“Bukharin, like Lenin, regarded the system of basing economic life on mass terror not as a transient necessity but as a permanent principle of socialist organization. He did not shrink from justifying all means of coercion and held, like Trotsky at the same period, that the new system called essentially for the militarization of labour – i.e. the use of police and military force to compel the whole population to work in such places and conditions as the state might arbitrarily decree. Indeed, once the market is abolished there is no longer any free sale of labour or competition between workers, and police coercion is therefore the only means of allocating “human resources”. If hired labour is eliminated, only compulsory labour remains. In other words, socialism – as conceived by both Trotsky and Bukharin at this time – is a permanent, nation-wide labour camp. (pg. 28-9)”
“A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading.”
Leszek Kołakowski
“We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are.”
Leszek Kołakowski
“...shall we say that the difference between a vegetarian and a cannibal is just a matter of taste?”
Leszek Kołakowski
“Communism was not the crazy fantasy of a few fanatics, nor the result of human stupidity and baseness; it was a real, very real part of the history of the twentieth century, and we cannot understand t...”
Leszek Kołakowski
“When I collect my experiences, I notice that fascist is a person who holds one of the following beliefs (by way of example): 1) That people should wash themselves, rather than go dirty; 2) that freedo...”
Leszek Kołakowski