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9 November 2013

Não é possível votar na esquerda se a esquerda deixou de existir.

It is no longer possible to vote for the left if the left has ceased to exist.

Observation by Portuguese novelist José Saramago (1922-2010), winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature, in his diary entry for 9 June 2009.

A fuller version of the passage is as follows:

O que chegou a ser, no passado, uma das maiores esperanças da humanidade, capaz de mobilizar vontades pelo simples apelo ao que de melhor caracterizava a espécie humana, e que veio criando, com a passagem do tempo, as mudanças sociais …. cada dia mais longe das promessas primeiras, assemelhando-se mais e mais aos adversários e aos inimigos, como se essa fosse a única maneira de se fazer aceitar, acabou por cair em meras simulações, nas quais conceitos doutras épocas chegaram a ser utilizados para justificar actos que esses mesmos conceitos haviam combatido. Ao deslizar progressivamente para o centro, movimento proclamado pelos seus promotores como demonstração de uma genialidade táctica e de uma modernidade imparável, a esquerda parece não ter percebido que se estava a aproximar da direita….Não é possível votar na esquerda se a esquerda deixou de existir.

A movement that in the past succeeded in representing one of the greatest hopes for humanity, capable of spurring us to action by the simple resort of an appeal to what is best in human nature, I saw, over the passage of time, undergoing a change in its social composition.…daily moving further away from its early promises, becoming more and more like its old adversaries and enemies, as if this were the only possible means of achieving acceptance, and so ending up becoming a faint replica of what it once was, employing concepts to justify certain actions, which it formerly used to argue against precisely the same actions. As it drifts without let-up towards the centre – a course described by its advocates as demonstrating both tactical genius and the inevitable need to keep up with the times – the left does not appear to have noticed that it was coming to resemble the right…. It is no longer possible to vote for the left if the left has ceased to exist.

Antigone1984:

The ideas expressed are very much in line with our own, eg in our post on Partitocracy v. Democracy .

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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