The present generation is like the Jews whom Moses led through the wilderness. It has not only a new world to conquer, it must go under in order to make room for men who are able to cope with a new world.
That's Marx, writing in the aftermath of 1848, W. says. Have we gone under?, W. wonders. Are we going under now? We're on a walk, the sea to the left of us, our shadows on the right. We're walking, exulting in the ozone released from the foaming waters.
Only the young arrived in Canaan, we reflect. Moses himself died without entering it. And he bade the Hebrews to wander for 40 years in the desert, lest they bring Egypt, the memory of their captivity, with them into the promised land.
For the escape from Egypt did not happen once and for all. The Pharoah's horses and chariots were drowned, it is true, but there is a Pharoah of the mind, too; and there are horses and chariots of the mind. We are all in bondage, W. says. We have no idea what freedom might mean. No idea of liberation.
Where is our leader?, he wonders. Where the Lenin to organise and discipline us? We need to be purged! Put up against the wall as counterrevolutionaries! Only then, without us, might liberation begin. Only then might we overcome our bondage.
Lars Iyer's Blog 