5
" The early socialists seem to have understood the slogan 'To each according to his needs' in a limited sense: they meant that people should not have to suffer cold and hunger or spend their lives staving off destitution. Marx, however, and many Marxists after him, imagined that under socialism all scarcity would come to an end. It was possible to entertain this hope in the ultra-sanguine form that all wants would be satisfied, as though every human being had a magic ring or obedient jinn at his disposal. But, since this could hardly be taken seriously, Marxists who considered the question decided, with a fair degree of support from Marx's works, that Communism would ensure the satisfaction of 'true' or 'genuine' needs consonant with human nature, but not whims or desires of all kinds. This, however, gave rise to a problem which no one answered clearly: who is to decide what needs are 'genuine', and by what criteria? If every man is to judge this for himself, then all needs are equally genuine provided they are actually, subjectively felt, and there is no room for any distinction. If, on the other hand, it is the state which decides, then the greatest emancipation in history consists in a system of universal rationing. "
― Leszek Kołakowski , Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown
6
" The apocalyptic belief in the consummation of history, the inevitability of socialism, and the natural sequence of 'social formations'; the 'dictatorship of the proletariat', the exhalation of violence, faith in the automatic efficacy of nationalizing industry, fantasies concerning a society without conflict and an economy without money—all these have nothing to do with the idea of democratic socialism. The latter's purpose is to create institutions which can gradually reduce the subordination of production to profit, do away with poverty, diminish inequality, remove social barriers to educational opportunity, and minimize the threat to democratic liberties from state bureaucracy and the seductions of totalitarianism. "
― Leszek Kołakowski , Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown
13
" Many observers, including the present author, believe that the Soviet system as it developed under Stalin was a continuation of Leninism, and that the state founded on Lenin's political and ideological principles could only have maintained itself in a Stalinist form; such critics hold, moreover, that 'Stalinism' in the narrow sense, i.e. the system that prevailed until 1953, has not been affected in any essential way by the changes of the post-Stalinist era. "
― Leszek Kołakowski , Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown
18
" There is no general agreement as to what the term 'Stalinism' connotes. It has never been used by the official ideologists of the Soviet state, as it would seem to imply the existence of a self-contained social system. Since Khrushchev's time the accepted formula for what went on in Stalin's day has been 'the cult of personality', and this phrase is invariably associated with two presuppositions. The first is that throughout the existence of the Soviet Union the party's policy was 'in principle' right and salutary, but that occasional errors were committed, the most serious of which was the neglect of 'collective leadership', i.e. the concentration of unlimited power in Stalin's hands. The second assumption is that the main source of 'errors and distortions' lay in Stalin's own faults of character, his thirst for power, despotic inclinations, and so on. After Stalin's death all these deviations were immediately cured: the party once more conformed to proper democratic principles, and that was the end of the matter. "
― Leszek Kołakowski , Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown
19
" The mass slaughter of Communists in 1936–9 cannot be called a 'historical necessity', and we may suppose that it would not have taken place under a tyrant other than Stalin himself. But if, as in the typical Communist view, that slaughter is regarded as the true, 'negative' significance of Stalinism, it follows that the whole of Stalinism was a deplorable accident—the implication being that everything is always for the best under Communist rule until prominent Communists start being murdered. This is hard of the historian to accept, not only because he is interested in the fate of millions who were not party leaders or even party members, but also because the sanguinary terror on a huge scale which occurred in the Soviet Union at certain periods is not a permanent or essential feature of totalitarian despotism. The deposit system remains in force irrespective of whether, in a particular year, official murders are counted in millions or only in thousands, whether is used as a matter of routine or only occasionally, and whether the victims are only workers, peasants, and intellectuals or include party bureaucrats as well. "
― Leszek Kołakowski , Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown
