The Mourning After

What is it that we mourn when we mourn revolution, especially since the term has fallen into disrepute in the age of liberal-democratic consensus? At first sight, we mourn very little. Ever since the fall of Communism and, perhaps just as significantly, starting with the polemic around the ‘end of history’ predicated as a consequence of that fall, its use in political discourse seems irremediably anachronistic, an enunciation closer to the language of historians than to the doings of serious activists and progressive thinkers.

So, who mourns? Certainly not the advocates of the free market, for they have every reason to celebrate. Those who once believed in revolution have now moved on. Having made their peace with the loss, they accept the closure of the idea of radical change and conceive politics along the path of pragmatism. If they still invoke revolution, or its manifold ghosts, they do so ironically in order not to sound risible or pathetic. Others, however, continue to mourn. They do so as one mourns a dead lover or a departed friend, with grief, at times with nostalgia, but always with the feeling of loss. This is a loss of direction ensuing from the collapse of a project or horizon for action, in this case the horizon of a more just society with a greater sense of solidarity, also called socialism for the sake of brevity.