Outtakes from a story of defeat

Tariq Ali's radical winter

WHEN THE TIME CAME, too many good people gave up too easily. In the doldrums of the Cold War, when the wind seemed to be going out of the revolutionary left, a large number of people who really should’ve known better turned their backs on the movement. They went over to the right, or to human rights, or environmentalism. Everywhere there was a softening…