When Victor Serge died of a heart attack in a Mexico City cab in 1947, there were said to be holes in the soles of his shoes. They spoke of the poverty of his last six years in Mexico, but they also symbolized the peripatetic life of this perpetual exile. But it is a life with lessons, for Serge and his rethinking of socialism and the left have a particularly resonance today. The rise of right-wing populism, which has taken over the left’s former base, the emergence of the mixed left- and right-populism of the yellow vests in France that rejects political parties, as well as the emergence of a firmly democratic socialism in the US, all point to the need for a re-examination of leftist verities in which Serge engaged, particularly toward the end of his life.
Source : Victor Serge: Indispensable Critic of Leftist Illusion
