Works in ChatGPT, Claude, or Any AI
Add semantic quote search to your AI assistant via MCP. One command setup.
To say that all over the world social democracy is not just a political lobby voicing the aspirations and grievances of workers, of underdogs and the… - Leszek Kołakowski
" "To say that all over the world social democracy is not just a political lobby voicing the aspirations and grievances of workers, of underdogs and the oppressed, but an idea of a better human community as well is neither controversial nor very enlightening. The trouble with the social-democratic idea is that it does not stock or sell any of the exciting ideological commodities which totalitarian movements — communist, fascist, or leftist — offer dream-hungry youth. It has no ultimate solution for all human mis- fortune; it has no prescription for the total salvation of mankind; it cannot promise the firework of the final revolution to settle definitively all the conflict and struggles; it has invented no miraculous devices to bring about the perfect unity of men or universal brotherhood; it believes in no final, easy victory over evil. It is not fun; it is difficult and unrewarding, and it does not suffer from self-inflicted blindness. It requires the commitment to a number of basic values — freedom, equal opportunity, a human-oriented and publicly supervised economy — and it demands hard knowledge and rational calculation, as we need to be aware of, and to investigate as deeply as possible, the historical and economic conditions in which these values are to be implemented. It has an obstinate will to erode by inches the conditions which produce avoidable suffering, oppression, hunger, wars, racial and national hatred, insatiable greed and vindictive envy, yet it is aware of the narrow limits within which this struggle is being waged, limits imposed by the natural framework of human existence, by innumerable historical accidents, and by various forces that have shaped for centuries today's social institutions.
English
Collect this quote
About Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski (23 October 1927 – 17 July 2009) was a Polish philosopher and historian of ideas. He is best known for his critical analyses of Marxist thought, especially his three-volume history, Main Currents of Marxism (1976). In his later work, Kolakowski increasingly focused on religious questions.
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Leszek Kolakowski
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Additional quotes by Leszek Kołakowski
A certain degree of blindness as to the absoluteness of one’s own values may be indispensable to extract the valuable qualities from the world, the qualities whose value is believed to be the highest. It is possible that in order to realize one’s values one must have faith in their exclusive character.
But we may safely predict that Marx himself will become more and more what he already is: a chapter from a textbook of the history of ideas, a figure that no longer evokes any emotions, simply the author of one the 'great books' of the nineteenth century - one of those books that very few bother to read but whose titles are known to the educated public.
Limited Time Offer
Premium members can get their quote collection automatically imported into their Quotewise collections.
To sum up [Trotsky wrote], “the road to Socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the Slate … The State, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. the most ruthless form of State, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction” ([The Defence of Terrorism] p. 157). It would be difficult indeed to put the matter more plainly. The state of the proletarian dictatorship is depicted by Trotsky as a huge permanent concentration camp in which the government exercises absolute power over every aspect of the citizens’ lives and in particular decides how much work they shall do, of what kind and in what places. Individuals are nothing but labour units. Compulsion is universal, and any organization that is not part of the state must be its enemy, thus the enemy of the proletariat. All this, of course, is in the name of an ideal realm of freedom, the advent of which is expected after an indefinite lapse of historical time. (pg. 512)
Loading...