The general state of affairs, we are told again and again, every day, by a hundred voices and in a hundred ways, is the only way things can possibly be: all of these massive patterns are beyond human control; you might try to change one or two details, you cannot change the big picture. To imagine a radically different world that does not generate patterns like the ones we are now seeing is to succumb to a delusion.

This “delusion” — that another world is possible — is traditionally called the left.

To be a leftist — a.k.a.