The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the Cold War but also the rise of a melancholic
vision of history as a series of losses. For the political left the cause lost was communism
and this trauma determined how leftists wrote the next chapter in their political struggle and
how they have thought about their past since. Throughout the twentieth century argues
Left-Wing Melancholia from classical Marxism to psychoanalysis to the advent of critical
theory a culture of defeat and its emotional overlay of melancholy have characterized the
leftist understanding of the political in history and in theoretical critique.
