File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-10-22.195, message 13


Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 19:49:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: How fascism began


On Fri, 18 Oct 1996, Hugh Rodwell wrote:

> Nothing "unfortunate" about it. Kolakowski is a rabid anti-communist and a
> casuist in the great Jesuit tradition. Perfectly at home in Oxford and not
> in the least bit interested in revolutionary socialism.
> 
> This also makes him anti-positivist, so his stuff against positivism is
> interesting.

Presumably were K at Cambridge, that infamoius hotbed of Communism, he
would not be at home. (During the height of the antinuclear movement I was
called a Cambridge Commie during a call in radio interview while I was
arguing that nuclear weapons were about imperialism, not deterrence; the
interviewer had mentioned by dark past as a grad student at Cambs, where I
saw but did not meet Piero Sraffa.) 

But what are we to make of the fact that Oxford is also the home of the
greatest living Marxist historian, Christopher Hill, who was Master of
Baliol (gasp! Jowett doubtless turned over in his grave) and of G.A.
Cohen, arguably the greatest living Marxist philosopher--and a positivist
in philosophy of science? As well as, at least untile recently Chicele
Prof. of the Moral Sciences. 

K himself used to be a rather good and interesting offbeat Marxist: I have
a Grove anthology of his 1960s writings, Towards a Marxist Humanism. I
think the crushing of the Prague Spring turned him against Marxism,
although the antiMarxist turn was not uncommon among East European
intellectuals. I think experiencing Stalinism from the inside tended to
have that effect.

--JUstin Schwartz




   

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