The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies

by Ryszard Legutko

This does not mean that we are all slaves of our time. There are those who see more clearly than others, not because they are free from a historical entanglement, but because their minds have a better grasp of the world to come. It is these people who speak in the name of the future and are the purveyors of a revolutionary spirit. Both these types of consciousness—the one mystified by its false claim to timelessness, the other anticipating a new era—Marx and Engels called ideology. The concept vaulted to unprecedented popularity, primarily because it proved to be a most convenient tool in political conflicts: it allowed discrediting one’s opponent without entering into a substantive argument. There was no sense in analyzing the opponent’s views on their merits, such an analysis being usually inconclusive and politically inefficient. It was much better to show that his views represented his interests and were conditioned by his social and economic position.