Possibilities and Pitfalls

of far-out individualism? Pride in ones weaknesses can perhaps constitute a tolerable ingredient for poetry; it is hardly the staple for down-to-earth political radicalism I There must be thousands, inside prison and outside, still sold on the Yenan model. It is perhaps necessary, brutally necessary, to tell them that their comprehension of historical analogues is worth next to nothing. There are yet others who too could be accused of having committed, in their own manner, acts of wholesale irresponsibility toward the working diss. If the Left has ceased to be credible, if it finds the masses immobilised by a not-quite-definable ennui, is it not because, at a certain point of time in the recent past, it itself turned frivolous? Not to look beyond one's nose is frivolity, not to anticipate the moves and counter-moves of the enemy is frivolity. It is easy to shift the culpability of the present order of things to exogenous factors. That is corner-outing. And through such device the Left will be cheating only itself.