When I was in Paris with Jenny in 1843, I was twenty-five, and I wrote that in the new industrial system people are estranged from their work because it is distasteful to them. They are estranged from nature, as machines, smoke, smells, noise invade their senses - progress it is called. They are estranged from others because everyone is set against everyone else, scrambling for survival. And they are estranged from their own selves, living lives that are not their own, living as they do not really want to live, so that a good life is possible only in dreams, in fantasy.
But it does not have to be. Ther is still a possibility of choice. Only a possibility, I grant. Nothing is certain. That is now clear. I was too dammed certain. Now I know - anything can happen. But people must get off their asses!
Marx In Soho, Howard Zinn
Esta es la voz que Howard Zinn le da a un Carlos Marx que reaparece en Nueva York a principios de los años noventa. La clave, de la especulación de Zinn, es que después del siglo XX, un Marx retrospectivo sería menos estructuralista y un poquito más voluntarista.
Howard Zinn se murió hace un par de semanas. La mayoría de la gente lo conoce por a People's History of the United Sates, que narra la historia de EU desde la visión de los vencidos (más o menos).