Socialism: Utopian and Cultural

Abstract

Zygmunt Bauman has identified as a continuous interest of his work: ‘the working class, standing for the downtrodden or the underdog, for suffering in general. For a long time there was the sign of an identity between the two: the working class as the embodiment of suffering’ (Bauman 1992a: 206). The interest can be traced back to the passion that led Bauman to fall into line with the Communists in their stated desire after the war to rebuild Poland as a nation of human dignity and without social suffering (that is, as a place where moral evil had been overcome). It also points forwards to Bauman’s discussions of such themes as ambivalence, globalisation and community, where there is a realisation that while the working class historically might be the pre-eminent signifier of social suffering, the contemporary human condition is one in which the working class has been replaced by other signifiers of the perpetration of evil great and small; Jews, refugees, the excluded (see also Bauman 1986).