Revolution is a real referent while postmodernity remains a mere theoretical construct

Evidence

Socialist revolution is the outcome of historical processes at work throughout the present century which have produced a series of major social and political convulsions, and on one occasion - Russia in October 1917 - the actual emergence, albeit short lived, of a workers’ state. The absence of successful socialist revolution is a contingent historical fact. Postmodernity by contrast is merely a theoretical construct, of interest primarily as a symptom of the current mood of the Western intelligentsia (hence the quotation marks around ‘postmodernity’ above which should be treated as invisibly surrounding every other occurrence of the word in this book). — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 54