ABSTRACT
The intellectual impetus for this volume has been the longstanding interest of the editors in grappling in new and creative ways with what has certainly been one of the most influential, controversial, and maligned ideas in the modern world – the idea of socialism. Inspired by “freedom, equality and fraternity,” the modern socialist tradition has been the main source of theories and practices that have spurred workers of all stripes to fight for a more just world. Yet, today, faced with the “fall of the Wall” and the unceremonious collapse of the Soviet Union, it is more commonplace to hear workers and progressive-minded people speak in terms of the “TINA factor,” that there is no alternative to current neo-liberalism and corporate globalization, with the version of social justice these offer; and that all future-directed thinking about human society and social change must necessarily unfold within the narrow bounds of what “the market” purportedly renders possible or “rational.”
