Spontaneous and Acquired Political Consciousness

24.04.2018

We have not, in our time, moved from socialism to apathy or reaction, whatever the pessimists may consider. We have moved instead from socialism to anti-capitalism. That is hardly much of a shift at all, and one which is in any case entirely understandable in the light of recently actually existing socialism; but it is, even so, a backsliding.

You can attain anti-capitalist consciousness simply by looking around the world with a modicum of intelligence and moral decency, but you cannot attain a knowledge of global trade mechanisms or the institutions of workers’ power in this way. The distinction between spontaneous and acquired political consciousness, whatever historical disasters it may have contributed to, is itself a valid and necessary one.

— TERRY EAGLETON, “Lenin in the Postmodern Age”, in Lenin Reloaded: Toward a Politics of Truth