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Reading Flaubert one is plunged into persons with whom one is in complete disaccord, who are irksome. Sometimes one feels with them, and then somehow they suddenly reject one’s sympathy and one finds oneself once again antagonistic to them. Obviously it was this that fascinated me, because it made …

This is the theoretical aim of your present work. But why exactly the choice of Flaubert?

Because he is the imaginary. With him, I am at the border, the barrier of dreams.

I think one has to draw a distinction between the established left parties and the broader Left. The PRD, after all, is at best an anti-neo-liberal nationalist party which originated in the PRI, whereas La Jornada is fed by a much broader left culture. But at present, in Mexico as elsewhere, the sp…

Of course, it was unjust that I was there at all, but the regime was almost like a monastery. It was good to be insulated from all the turbulence of political praxis—which deputy voted how, getting leaflets out, and so on. I had time to read a lot of literature, and read all of Capital again. As an…

That same year I also spent time in Italy. There I found the Trotskyists to be more focused on political questions—what line should be taken—rather than on the very real changes that had been taking place in the factories. Automation had brought about significant shifts in the labour process, and i…