Does my optimism surprise you? I, like any other person, choose to side with the winners. Capitalism has no hope of survival whatsoever. With his plays and poems, Peter Hacks knew how to engage in social life. But the poet and determined optimist also spoke out through pamphlets, letters, and essays: he criticized colleagues, polemicized against political despair, and carried the Enlightenment on his tongue. This book gathers political texts from 40 years that are missing from the collected works, as well as unpublished documents from his estate. It portrays Peter Hacks as a political thinker who wrests the idea of a rationally organized world from decline.