The left’s defeat may have been a slow disintegration rather than a battle

Evidence

Perhaps aware of the difficulty, Eagleton momentarily retracts with one hand what he advances with the other. The fable of political defeat concludes with the ‘most bizarre possibility of all’, as he asks: ’ What if this defeat never really happened in the first place? What if it were less a matter of the left rising up and being forced back, than of a steady disintegration, a gradual failure of nerve, a creeping paralysis?’. Were that the case, then balance between cause and effect would be restored. But, tempted though he is by this comforting fancy, Eagleton is too lucid to insist on it. His book ends as it begins, ‘regretfully, on a more minatory note’: not equipoise, but illusion is the bottom-line of the postmodern. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 276

Categorization

• QUESTION: The ‘defeat that never really happened’ counterfactual is a striking revision of the standard defeat-narrative of post-1968 theory — worth chasing.
• XREF: connects to: Postwar socialist governments prioritized survival over revolutionary aims, splitting the Left — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 92; Internal party struggles over bolshevisation eroded the Left’s strength through multiple converging forces; Defeated revolutionary movements often self-destruct rather than self-correct (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Internal party struggles over bolshevisation eroded the Left’s strength through multiple converging forces #corroborates (0.85)
• Defeated revolutionary movements often self-destruct rather than self-correct #corroborates (0.80)
• Left movements police their own borders and shrink their ranks #corroborates (0.80) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 410
• Left factions failed to unite because their strategies were mutually contradictory #qualifies (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 132
• Against concentrated oligarchy, left splintering functionally amounts to surrender #complicates (0.75) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 1084
• A movement’s founding ideology can become a trap that ensures its defeat #complicates (0.75) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 392
• The Right gains ground partly because of what the Left does within limits. #corroborates (0.72) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1130