The Revisionists and Marxism. Faced as they were
with Marxism converted into a justification for Stalinist
tyranny, Revisionist philosophers were concerned with
reaffirming the validity of the humanist side of Marx's
doctrine. This humanism was, in their view, to be found
most clearly expressed in Marx's early works; it had
been overshadowed, but not erased, in the later works,
and even more so by Engels, Lenin, and Stalin.
In spite of this appeal to Marx against his successors,
contemporary philosophical Revisionism is not a fun-
damentalist doctrine. Not all would go as far as the
Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski, for whom
Marxism will cease to exist as a separate doctrine as
its valid tenets are sifted and absorbed into the general
storehouse of human thought, “just as there is no
'Newtonism' in physics, no 'Linnaeism' in Botany, no
'Harveyism' in physiology and no 'Gaussism' in mathe-
matics” (Kołakowski [1969], p. 206). Others such as
Adam Schaff were ready to extend the scope of Marx-
ism to tackle problems hitherto avoided by Marxist
philosophers, such as semantics and existentialism (here
a direct stimulus came from Sartre), but did not free
themselves from the instrumentalist tradition of Marx-
ism, and still retained a basically political motivation.
They were willing to revise Marxism in order to defend
it. They retained, that is, a certain methodological
dogmatism: recognizing that there are definite limits
which no one could transgress if he did not wish to
sever his connections with Marxism-Leninism, they
accepted these limitations (Jordan [1962], 6, 15). Others
again were less concerned to define their attitude to
Marxism in general than to select such parts of Marxist
doctrine as could be useful to them in developing a
philosophy of socialist humanism. In this, their main
inspiration has come from the young Marx, but they
have also adapted elements of existentialism and
Kantianism. They have regarded Marxism as the legiti-
mate harvester of the fruits of other philosophies. They
have thus recognized a dialogue between Marxism and
contemporary continental philosophy—a dialogue de-
nied by Soviet philosophers, who still insist on the
dichotomies of “Marxist” and “bourgeois,” “materi-
alist” and “idealist” philosophy.
