Globalisation, Hegemony and Passive Revolution

(The question) is one … of seeing whether 'what ought to be' is arbitrary or necessary; whether it is concrete will on the one hand or idle fancy, yearning, daydream on the other. The active politician is a creator, an initiator; but he neither creates from nothing nor does he move in the turbid void of his own desires and dreams. He bases himself on effective reality, but what is this effective reality? Is it something static and immobile, or is it not rather a relation of forces in continuous motion and shift of equilibrium?1 A common error in historico-political analysis consists in an inability to find the correct relation between what is organic and what is conjunctural … (I)f (such) error is serious in historiography, it becomes still more serious in the art of politics, when it is not the reconstruction of past history but the construction of present and future history which is at stake. One's own baser and more immediate desires and passions are the cause of error, in that they take the place of an objective and impartial analysis-and this happens not as a conscious 'means' to stimulate to action, but as self-deception.2