Escape from the 19th Century and Other Essays

Did the nineteenth century ever come to an end? Was the twentieth century just a re-run? If to know “History” as tragedy is to escape its repetition as farce, then perhaps we need to look more deeply at this Past that won’t stop haunting us. Two illuminated madmen—Charles Fourier and Friedrich Nietzsche—and two too-sane geniuses—J.-P. Proudhon and Karl Marx—are enlisted in the break-out plan. The shape of this plan is then suggested in a final essay showing how old “rights and customs” of paleolithic reciprocity and eqalitarian spirituality have made innumerable re-entries into History.