Socialist Register 1997 Preface

Abstract

Last year's volume posed the sober question of 'Are There Alternatives?', rather than blithely asserting that there are alternatives, precisely because we are aware that genuine alternatives cannot be constructed out of thin air. A large part of our purpose in that volume was to show that what is presented by way of alternatives to neoliberalism in the present conjuncture are nothing of the sort precisely because they are captured within the very contradictions and dynamics that gave rise to neoliberalism. We extend that orientation in this volume. The essays in this volume undertake sober analysis and ruthless criticism of the dynamics, depredations and contradictions of today's global capitalism; of the abject accommodation to it by erstwhile Communists, Social Democrats and Liberals; of the failed socialist and 'new left' movements over the past century; and, not least, of the defeatist and confused 'post-' intellectuals of our time, who would leave us with no analytic capacity, let alone with no commitment, with which to contribute today to the eventual relaunching of socialist politics.