ABSTRACT
˜One of the major implications of the dissolution of the radical left has been the disappearance of systemic alternatives, both at the level of ideology and at the level of practical structural reforms. Whereas the generation of 1968 could credibly pose the slogan, “Be practical, demand the impossible,” latter-day political thought asks in Michael Harrington's felicitous phrase, “What is the left wing of the possible?” To the discourse of utopian possibility, the retort is, “What do we do on Monday morning?” Some erstwhile radical intellectuals have rediscovered republicanism, with its focus on human rights, corruption-free, and transparent representative democracy; some have rediscovered the eighteenth-century idea of civil society and the democratic potential of market economies; and some have invented a “left” communitarianism which roughly corresponds to the nationalist program: redistributive economics and conservatism on the “social issues.”
