Up Against the Wall

W. reads to me from his notebook:

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 the revolutions of 1848, W. says. Have we gone under?, W. wonders. Are we going under right now?

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 to corrupt the promised land.

We dream of the young of Middlesex, with a daggers in their heart and ice on their lips. We dream of those who will come after our going under. What fools they'll think we were!

We're not young enough. Not ardent enough, we agree. Aren't we a symbol of what needs to be overcome? The escape from Egypt didn't happen once and for all. To be sure, Pharoah's horses and chariots were drowned in the Red Sea, but there is a Pharoah of the mind, too, and horses and chariots of the mind. We are all in bondage – especially us. We're all in bondage, and especially those whose communist dreams are so lacking in definition. 

Our communism is mystagogic, fanciful. At once pure obfuscation and childish whimsy. What do we understand of the militant demand? What of the risks that must be taken? 

To go under … We need to be purged! Put up against the wall as counterrevolutionaries! Only then, without us, might liberation begin. Only then might the world overcome its bondage.