After Socialism: Reconstructing Critical Social Thought

by KOLKO; GABRIEL

• ISBN13: 9780415395908
• ISBN10: 0415395909
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-09-06
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Does socialism have a future in the 21st Century society? If not, what is the future for progressive politics? "After Socialism" deals with the collapse of socialism both as an idea and movement. This book scrutinizes the economic and social realities that require a critical but much more intelligent alternative of coping with the enormous, mounting challenges that the world confronts. This is a major contribution to contemporary social and political thought written by one of the world's leading critical historians. Gabriel Kolko asks difficult questions about where the left can go in a post-Cold War world where neoliberal policies appear to have triumphed in both the West and the former Soviet bloc. In trying to answer this, he discusses: - the origins and development of socialist ideas - the contemporary dynamics of the globalize economy dominated by American military, cultural and political might - the failures of contemporary capitalism - the poverty and economic and financial instability-- in the United States and industrial nations as well as the Third World-- that make our contemporary world so precarious. "After Socialism" is a synthesis of Kolko's past work and a critical assessment of why and how critical social thought can be reconstructed. While avoiding the temptations of either pessimism or utopianism, Kolko manages to offer an original and practical solution about the way forward for liberal politics.

Author Biography

Gabriel Kolko is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at York University in Toronto

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	1	(6)
1 The power of reason: a world without limits	7	(13)
2 The legacies of socialism: theory	20	(16)
3 The legacies of socialism: organizational successes, and failures	36	(37)
4 The role and limits of social theories	73	(18)
5 Capitalist realities: economic development, the state, and the myths of the market	91	(31)
6 Capitalist realities: the way the world lives	122	(26)
7 The future: where and how	148	(28)
Notes	176	(5)
References	181	(8)
Index	189