fantasy and political organization

Nasreen Karim karim at rnet.com
Tue Jun 5 18:08:12 PDT 2001


Doug Henwood wrote


> There's no successful politics without a good fantasy, whether you're
> talking Bolshevism or Reaganism. So calling something a "fantasy"
> isn't terribly helpful. We need fantasies that are rooted enough in
> the real world to have some possibility of success and just
> otherworldly enough to inspire people.

I agree. Sorel understood that long ago when he talked about the myth of general strike. Marcuse, in his reading of Freud, understood the emancipatory content of fantasy. Those of us who have lost trust on the binary opposition between "utopian" and "scientific" socialism, in other words, those of us who don't see "utopia" as a dirty word any more, should recognize the way fantasies can empower us.

Manjur Karim



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