Alexander Zinoviev Quotes

To feel life, to truly experience it, you must, of course, be in it. But to know it, it is necessary, above all, to move away from it at a sufficient distance. Otherwise, you have no overall vision, you cannot distinguish its essential features, its dynamics, its aims. 397

I therefore affirm that, to understand our society, our dialectical method is necessary, while that of the West, non-dialectical, is of no use. But be careful: I am not talking about “dialectics” in the sense given to it by Soviet philosophies – starting with Stalin in his Dialectical and Historical Materialism; I am talking about this ability to take into account all the complexity and changing nature of formations such as our gigantic society. Ah! I'm itching to describe this method! But by giving it the efficiency, the practical sense of the Western style of thinking. Is it possible ? Who knows, perhaps the most suitable forms are born from these unthinkable compromise. p. 353

It is, in principle, impossible to understand our life and our mental functioning if we are not a dialectician. However, dialectics is fundamentally foreign to Western man, whether he is a “thinker” or not. p. 353

The one-party system does not come from an error or bad design, it is, on the contrary, perfectly normal, because our society does not have ONE party, it is WITHOUT a party. p. 115-116

A pluralist system under a communist regime is an absurdity. The parties would immediately go to war, and one of them would win (or the country would divide into “independent” states). p. 115

The Party is the organization of leaders, in the strongest sense of the term and for leaders of all orders. It is, fundamentally, an organ of repression, and not just the place of production of slogans and speeches. Our party is not one, in the sense in which it was understood before the revolution, or in the Western sense of the term. It only has the name. It's not the party, it's the Party. And its role is quite different in the life of society (it is power, privileges). p. 115

The whole problem, currently, is to have a method of understanding, says the Fool. People have information in spades, but they are incapable of extracting truths that matter. They are content to live at a superficial level of very primary observation and generalization. No one is capable of deepening their analysis to the essential mechanisms of what is happening. However, such deepening obeys rules, which are not very complicated. 117

This is only a description of the facts. However, this is not the truth, since there will undoubtedly be other facts whose description will contradict this one. The truth is not in the juxtaposition of this type of writing. What opposes the truth is not another truth, but error. p. 89

La Maison jaune, Alexandre Zinoviev (trad. Anne Coldefy-Faucard et Wladimir Berelowitch), éd. Julliard/L'Age d'Homme, 1982, en 2 tomes

Which means that we are seriously mistaken when we hope to see science play a role as an instrument of progress and civilization.

The scientific spirit is relegated to the pitiful role of an inferior attribute. However, we support it to the extent that it can serve as an alibi for the anti-scientific spirit. But, above all, we try to dismiss it as a kind of unbearable reproach for a guilty conscience. p. 287

At first, both (under other names, of course) can be considered equal parts of the same science, but soon the anti-scientific spirit takes over, just like those weeds that choke plants that we forget to weed. p. 287

The scientific mind produces abstractions, the anti-scientific mind destroys them under the pretext that they do not take into account this or that factor. The scientific spirit establishes rigorous notions, the anti-scientific spirit, under the pretext of encompassing the multiplicity of reality, gives them various meanings. The scientific mind avoids using means that it can do without. The anti-scientific spirit is firing on all cylinders. The scientific mind seeks to simplify and clarify. The anti-scientific spirit confuses and complicates. The scientific mind strives to trivialize what seems unusual. The anti-scientific spirit aims for the sensational and likes to surround the most ordinary phenomena with mystery. p.287

Current science is not only concerned with seeking the truth. His part of scientific spirit, which in no way resembles science as it is commonly conceived, is far from equaling that of an anti-scientific spirit hostile to the first, but apparently much more scientific than him. p.287

The ideology in the present case is eager to give itself the air of science. p. 289