The Captive Mind examined today
This is a summary of my paper on Czesław Miłosz’s The Captive Mind seen from a vantage-point of the 21st century.
At the time of its publication The Captive Mind was an important contribution not so much to cold-war literature as to the literature dealing with the “conversion” or tactical collaboration with Marxism-Leninism by Polish writers and intellectuals. Miłosz invented the term (taken over from Gobineau) of “Ketman” and described various applications of this approach. The common denominator behind the various “Ketmans” was the recognition of “historical necessity” and a perception of “the weakness of the West”.
This argument may have had relevance in 1951 but was already undermined in 1956 by Marxist revisionist philosophers such as Leszek Kołakowski. In 1956 (Hungary) and in 1968 (Czechoslovakia) even the myth of “Socialist brotherhood” was utterly destroyed. In 1980 Solidarity arose, the Polish workers turning against the regime. The implosion of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall under Gorbachev showed that “historical necessity” is a fallacy.
In my paper I would also like to examine the individual cases of Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta, all discussed in The Captive Mind. It is interesting to see what happened to them later, how they reacted to the changes of 1956 and 1970, and whether they attacked or challenged Miłosz afterwards. Also, what Czesław Miłosz himself thought later about his important book of 1951.
