Leszek Kołakowski

"The abolition of the market means not only that the consumers—that is all members of society—are robbed of virtually all choice of consumption and all influence over production; it also means that the…"

"The concept of original sin gives us a penetrating insight into human destiny."

"To sum up , “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 cultural atmosphere of Russia in those years had an adolescent quality, common to all periods of revolution: the belief that life is just beginning, that the future is unlimited, and that mankind …"

"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 …"

"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…"

"Karl Marx was born at Trier on 5 May 1818, the child of Jewish parents with a long rabbinical tradition on both sides. His grandfathers were rabbis; his father, a well-to-do lawyer, changed his first …"

"We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are."