The Fetish of the Working Class

From Žižek and Daly, Conversations with Žižek (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2004), pp. 145-146:

[...] "we also, of course, have a classical Trotskyism which I think represents something of a tragic position because it is always addressed to the fetish of the working class as a revolutionary party. When I speak to some of my orthodox Marxist friends, it is typical how, with their vision of all of the upheavals from Solidarity in Poland to the disintegration of communism and, more recently, the fall of Milosevic, they are always telling the same story: that those who truly brought down these corrupt degenerate communist regimes were workers--workers' strikes, workers' movements and so on. So the story goes that there was always a chance of an authentic workers' revolution, but since there wasn't a proper political party there, the workers' movement was co-opted either by nationalists, neo-capitalists, CIA agents or whatever. Sometimes there is an element of truth in this. With the early mobilizations of Solidarity, for example, the original demands were for greater socialism and not private property. But nonetheless, I think that the standard idea that in all these cases we had a missed opportunity for socialist revolution is a deep delusion. It doesn't function in this way."