Need for optimism (Rob Schaap on Foucault)

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Fri Jun 22 08:17:37 PDT 2001


From Charles to Justin:


>>He [Marx] went throught a period of retrenchment and resignation in
>>the 1850s.
>
>CB: Don't think he made this public. My point being that he knew
>that pessimism would tend to be self-fullfilling.

We have a good number of leftists, far more numerous probably than the number that existed just before the creation of the Communist Party or the building of diverse social movements in the 60s (since both the upsurges followed the devastating attacks on leftists). It's a wonder that we don't seem to be able to get nothing coherent & substantial going (beyond sporadic protests against this or that) together, despite the numerical strength, under relatively little direct state repression of left-wing activities (compared to other decades).

Yoshie



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