There are no irreversible situations or ‘laws’ of history of the kind popularised as mistaken and dangerous old Marxist recipes. The outcomes in human affairs will always depend on what we are capable of doing every day. Paradoxically, communists and socialists who beat the drum of ‘historical determinism’ never thought they could leave history to roll in on the wheels of inevitability. Socialists in general work more diligently at influencing history than the supposed defenders of freedom.

Leon Louw, ‘The War of Ideas: Lessons from South Africa’, in Colleen Dyble & Bridgett Wagner (eds.), Taming Leviathan: Waging the War of Ideas Around the World, London, 2008, p. 159