What is sometimes characterised as a nostalgia for class politics of some older type is generally more likely to be simply a 'nostalgia' for politics tout court: given the way in which periods of intense politicisation and subsequent periods of depoliticisation and withdrawal are modelled on the great economic rhythms of the boom and bust of the business cycle, to describe this feeling as 'nostalgia' is about as adequate as to characterise the body's hunger, before dinner, as a 'nostalgia for food'.

Frederic Jameson, from Postmodernism