“Democracy is no longer an unequivocal ideal, it is also a historical fact, not just the prize but the battleground on which social struggles take place […] Both Left and Right work the terrain of democracy, and though the ground ought to favour the former, it is from the latter that some of the most successful and inventive thrusts have come.”

Ken Hirschkop, 1999, Mikhail Bakhtin: An Aesthetic for Democracy, Oxford University Press.