daydreams of kitty treats, Marxist-lite international progressivists at home and abroad dream of centrally planned utopias that can never be.

Kimball continues:

Marxism, [Kolakowski] wrote, was the "greatest fantasy" of the twentieth century, not because it offered a better life but because it appealed to apparently ineradicable spiritual cravings.

Almost all the prophecies of Marx and his followers have already proved to be false, but this does not disturb the spiritual certainty of the faithful.

He shows how the tendency to believe that all human problems have a technical solution is an unfortunate inheritance from the Enlightenment -- "even," he notes, "from the best aspects of the Enlightenment: from its struggle against intolerance, self-complacency, superstitions and uncritical worship of tradition." There is much about human life that is not susceptible to human remedy or intervention. Our allegiance to the ideal of unlimited progress is, paradoxically, a dangerous moral limitation that is closely bound up with what Kolakowski calls the loss of the sacred.

That's the thing about liberals.  For them it's a tenet of faith that Western Civ is responsible for everything bad on the face of the earth -- from human poverty to global warming to terrorist attacks -- and only central command and control by them and their fellow elites -- who know better than we do what's best for us -- can save the world. Hubris. It's as old as the hills.

Update: Beth of My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy agrees.

Comments

[Tara]

Looks like the Supremes could have used Kolakowski's book when making the decision in the Kelo case regarding eminent domain.

[goomp]

As someone said, "Civilizations are not killed, they commit suicide". Our liberals are giving it the old academic try.

[Bryan]

Here's an interesting short essay that Kolakowski wrote:

http://www.mrbauld.com/conlibsoc.html

Also, your extending Kolakowski's perfectly valid criticisms of Marxism to the entirely non-Marxist modern American Democratic Party is frankly ridiculous.