62
LESZEK KOLAKOWSKI
a few friends, telling jokes, and for incorrect opinions in private
letters, the very concept of legality is senseless. Obviously, the best
way to combat illegal persecution of this kind is to make the "crime"
as widespread as possible. When I speak about the reformist posture,
I have in mind a belief in the effectiveness of partial and gradual
pressure within the larger perspective of social and national libera–
tion. Despotic socialism cannot be regarded as a totally unpliable
system, for there are no such systems. In fact, some pliability has been
revealed in the past few years in as basic an area as decision-making,
which falls under the jurisdiction of official ideology. The limits of
ideological control have been narrowed quite significantly: party
functionaries can no longer pretend to know more about medicine
than professors of medicine do, or more about philology than philo–
logists do. True, they still know more about literature than writers
do. But in Poland, even in this area, certain irreversible changes have
taken place. Official ideological interference is still unbearable, but
significantly less so when we remember the not so distant time when
state doctrine defined the width of the trouser leg, the color of socks,
and the laws of genetics, all at the same time. Someone might say
that what we have here is a progression from slavery to feudalism.
We are not, however, faced with a choice between degradation and
freedom, but only with a choice between accepting degradation and
trying to preserve certain human values. All over the world, we are
witnessing the breakdown of rigid orthodoxies. The churches have
lost the sanctions they once enjoyed. And even the police, whose
power depends solely on the belief in their omnipotence, become
powerless in the face of social pressure, and the fear of those who
have lived by sowing fear becomes greater than the fear of the per–
secuted.
Bureaucratic socialism has lost its ideological base. Despite all its
monstrosities, the Stalinist apparatus, at least in the countries of the
people's democracies, was much more dependent on ideology than the
present ones.
It
might seem that an apparatus based on cynicism–
which measures the accomplishments of socialism by its own privi–
leges - is more effective, for it is free of ideological baggage, safe
from ideological conflicts, capable of spontaneous and rapid changes,
and more suited to manipulation. But this is less than half the truth.
For such an apparatus is not only less reliable in moments of crisis,
