WRITERS IN EXILE
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thinking. One has to think in order to survive, and being all by
oneself, one could think without any inhibitions and images;
one's reality is not influenced.
Just to find the truth. What was the truth I was looking for?
I asked myself whether all that I'd seen in the Soviet Union-or
for that matter, in Czechoslovakia, and particularly what I'd ex–
perienced in prison-whether this was a deviation of Marxism or
something built into Marxism. I did hope that the result would
be that it was a deviation of Marxism, that I was just a victim of
this deviation, as it happens so very often in the history of man–
kind that very great ideas are distorted in practice. But the more I
thought, the more I tried
to
come to the very roots of Marxism
and social philosophy and general philosophy, I came
to
the
very tragic conclusion (tragic for me) that all these dehumanizing
phenomena I noticed both in Czechoslovakia and in the Soviet
Union-despite the fact that in Czechoslovakia our aim was to
create a humane society-that it is deeply built-in in Marxism,
that there is no Marxism with a human face. And there is no
Marxism tha t can be in whatever respect humane.
There is no doubt that Marx's point of departure, as well as
that of my generation of Marxists, was to create a humane society.
Why is it that not a humane society but the opposite has been
created? I came to the conclusion that the very feature of Marxism
that attracted me most-that it is a scientific tool-was the cause
of all the shortcomings of Marxism, theoretical or applied. Why?
Marx applied the method of the natural sciences
to
society. He
wanted to discover the laws of motion; he saw the development
of society as a determined process of natural 'historical deter–
minism and inevitability. And actually he eliminated all values.
Capitalism was in Marxist terminology not at all bad and not at
all good.
It
was a certain stage of development. History made
capitalism and history will destroy capitalism. The proletariat
was not good or bad; it was just a product of history, a historical
agent. At the same time, it was created by history; the proletarian
class will one day disappear when we abolish the forms of private
ownership. So the question of good and bad did not exist. And
we had there actually a question of-to use a term that will be
particularly familiar
to
our highly esteemed moderator-we had
a question of the end of ideology. Marxism is a pseudo-science
because it applies the methods of the natural sciences to perfectly
