nival of annihilation is still on the road,”rnhe shouted to a CND rally at Hyde Park,rnLondon in October 1981. “Time is notrnon our side.” In fact it was. The Westrnwas not beggared by the arms race, andrnthe wodd did not explode. It was thernsocialist empire that died, and with itrnthe fading hopes of those who believedrnthat its theory of mankind was at oncerninevitable and just.rnMeanwhile, the work of definition andrnredefinition continued, buoyed up by anrninvincible sense of virtue and righteousness;rnbut even the polemics nowrnlook dated. The struggle to humanizernsocialism by anglicizing it—less Marxrnand more Morris—was honorably patriotic,rnbut its terms were confused. “Marxrndid not invent the socialist movement,”rnhe wrote in The Poverty of Theory, andrnMorris had more to say than he aboutrnthe humane objectives of socialism; butrnhe then quotes a letter of Morris consistingrnentirely of unstinted praise ofrnMarx. If there was ever an English, pre-rnMarxist phase of socialism, Morris doesrnnot seem to know about it; nor does ThernMaking of the EngUsh Working Class,rnwhich is about radical movements beforernthe great Reform Act of 1832, demonstraternthat a socialist tradition flourishedrnin England before that year.rnThompson gravely overrated, too, thernattention that Marxists pay to the writingsrnof Marx. “To return . . . to propositionsrnof Marx is like going on a crosscountryrnrun in leaden boots,” he remarksrnat the end of The Poverty of Theory, complainingrnthat Althusser and his kind werernprisoners of texts, capable of doing nornmore than reading and quoting thernwritings of Marx. If only they had readrnthem at all. In 1992 Althusser’s posthumousrnautobiography appeared, L’Avenirrndure longtemps, revealing that thernFrench philosopher had read none of thernwritings of Aristotle and Kant, on whomrnhe lectured, and only the early writingsrnof Marx. Thompson had supposed thatrnthe French Marxist habit of quotingrnMarx meant that they were studious,rneven book-bound. In fact they were lazyrnand borrowed quotations. The author ofrnLire le Capital (1968), on his ownrnadmission, had not read it.rnThe Poverty of Theory is a tortured andrnshadowed work, oddly compounded ofrnheroics and self-reproach. It ends with arnpassage that brought tears to the eyes ofrnsome when it first appeared, and itrnis still a passage to haunt the mind:rn”What if the defeat be total and abject,rnand call in question the rationality andrngood faith of the socialist project itself?”rnWhat indeed? That was written longrnago, in the 1970’s, and about events evenrnlonger ago, such as the Soviet action inrnBudapest in 1956. But it is also, in arnstrange and perhaps unintended way,rnpredictive. In 1989 the Soviet defeat wasrntotal and abject, after all, and it didrncall into question far more than thernrationality and good faith of the Sovietrnsystem.rnThompson’s writings were composedrntoo early to tell us what he thoughtrnabout all that. The Poverty of Theoryrnends evocatively with an echo of the famousrnlast sentence of Voltaire’s Candide,rnwhere an innocent returns to the homernof his youth after a wealth of conflictingrnexperiences and sees its familiar sightsrnas if for the first time. The world,rnthough itself unchanged, looks different,rnand what is different is oneself.rnThompson concludes his book by announcingrnthat he will now return to “myrnproper work,” whatever that was, “and tornmy own garden,” as if the universe ofrnpolitics that had once looked simple hadrngrown too complex for him to understand.rn”I will watch how things grow.”rnLike the endeavors of his parentsrnto Christianize India, his crusade hadrnled nowhere. But he was right to thinkrnthat it is by watching and learning, whenrntheory fails, that innocents at last becomernwise.rnGeorge Watson, who is a fellowrnof St. John’s College, Cambridge,rnis the author o/” Politics & Literaturernin Modern Britain, The Idea ofrnLiberalism, and British LiteraturernSince 1945.rnLIBERAL ARTSrnKILLJOY LAWrnThe Socialist Party in Greece recently divided over the critical problem of what to do about late-night parties. The government, whichrnhad attempted to get Greeks to go to bed earlier by banning drink and dance after 2 A.M. in clubs, bars, and discos, was split betweenrnministers who publicly argue that the killjoy law is needed to crack down on an alarming rise in crime, alcoholism, and drug addictionrnamong the young and officials who privately concede that it has done more to cramp their own lifestyle than any other law.rnAccording to the European last March, many prominent Socialist MPs and ministers were “praying” that Stelios Papathemelis,rnGreece’s church-going public order minister, would be forced to withdraw the antirevelling legislation. ‘The sight of riot police clubbingrnhundreds of revellers, many armed with little more than a drink, as they demonstrated outside an Athenian bar, has sent shiversrndown the spines of fun-loving Socialists.” But Papathemelis thinb “it’s about time that Greeks learned to behave like other Europeans.rnThey go to bed at illogical hours and then, exhausted, sleep through the day at work or school.”rn48/CHRONICLESrnrnrn