| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £2.65
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £2.65, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Review
"Considered the definitive work on the subject" (The New York Times), Main Currents of Marxism is now in one paperback volume. "A monument of modern humanistic scholarship... It will surely not be superseded." New York Review of Books "Leszek Kolokowki is one of the world's greatest living political philosophers and historians of ideas... Norton have reissued his magnum opus, Main Currents of Marxism, in a handsome single volume." Timothy Garton Ash, Books of the Year, The Times Literary Supplement "...indispensable... an unmatched encyclopaedia of a major passage in Western intellectual history, but the enduring interest of this masterly volume does not come chiefly from the mass of useful information it provides. Instead, it lies in Kolokowski's devastating assessment of Marx's thought." John Gray, The Times Higher Education Supplement"
Product Description
From philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, one of the giants of twentieth-century intellectual history, comes this highly influential study of Marxism. Written in exile, this "prophetic work" presents, according to the Library of Congress, "the most lucid and comprehensive history of the origins, structure, and posthumous development of the system of thought that had the greatest impact on the twentieth century". Kolakowski traces the intellectual foundations of Marxist thought from Plotonius through Lenin, Lukacs, Sartre and Mao. He reveals Marxism to be "the greatest fantasy of our century...an idea that began in Promethean humanism and culminated in the monstrous tyranny of Stalinism". In a brilliant coda, he examines the collapse of international Communism in light of the last tumultuous decades. "Main Currents of Marxism" remains the indispensable book in its field.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"Main Currents" is comprised of three parts - "The Founders", 'The Golden Age" and "The Breakdown". The first part looks at both the antecedents ie Kant, Hegel, as well as the main protagonists - Marx and Engels. In some places, it is heavy going but if the reader can stick with it, the insights into philosophy underpinning Marxism are worthwhile. "The Golden Age" deals with the various contributions of Kautsky, Bernstein and other relatively less well known writers but at the heart of this part is the Russian contributors ie Plekhanov and Lenin, and here the examination turns from the analysis of the ideas to a straight examination of the Bolshevik and then Stalinist ideas in practise - perhaps not that original but still worth reading for the author`s insights - he was a Professor of Philosophy at Warsaw University into the 1960s. The final part covers the ideas of latterday contributors such as Marcuse and the Frankfurt School. The book pretty well finishes in the late 1960s in due part to the author`s belief that there was little more to say - the ideas of Marx et al had run their course and been found 'wanting in the balance' in their application in his country, then part of the Soviet bloc, and elsewhere. This is a book of real scholarship in its breadth and depth of the coverage of the Marxist ideal and is unlikely to be bettered.
Format:Paperback
Leszek Kolakowski's three-volume behemoth is a bible for both the Marxist thinker and historian. Not only it one of the few comprehensive overviews of the many streams of thought which shaped the Marxist debate over 150 years, but it's impressively lucid and concise to boot. Kolakowski summarises the biography, theory and critique of each thinker with an intellectual rigour that creates the standard for histories of ideas.
One of the key selling points of the `Main Currents of Marxism', however, is the objectivity with which Kolakowski treats his material. Once a diligent communist, he gradually became disillusioned with the philosophy which underpinned Soviet Poland and to such an extent that he actively funded dissident groups to undermine the system. He even came to believe that that the `aberrations' of Karl Marx's original works - propagated by Stalin, Pol Pot and Ceausescu, for example - were actually credible end products of the grand mage's logic.
However, Kolakowski didn't abandon his intellectual heritage altogether, and this translates into his work. He examines each thinker, each diverse form of the philosophy, carefully, and without presuppositions. His conclusions about each theory are philosophical rather than moral, singling out contradictions and paradoxes rather than the thoughts that might have provided the intellectual foundation for various atrocities.
Granted, Kolakowski can only say so much in his analyses, since his overview summarises rather than studies. But as an introduction to particular strands of Marxist thought and the problems associated with them, the `Main Currents of Marxism' is unbeatable. Kolakowski's prose is as lively as it is erudite; the content as rich as it is varied.
A true feast!
One of the key selling points of the `Main Currents of Marxism', however, is the objectivity with which Kolakowski treats his material. Once a diligent communist, he gradually became disillusioned with the philosophy which underpinned Soviet Poland and to such an extent that he actively funded dissident groups to undermine the system. He even came to believe that that the `aberrations' of Karl Marx's original works - propagated by Stalin, Pol Pot and Ceausescu, for example - were actually credible end products of the grand mage's logic.
However, Kolakowski didn't abandon his intellectual heritage altogether, and this translates into his work. He examines each thinker, each diverse form of the philosophy, carefully, and without presuppositions. His conclusions about each theory are philosophical rather than moral, singling out contradictions and paradoxes rather than the thoughts that might have provided the intellectual foundation for various atrocities.
Granted, Kolakowski can only say so much in his analyses, since his overview summarises rather than studies. But as an introduction to particular strands of Marxist thought and the problems associated with them, the `Main Currents of Marxism' is unbeatable. Kolakowski's prose is as lively as it is erudite; the content as rich as it is varied.
A true feast!
4 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The best review of the history of Marxism so far. It will be difficult to surpass it, and a waste of time to try.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
