At least it is a piece about the world. At least it’s angry. What is this self-flagellating urge to read all the lockdown diaries, all the ‘Not another lockdown diary!’ first lines? These reams of writerly vacuities, column after mot juste-hunting column describing this shape of the day, this view from the window, such-and-such a tree and such, this which is on the desk, this which is in the fridge what with food not being as easy to get these days, these the new modes of going to the shops, this which is the conversation that was had with this friend or child or neighbour, this, now you mention it, which is the newly warm neighbourly discourse, this the recourse to Netflix, this the thing the author had thought they would miss and does not, this the one they weren’t expecting to and do. This the sense that things will never be the same again. Et cetera, repeat to fade. They provoke incredulousness greater than the sky. Who gives a fuck?

In the city, amid the tragedy and trauma, we’re granted a new silence. Distinct. Not total, any more than what we used to think of as London quiet, in the minutes between cars at night, the sound of a distant train part of the silence itself. Now you can hear the wings of a bird you watch. And when a car or van or a delivery driver on a scooter – one of the new heroes – passes by, the interruption startles. Glimpsing home-exercisers through windows you’re overwhelmed with affection for a new sort of community. Mist comes and goes across your vision: your mask sends breath on to your glasses. What would this lockdown be if it were autumn? What if it were winter?

[...] The final way of solving social catastrophe is ... by the demolition of the mass transit system that ruined everything by literally raised the poor and put them among the rich: travelling together, social-democratic welfarism as opposed to trickle-downism is a nice dream but leads to social collapse, and if left unchecked terrorism that sends transit systems careering through the sky into tall buildings in the middle of New York-style cities—9/11 as caused by the crisis of excessive social solidarity, the arrogance of masses not being sufficiently terrified of their shepherds.

In all a film that says social stratification is necessary to prevent tragedy, and that it should be policed by terrorising the plebeians, for the sake of corporations which if there is a happy ending ... will end up back in the hands of a single enlightened despot, hurrah, to save us from the depredations of consensus.

It is in the twenty-second session of that gathering that a chasm opens between the delegates, a split remarkable not only for its depth, but also for the seeming triviality of its catalyst. The question is whether a party member should be one who ‘recognises the party’s programme and supports it by material means and by regular personal association under the direction of one of the party organisations’, or ‘by personal participation in one of the party organisations’. Martov demands the former. Lenin stakes all on the latter

Relations between the two have been cooling for some time. Now after an intense, vigorous debate, Martov wins, twenty-eight to twenty-three. But various fits of huff and dudgeon ensue on other issues, and by the time the party leadership is to be decided, walkouts by the Jewish socialist group the Bund and by the Economist Marxists mean Martov has lost eight of his original supporters. Lenin manages to push through his choices for the Central Committee. Minority in Russian is menshinstvo, majority bolshinstvo. From these words the two great wings of Russian Marxism take their names: Martov’s Mensheviks and Lenin’s Bolsheviks.