This may all the more readily be justified by the conviction that, after all, this is what we went through in the early industrial period. Our recognition of the samenesses and echoes of our own experience serve, not to horrify and revolt us, but to perceive all this merely as a stage of development, a necessary phase in the process of growing rich which will eventually raise those people to the levels of consumption enjoyed by a majority in the West. The paradox that everything is changed yet nothing is changed, is the contradiction that haunts the conflict between Old Labour and New Labour. The need for continuing struggle and fight for social justice has not gone away - it is simply that the actors are different, and have become unrecognisable to those who were once at the centre of these efforts. To dwell in denial and unknowing is a seductive and comfortable posture, which few resist.
Life is so short.
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