i Am Not Happy With the Notion of False Consciousness

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AN OPEN LETTER TO LESZEK

KOLAKOWSKI

E.

P.

ThompsonDear

Leszek

Kolakowski,First,

I

must introduce myself, since this is an unusual kind of Ietter.You don't know me, but

I

know you well.This must be familiar

enough

to a man with an international

"

reputation. He must often be beset with the importunities of strangers.But my claim is more insistent and vulgar than that.

I

am thestranger who walks into the house, slaps you on the back, sits down atyour

;able,

and jests about your

youthful

escapades, on the pretext of a claim to distant relationship of which you know nothing.

I

am, inpolitical terms, your mother's brother's stepson.

I

am an impossibleand presumptuous guest, and an uninvited one

-

you may even suspectthat

I

am an impostor

-

but the courtesies of kinship disallow you fromthrowing me

from

your house.We were both voices of the Communist revisionism of 1956. Notmuch can be made of that. The intellectual particles produced in thatmoment of ideological fission have now fallen out over most parts of the political globe.But there was a closer and more continuing identity in our pre

-

occupations. We both passed from a frontal critique of Stalinism to astance of Marxist revisionism; we both sought to rehabilitate theutopian energies within the socialist tradition; we both stood in anambiguous position, critical and affirmative, to the Marxist tradition.We both were centrally concerned with the radiating problems of historical determinism on the one hand, and of agency, moral choice,and individual responsibility on the other.When I say that

"

we both'' initiated similar enquiries,

I

don't, of course, suggest that we both did so with equal success. The inadequacyof my own writings is testified by the silence into which they havefallen. Your

own

writing, on the other hand, still seems to me to beamong the few constructive and enduring consequences of that ex

-

perience. Your sustained polemic,

"

Responsibility and

History",

first published in

Nowa Kultura

in

1957,l

remains without equal.In 1956 we lived through a common experience, but we experiencedit in different ways. In Britain the small number of Communist

in

-

tellectuals belonged to a defeated and discredited tradition

-

or so it

1

was the business of every orthodoxy in our culture to assure us. We werenot heretics but barbarians, who desecrated with our presence thealtars of the liberal Gods. There are many personal histories and eachone is accented differently. But one may say that, in general, ourallegiance to Communism was political: it arose from inexorablechoices in a partisan world in which neutrality seemed impossible. Youare familiar enough with this, and

I

won't go over all the elisions of truth and the self

-

deceptions that were involved.But our intellectual allegiance was to Marxism. It was, at least in

some

part, pre

-

Stalinist, or Stalinist in a hang

-

dog, shame

-

faced sort of way.

We

might, from a sense of solidarity, act as apologists for Stalinism.We might even engage in some casuistry to explain away Zhdanovism(a consequence of the tragic sufferings of the war)

;

but few of us, in thedepth of our hearts, did not wish for the siege mentality of Communismto fall away. Thus there is a sense in which, even before 1956, oursolidarity was given not to Communist states in their existence, but intheir potential

-

not for what they were but for what

-

given a

dimuni-tion

in the Cold War

-

they might become.

.

-

Hence, whether consciously or unconsciously, we were expectant of exactlv what occurred in 1956. These

"

revelations

"

re~resented

less arupture in our understanding than a fulfilment of our half

-

conscioushopes. From that preposterous military orthodoxy we had hoped forcontroversy, acknowledgement of human frailty, a moral vocabulary.And for this reason, in spite of its agony, in spite even of the

~un~arian

tragedy, 1956 was a year of hope. We had seen, not the potential (forthis was soon crushed) but the living, indomitable agents of thatpotential at work within those societies. Behind the posters, novelsand films of Stakhanovites we saw (to our relief) workers who wereabsentees, pilferers, time

-

servers, as well as workers who were learningto defend themselves, organize, and take common cause with intellec

-

tuals. And behind the nonsense of self

-

validating

"

correct formulations

"

we saw the old Adam of a critical, sceptical intelligence. The undefeatedold man of the mind still survived, it seemed, among the copybook abstractions of the New Man of History.You Poles were the worst old

Adarnists

of all! Your poets

-

'I'uwimand Wazyk

-

your film

-

makers and sociologists, and, worst of all, yourLeszek Kolakowski. In our journals, The Reasoner and The

flew

Reasoner, we dissident British communists did something to make publicyour work. A member of our editorial board, Alfred Dressler, followedclosely the discussions in

Nowa Kultura

and

Po

Prostu,

and visited Poland

more than

once for exchanges with our friends.

u

Your voice was the clearest voice out of Eastern Europe in thoseyears, although you didn't offer the easiest answers. You offered not aparcel of solutions, each ready for unwrapping (

"

freedom

"

,

"democ-

racy

"

,

"

workers control

"

-

although each of these you indicated asobjectives, complex in their nature, awaiting attainment), but theresumption of old modes of intellectual and moral aspiration anddiscourse. And in this, too, we showed what solidarity we could withyou.What we dissident Communists did in Britain

-

and for this smallachievement

I

still feel a stubborn pride

-

was to refuse to enter thewell

-

worn paths of apostasy. After the suppression of the Hungarianrevolution up to 10,000 people, or one

-

third of its total membership,walked out of the British Communist Party; and of that 10,000

I

canthink of not one who took on the

acce~ted

role. in

fiberal ca~italist

society, of Public Confessor and Renegade. No

-

one ran to the presswith his revelations about Communist

"

conspiracy

"

and no

-

one wroteelegant essays, in the organs published by the Congress for CulturalFreedom, complaining that God had failed. We had had, after all,our experiential political reasons for being opposed to capitalistsociety, independent of any evolution in Eastern Europe whatsoever.We had had, after all, our intellectual reasons for associating with theMarxist tradition, independent of any follies or self

-

delusions of Stalinism. So in the face of liberal applause, which was short

-

lived, andintellectual ridicule, which we were used to, we took up what work wecould. Some, no doubt, fell back exhausted into private trajectories.Others continued their work in the working

-

class organizations towhich they already belonged. Others took a part in initiating the NewLeft and in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Some of us, intrade unions or in intellectual life, are still not quite dead.But none of us,

I

think, are classical renegades. And

I

claim this as adebt upon you, as a solidarity we paid to you, although you may notsee it in the same way at all. Nor do

I

claim this out of hindsight.Expressly and repeatedly, between 1956 and the early

1960s,

I

andseveral of my comrades affirmed our general allegiance, not to theCommunist Party as institution or as ideology, but to the Communistmovement in its humanist potential. And we did this for two reasons.First, you and your comrades, striving in the most complex andsometimes threatening circumstances to influence your own societies,were present at every moment in our political consciousness. If suchmen as vou were content to remain Communists (and vou will recall

\,

that your own membership of the Polish Party was not severed until1966, and then by expulsion and not by resignation), if such men andwomen as the Czech insurgents of 1968 were to emerge directly fromthe Communist tradition,

who

were we to deny the

claims

of solidarit

y

?We rejected

-

as

I

still reject

-

any description of Communism or of Communist

-

governed societies which defines these in terms of theirruling ideologies and the institutions of their ruling

Clites,

and which

of 00

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