ABSTRACT
If socialism is to come, who is to bring it about? Who are its actors and agents? In terms of the general line of argument being pursued here, such familiar questions require a further refinement: what kinds of actors are envisaged and embraced by what kinds of socialism? For a long time it seemed that socialists had a secure, unproblematical answer to this central question of agency, with any difficulties confined to the margin. At the end of the twentieth century this is manifestly no longer the case. If it has become possible for a socialist like André Gorz to wave a convincing Farewell to the Working Class, it is much less clear to whom socialists are now waving a convincing greeting.
