Boundless Conformity
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Social Democracy had decayed, said Walter Benjamin in his 1940 essay “On the Concept
of History,” without the expectation that revolution would make “the continuum of history explode.” Already, within three decades, Social Democrats had managed virtually to erase the name of Blanqui, associated as it was with insurrection, “though it had been the rallying sound that had reverberated through the 19th century.”