Alexander Zinoviev Quotes

Historical judgment focuses attention on phenomena from which we must above all abstract ourselves if we want to understand what this new society born in a given historical context really is. The historical process is also, of course, a reality, but it is a reality which disappears into the past. The new society which has matured within him quickly got rid of a historical covering which encumbered it and had become foreign to him. It constitutes another historical environment more in keeping with its nature. Sociological reality is designed to remain. She is looking to the future. p. 41

In the present case, historical judgment furthermore obstructs the scientific understanding of the society that interests us, because the stories here impose functions foreign to this society. p. 40

It is so natural in trying to understand the phenomena of human life to have recourse to notions of historicism that the very fact of wanting to question them seems sacrilegious. Some people think that we can only understand communist society in its essence from a historical point of view, that is to say by considering the history of its formation. Authentic history, that goes without saying, and not the falsified history practiced by pro-communist historians and philosophers. According to them, the course of events, the way in which this society was constituted is sufficient to explain nature. p. 39

Unlike science, an ideology is constructed of conventional ambiguous expressions, which require interpretation. It is impossible to verify or experimentally confirm an ideological statement, one cannot refute these for they are meaningless. […] While arising, an ideology may have pretensions to be scientific. But having become an ideology, it loses all the major characteristics of science.

Marxism disguises itself as science and owing to this it is easier for Marxism to portray the existing society as acting on the basis of scientific laws of his history, to portray the leadership’s selfishness and idiocy as ingenious scientific foresight etc.

Historically, Marxism was born with the ambition of explaining everything in the world scientifically. It is known, that Marx even dealt with mathematics. Although he could not solve problems which are nowadays clear for even asinine pupils, Marx left behind for the future generations his smart tips.

But the [communist] authorities acquire from Marxism a splendid method and abounding phraseology to justify whatever piggery.

The firmest proof that Marxism is not science but an ideology is Marxism’s attitude to the experience of the real communist (or socialist) societies.

None of the Marxist concepts (literally – not a single one!) matches the logical rules of scientific concepts.

One physicist writes a study on microphysics, but another writes a book on the importance of Lenin’s and Engels’ works for the development of physics; one mathematician proves theorems, another publishes demagoguery on ingenious mathematical ideas of classical Marxists.

All in all, Engels talked so much rot of every kind, that now all the world’s academies of science should be directed to rectify his mistakes and idiocies.

Marxism emerged not only with the intention of explaining scientifically everything in the world, but in addition to this, as a representative of the ‘hurt and injured’ classes of the world, expressing thus the centuries old dream of an earthly paradise. But dreams and wishes have nothing to do with science.

School is not only a preparation of men to receive an education and a specialty. School is a sphere of social life which is subject to the same laws as the whole. It reflects in itself the whole society with all its properties and problems, which only transform in relation to the age and position of citizens. p. 502

Today, fear of the truth is not a fear of the unknown, but a fear of something we know very well. People are afraid of themselves because they know who they are. p. 302

New knowledge [of] the objects of investigation comes not through observation and experiment (as happens on the empirical level) but through logical judgments in the framework of a given or newly developed theory (i.e., special groups of concepts and statements united by rules of logic)