Green Social Thought

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Revolutions are not the train ride, but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake

More than anything, Benjamin worried in these years about the fixation on growth rates and manufacturing quotas, the intensity of the belief that capitalist production could solve the problems of despair and deprivation. Revolutions, Benjamin said, should not be seen as an ever-accelerating train. ‘Perhaps revolutions are not the train ride’, he wrote in his…

Written by

Vijay Prashad

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Originally Published in

More than anything, Benjamin worried in these years about the fixation on growth rates and manufacturing quotas, the intensity of the belief that capitalist production could solve the problems of despair and deprivation. Revolutions, Benjamin said, should not be seen as an ever-accelerating train. ‘Perhaps revolutions are not the train ride’, he wrote in his unpublished Arcades, ‘but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake’.