In Imperial Russia there was a 'What is to be done?' genre of political writing which was - except, perhaps, in the case of Lenin - rarely optimistic. On the contrary, there tended to be an assumption that there was too much to do and probably no chance of doing it. In Britain we find ourselves, mutatis mutandis, in an analogous situation. We have a government which has scarcely any reason to exist and hardly anything of importance to say to the electorate, but we face an almost unendurably long election campaign which that government has at least an even chance of winning - in which case nothing will be done at all. When, therefore, we ask what is to be done, we must also remember that the problem of arrival is inseparable from the problem of what we do when we arrive.

LRB 27 February 1992 | PDF Download