The Left is so demoralized that even in the worst recession in 70 years, it poses no threat to capitalism. Most who ‘like to think of themselves as on the Left’ (that refuge of fantasy), ritually deplore the loss of popular support, bleakly placing faith in ‘the swing of the pendulum’ or telling each other that ‘the world has changed’ and we must make the best of it.
Why socialism capitulated after so faint a struggle continues to mystify socialists. In Britain, the 1984 miners’ strike was seen as an heroic last stand; but the ideological battle had long been conceded. Socialism perished long before the Thatcher years; the roots of the labour movement were never deep enough to prevent it from being assimilated into the system it came into existence to oppose.
