sociologists-from-russia

"One physicist writes a study on microphysics, but another writes a book on the importance of Lenin’s and Engels’ works for the development of physics; one mathematician proves theorems, another publishes demagoguery on ingenious mathematical ideas of classical Marxists."

"None of the Marxist concepts (literally – not a single one!) matches the logical rules of scientific concepts."

"The firmest proof that Marxism is not science but an ideology is Marxism’s attitude to the experience of the real communist (or socialist) societies."

"But the [communist] authorities acquire from Marxism a splendid method and abounding phraseology to justify whatever piggery."

"Historically, Marxism was born with the ambition of explaining everything in the world scientifically. It is known, that Marx even dealt with mathematics. Although he could not solve problems which are nowadays clear for even asinine pupils, Marx left behind for the future generations his smart tips."

"Marxism disguises itself as science and owing to this it is easier for Marxism to portray the existing society as acting on the basis of scientific laws of his history, to portray the leadership’s selfishness and idiocy as ingenious scientific foresight etc."

"Unlike science, an ideology is constructed of conventional ambiguous expressions, which require interpretation. It is impossible to verify or experimentally confirm an ideological statement, one cannot refute these for they are meaningless. […] While arising, an ideology may have pretensions to be scientific. But having become an ideology, it loses all the major characteristics of science."

"It is so natural in trying to understand the phenomena of human life to have recourse to notions of historicism that the very fact of wanting to question them seems sacrilegious. Some people think that we can only understand communist society in its essence from a historical point of view, that is to say by considering the history of its formation. Authentic history, that goes without saying, and not the falsified history practiced by pro-communist historians and philosophers. According to them, the course of events, the way in which this society was constituted is sufficient to explain nature. p. 39"

"In the present case, historical judgment furthermore obstructs the scientific understanding of the society that interests us, because the stories here impose functions foreign to this society. p. 40"

"Historical judgment focuses attention on phenomena from which we must above all abstract ourselves if we want to understand what this new society born in a given historical context really is. The historical process is also, of course, a reality, but it is a reality which disappears into the past. The new society which has matured within him quickly got rid of a historical covering which encumbered it and had become foreign to him. It constitutes another historical environment more in keeping with its nature. Sociological reality is designed to remain. She is looking to the future. p. 41"

"Millions of people participated in the historical process that gave birth to the communist society of the Soviet Union. These people have performed billions of different actions. They accomplished them in their own interest. They acted according to the laws of community conduct and not only according to the laws of history, which do not intervene in the conduct of individuals. Some of these actions worked in favor of the new society, the other against. Sometimes the same actions worked either in favor of this society or against it. The supporters of the new societies have not always necessarily acted for it, and conversely its adversaries have not always harmed it. The revolutionaries have done a lot against the revolution and the counter-revolutionaries a lot in its favor, without realizing it. p. 41"

"Historical consciousness is condemned, for its part, to take everything at face value; she sees the origin of communist society in the action of supporters of communist doctrine and links the development of opposing forces to the action of its enemies. She is, for example, incapable of understanding that without the help of representatives of the privileged strata of the old Russian society the new society would not have been able to last a year. p. 41"

"In the present case the man who reasons as a historian is only a petty bourgeois in disguise. p. 42"

"From a petty bourgeois point of view something normal and natural is "something" good. this type of thinking makes no difference between the subjective appreciation of phenomena and their objective qualities. p. 35"

"The man who thinks like a petty bourgeois notices directly observable facts and immediately draws hasty generalizations without the slightest analysis. His judgments are subjective, that is, they bear the mark of his personal inclinations. p. 35"

"The man who thinks like a scientist seeks not only to note the facts, but also to analyze them taking into account their chance or their necessity, he tries to analyze the laws that immediate observation does not discern and to 'eliminate the influence of one's own inclinations on the results of one's reflections. 35"

"Petty-bourgeois thought claims to see its results directly confirmed by observable facts. Scientific thought, on the contrary, knows that its results do not directly coincide with observable facts. They only provide means by which concrete facts can be explained and predicted. p. 35-36"

"The petty bourgeois is inclined to pass off what he feels as the truth. p. 36"

"It has frequently happened to me to come up against conclusions which, although made by educated people, were no less monstrous in their absurdity. p. 36"

"This way that petty-bourgeois minds confuse their subjective assessments with the objective situation goes so far that the majority of notions used in conversations about social problems have currently lost their scientific character to become simple expressions of estimation. . p. 37"

"The petty-bourgeois mind considers the lives of others as if it were in their situation, transposing onto them its attitude, its criteria of judgment, its feelings. p. 37"

"Science presupposes the use of thoughtful, precise terminology, which leaves no room for ambiguity. Ideology, on the contrary, presupposes the use of meaningless, vague, equivocal terms. Scientific terminology does not need to be analyzed or interpreted. Ideological phraseology must be commented on, compared, rethought. Scientific assertions assume that we can at any time confirm them, refute them, or even in extreme cases, recognize their insoluble nature. The absurdity of ideological propositions means that they can neither be refuted nor confirmed p. 285"

"Understanding scientific texts requires a long period of specialized preparation and the use of a particular, professional language. Science is aimed at a restricted circle of specialists. Ideological texts are addressed to an entire population, regardless of profession and differences in educational level. To “understand” them (or more precisely to assimilate them), there is no need to undergo special preparation. It is enough to refer to examples from daily life to clarify this or that obscure passage. p. 286"

"It is impossible to refute an ideology. We can only weaken or strengthen it depending on whether we weaken or strengthen its influence on people. p. 286"

"The individual is today capable of carrying out an ideological treatment on information received, the effects of which are assured. Science is ultimately content to provide the phraseology, ideas and themes. p. 288"

"The ideology in the present case is eager to give itself the air of science. p. 289"

"Current science is not only concerned with seeking the truth. His part of scientific spirit, which in no way resembles science as it is commonly conceived, is far from equaling that of an anti-scientific spirit hostile to the first, but apparently much more scientific than him. p.287"

"The scientific mind produces abstractions, the anti-scientific mind destroys them under the pretext that they do not take into account this or that factor. The scientific spirit establishes rigorous notions, the anti-scientific spirit, under the pretext of encompassing the multiplicity of reality, gives them various meanings. The scientific mind avoids using means that it can do without. The anti-scientific spirit is firing on all cylinders. The scientific mind seeks to simplify and clarify. The anti-scientific spirit confuses and complicates. The scientific mind strives to trivialize what seems unusual. The anti-scientific spirit aims for the sensational and likes to surround the most ordinary phenomena with mystery. p.287"

"At first, both (under other names, of course) can be considered equal parts of the same science, but soon the anti-scientific spirit takes over, just like those weeds that choke plants that we forget to weed. p. 287"

"The scientific spirit is relegated to the pitiful role of an inferior attribute. However, we support it to the extent that it can serve as an alibi for the anti-scientific spirit. But, above all, we try to dismiss it as a kind of unbearable reproach for a guilty conscience. p. 287"

"Which means that we are seriously mistaken when we hope to see science play a role as an instrument of progress and civilization."

"La Maison jaune, Alexandre Zinoviev (trad. Anne Coldefy-Faucard et Wladimir Berelowitch), éd. Julliard/L'Age d'Homme, 1982, en 2 tomes"

"This is only a description of the facts. However, this is not the truth, since there will undoubtedly be other facts whose description will contradict this one. The truth is not in the juxtaposition of this type of writing. What opposes the truth is not another truth, but error. p. 89"

"The whole problem, currently, is to have a method of understanding, says the Fool. People have information in spades, but they are incapable of extracting truths that matter. They are content to live at a superficial level of very primary observation and generalization. No one is capable of deepening their analysis to the essential mechanisms of what is happening. However, such deepening obeys rules, which are not very complicated. 117"

"The Party is the organization of leaders, in the strongest sense of the term and for leaders of all orders. It is, fundamentally, an organ of repression, and not just the place of production of slogans and speeches. Our party is not one, in the sense in which it was understood before the revolution, or in the Western sense of the term. It only has the name. It's not the party, it's the Party. And its role is quite different in the life of society (it is power, privileges). p. 115"

"A pluralist system under a communist regime is an absurdity. The parties would immediately go to war, and one of them would win (or the country would divide into “independent” states). p. 115"

"The one-party system does not come from an error or bad design, it is, on the contrary, perfectly normal, because our society does not have ONE party, it is WITHOUT a party. p. 115-116"

"It is, in principle, impossible to understand our life and our mental functioning if we are not a dialectician. However, dialectics is fundamentally foreign to Western man, whether he is a “thinker” or not. p. 353"

"I therefore affirm that, to understand our society, our dialectical method is necessary, while that of the West, non-dialectical, is of no use. But be careful: I am not talking about “dialectics” in the sense given to it by Soviet philosophies – starting with Stalin in his Dialectical and Historical Materialism; I am talking about this ability to take into account all the complexity and changing nature of formations such as our gigantic society. Ah! I'm itching to describe this method! But by giving it the efficiency, the practical sense of the Western style of thinking. Is it possible ? Who knows, perhaps the most suitable forms are born from these unthinkable compromise. p. 353"

"To feel life, to truly experience it, you must, of course, be in it. But to know it, it is necessary, above all, to move away from it at a sufficient distance. Otherwise, you have no overall vision, you cannot distinguish its essential features, its dynamics, its aims. 397"

"The problem is not the lack of freedom, it is on the contrary the excess of freedom! We're stuffed with it! (p. 36)"

"The forms of preparation for war are varied. They are divided above all into capitalist forms and socialist forms. [...] The capitalists hide their capital in Swiss banks, and our compatriots in woolen stockings. The capitalists monopolize paintings by old masters for millions of dollars, our compatriots buy soap and sugar for a few kopecks... p. 36"

"To enjoy freedom, you need money p. 89"

"To fully feel Western freedom, one must lose all hope of losing freedom. For the Russian, Western freedom is above all solitude. p. 89"

"When it comes to destroying and humiliating Russian geniuses, the West and the Soviet Union are one. p. 103"

"There, as in the Soviet Union, we also don't like hearing the truth. p. 103"

"In short, the problem is not what will happen in fifty years, but what our surviving descendants will think of us. p. 127"

"The ancestors are generally only a caricature of the contemporaries, and the descendants a caricature of the ancestors. p. 127"

"The next war will perhaps be more humane than the previous one. But it will be disproportionate to man and humanity. By its dimensions it will be a war of gods, but a war waged by insignificant men for insignificant goals. Social progress will be; they too are insignificant. The last one, both in terms of its goals and its protagonists, was nevertheless significant. p. 127"

"The earthly geniuses had overlooked one point: everything that is reasonable is only so to the extent that there exists something that is not; the elimination of the unreasonable element has the inevitable consequence of transforming what is reasonable into its opposite. Being the refined dialecticians that they were not, they had not known how to approach dialectics dialectically, ideology had played a bad trick on them. p. 142"