Sweet and Sour Notes

Sweet and Sour Notes

On Workers and Intellectuals

The working class is a social presence; the proletariat, a historical potential. No one can question the place of the workers in the industrialized countries: their politics, their role in the work process, their ways of life. They exist, they constitute a distinctive class, they are a force. But the proletariat as agent of revolution—this remains a problem, an enigma, perhaps a delusion. For some it is still an indestructible hope; for others a burned-out disappointment.

The working class is a reality, the proletariat an idea. The reality occupies physical and social space, the idea survives in the minds of intellectuals. Surviving in the minds of intellectuals can sometimes ...