The Left Has Lost The Common Touch.

A Child's Appetite For New Toys Appeal To The Desire For Ownership And Appropriation: The Appeal Of Toys Comes To Lie Not In Their Use But In Their Status As Possessions.

Ideologies, However Appealing, Cannot Shape The Whole Structure Of Perceptions And Conduct Unless They Are Embedded In Daily Experiences That Confirm Them.

Parents Accept Their Obsolescence With The Best Grace They Can Muster. . . They Do All They Can To Make It Easy For The Younger Generation To Surpass The Older, While Secretly Dreading The Rejection That Follows.

Once Women Begin To Question The Inevitability Of Their Subordination And To Reject The Conventions Formerly Associated With It, They Can No Longer Retreat To The Safety Of Those Conventions. The Woman Who Rejects The Stereotype Of Feminine Weakness And Dependence Can No Longer Find Much Comfort In The Clich? That All Men Are Beasts. She Has No Choice Except To Believe, On The Contrary, That Men Are Human Beings, And She Finds It Hard To Forgive Them When They Act Like Animals.

The Hope Of A New Politics Does Not Lie In Formulating A Left-wing Reply To The Right-it Lies In Rejecting Conventional Political Categories.