The aim of this article is to develop and supplement arguments in support of Leszek Kołakowski’s thesis concerning the ideological and practical continuity of Marx’s philosophy and the 20th-century political attempts to implement it (‘institutionalism of Marxism’). The forms of the indicated homology have been divided into three categories: unjustified prophecies (historicism), propagation of violence and scientific misconduct. The article also explores numerous 19th-century exante sources that show the dangerous consequences of the Marxist philosophy of history long before they were confirmed by the revolutionary experiences of the 20th century. The final part describes the consequences of the conceptual ferment related to the attempts to separate Marx’s theory (in particular by giving up its systemic lectures) and modern totalitarian experiments with communism which are still present in political discourse and preserved in the dominant forms of collective memory.
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