ABSTRACT
As several authors in this collection observe, global conditions of the present have moved back into alignment with those of 1864, as a result of two quite recent historical developments. First came the collapse of first-epoch socialism, which brought the world back to its pre-1917 setting of unfettered capitalism. Second was the worldwide financial meltdown of 2008, which, along with continuing unconstrained social polarization (squeezing the poor to bloat the rich), subjected the working class to an immediate level of stress comparable to that described by Marx in his Inaugural Address to the First International.
