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Gwyneth's avatar

Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski

“The destructive action of totalitarian machinery is usually supported by a special kind of primitive social philosophy. It proclaims not only that the common good of ‘society’ has priority over the interest of individuals, but that the very existence of individuals, as persons, is reducible to the existence of the social ‘whole’; in other words, personal existence is, in a strange sense, unreal. This is a convenient foundation for any ideology of slavery.”

May 1983 essay Totalitarianism & the Lie,

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Susan Daniels's avatar

Thank you for sharing this. I am amazed at the things I still do not know.

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