Politics & Power Quote by Herbert Read

Despair is a political posture now, not just a private mood. Herbert Read, writing out of the wreckage and aftershocks of the early 20th century, names something many systems quietly depend on: the replacement of conviction with exhaustion. “Not one of positive belief” is the key phrase. He’s not lamenting ideological disagreement; he’s diagnosing a vacuum where belief used to be, a public sphere in which people participate less because they’re persuaded than because they feel cornered.

Read’s background matters. As a poet shaped by modernism, war, and a century that made grand narratives look naïve at best and murderous at worst, he’s suspicious of triumphant slogans. The line lands with poetic economy: “characteristic” implies a defining trait, almost a pathology; “today” signals a recurring present-tense emergency. He’s not predicting collapse, he’s pointing at the emotional climate that precedes it.

The subtext is sharper than a simple complaint about cynicism. Despair isn’t neutrality; it’s an attitude with political consequences. It lowers expectations until power looks like weather. It makes the managerial, the incremental, the authoritarian all easier to sell, because hope starts to resemble gullibility. Read suggests that when belief is discredited, the strongest remaining force is resignation - and resignation is governable.

The quote works because it’s both diagnosis and warning. If politics is driven by despair, then the fight isn’t only over policies or parties; it’s over whether collective agency still feels plausible.