What in the twentieth century perhaps comes closest to the working-class revolution were the events in Poland of 1980-81: the revolutionary movement of industrial workers (very strongly supported by the intelligentsia) against the exploiters, i.e., the state. ANd this solitary example of a working-class revolution (if indeed it may be counted as such) was directed against a socialist state, and carried out under the sign of the cross with the blessing of the Pope.[...]
As for the so-called materialist interpretation of history, it has provide us with a number of interesting insights and suggestions, but it has no explanatory value. In its strong, rigid version, for which there is considerable support in many classic texts, it implies that social development depends entirely on the class struggle, which ultimately, through the intermediary of changing 'modes of production,' is determined by the technological level of the society in question. It implies, moreover, that law, religion, philosophy and other elements of culture have no history of their own, since their history is the history of the realtions of production. This is an absurd claim, completely lacking in historical grounds.
If, on the other hand, the theory is taken in a weak, limited sense, it merely says that the history of social struggles and conflicting interests, and that political institutions depend in part, at least negatively, on technological development and on social conflicts. This, however, is an uncontroversial platitude which was known long before Marx. THus the materialist interpretation of history is either nonsens or a platitude.
Leszek Kołakowski,
What is Left of Socialism, zitiert aus Kołakowski,
Is God Happy?, S.65ff
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