The beginning of Marxist-Leninist philosophy

pp. 109-142

in: Z. Jordan, Philosophy and ideology, Berlin, Springer, 1963

Abstract

When the war ended and various philosophical trends which had existed in Poland before 1939 were resuming their interrupted development, Marxist-Leninist philosophy was non-existent. Marxism-Leninism has always taken pride in the fact that it was not an academic philosophy and that it has combined theory with practice, philosophy with ideology, political doctrine with political action. If we take Marxist-Leninist philosophy in this larger sense into consideration, we still cannot find a single Marxist-Leninist of intellectual distinction who had something significant to say, either among the living or the dead. The Polish Communist Party had political leaders but no philosophers or ideologists. Julian Marchlewski (1866–1925), who came closest to this category, left one contribution of some value, which dealt with the reception of physiocratic ideas in Poland in the eighteenth century.