Burnout: the Emotional Experience of Political Defeat. By Hannah Proctor. Verso £14.99.
In May 1871 the Paris Commune was brutally repressed, with many people executed and over four thousand of its supporters exiled to New Caledonia, a French territory in the Pacific Ocean, 750 miles east of Australia. Unsurprisingly, many of those exiled experienced feelings of hopelessness and despair. These were examples of what the author terms ‘pathological nostalgia’, which she contrasts with ‘political nostalgia’, which ‘looks to the future rather than the past’.
Nostalgia is one example of the different emotions identified here, the others being melancholia, depression, burnout, exhaustion, bitterness, trauma and mourning, though the distinctions among these are not always clear. The focus is on left-wing movements, where prolonged activity, with little achieved, can lead to exhaustion and disillusion. One woman, who had campaigned in the US on abortion issues, found herself in the 1980s with no partner, children or secure job, and wondered if it had all been a waste of time. On the other hand, many women who played an active role in supporting the UK miners’ strike felt really changed by it, meeting new people and becoming aware of the unjust nature of the British state. One woman (wife and mother of miners) found that contributing at the local soup kitchen helped combat her agoraphobia, saying, ‘I know that I’ve got to keep active after the strike.’
There is an interesting if somewhat unclear discussion of the impact of the Bolshevik takeover of 1917 (about which Proctor says ‘the October Revolution was not defeated’). The ensuing civil war, coupled with pre-1917 events, meant years of violence and famine, which ‘took a heavy physical and mental toll’. Many former activists became exhausted, in some cases this was due to ‘despair over the course the new society was taking’ (some more detail here would have been helpful). In 1921–2 over fourteen thousand people voluntarily left the Bolshevik party, and ‘there was a spate of suicides among the membership.’
Some left-wing groups go in for abuse and bullying (sometimes of close friends), while criticism and self-criticism sessions among the Weathermen in the US in the 1960s and 70s could inflict serious psychological damage on members. In the US ‘Communist’ Party, those who left could find themselves simply ignored in the street by those who had stayed on.
Proctor quotes Rosa Luxemburg as saying that revolutionary struggle involves thunderous defeats but will lead inexorably to final victory. Perhaps more realistic is her comment on the famous last words of Joe Hill: better to both mourn and organise.
Paul Bennett
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