Reviews

• ポーランドの社会主義体制下での知識人

  なぜこういった本は邦訳されなかったのでしょうかね。いや、案外、邦訳されていたのかも。ちなみに1950年ごろにかかれた本です。でも、著者が対象とした社会主義体制がいまや崩壊してしまった後に、この本にはじめて取り組んだわけですけど、なんともいえない感情でいっぱいです。なぜこのような体制が、ある一定の条件の下で、曲がりなりにも支持なるものを得ることができたのか、人間とは本当に弱い存在ですね。社会主義体制のもとでは、人間がどう変質せざるを得ないかを描写した本です。著者が、個人的にかかわった数人の芸術的な天才の社会主義体制下での運命と変質をたどることにより、知識人の感受性の鋭さと弱さが徹底的に描写されています。最後の章、バルトの部分は圧巻です。

• This is the product review not the book's content

  Print quality is awful, as you'd expect from penguin bootlegged version.

• Important text.

  Still relevant today. Fascinating read.

• What Marxist-Leninist Stalinism meant for Eastern Europe

  This book should be essential reading for all teenagers. Based on the author’s own experience of the imposition of Marxist-Leninist Stalinism on his native Poland following the Second World War, it should be as widely read as George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984.

• A handbook on the use of Fear to Capture and Imprison the Human Mind

  This book, written in 1950 in Poland under the thumb of Soviet Communism, is a penetrating account of the methods used to capture and hold Human minds, in what eventually became eager participation in their own oppression. Silence would no longer be good enough. Those who intend to survive and thrive would have to be among the more convincing in their pretended love of their glorious ruler. The great value in having a personal and focused account of the actual workings of this game of winning through convincing lies, is not just in exposing the methods of totalitarian Communism, but in offering an understandable model that can be extended into the interpretation of any modern system of imposed order that is based on the uses of fear and deception to achieve the desired results, for those of any ideology, that wishes to rule over the rest of the social group; from individual relationships up to nation states, religions, and economic systems. Fear and deception can be successful at any organizational level if the goal is that of control. When this becomes known and understood, it becomes clear that the only effective resistance involves courage and the application of truth. When a reader holds this book in their hands, they are in contact with an opportunity to become better acquainted with a clear expression of courage and honesty. My point is simply that it does not matter what is both feared and untrue. The fear might be of death. Or it might be of humiliation. The untruth is that there is nothing of positive value in death or humiliation. I might be supposed NOT to be preaching so openly. I ask your pardon because, "The Captive Mind," is a book that preaches its pointedly secular, humanistic, cause without apology. Which is no reason for those of other persuasions to set it aside. The human mind, wherever it may spring from, is the object of study here. And the insights on offer are profound for anyone who cares about such.

• A warning from a witness to the wars against humanity.

  Written by a person who saw the wasteland of the wars against individual human beings.This is a must read .

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