ABSTRACT
The watershed events of the last century-from the Bolshevik revolution through the turmoil of the 1960s to the fall of the Berlin Wall-all reflect the rise and fall of Karl Marx, and his most potent legacy, i.e., that there can be a viable economic and social alternative to capitalism. By now this legacy has been so discredited that any attempts to reassess its value are automatically prejudiced by negative, or at least highly romantic, associations. The whole set of iconic imagery-Politburo apparatchiks reviewing the tanks, Che Guevara in beret and combat fatigues, striking workers in a sea of placards and banners, Left Bank intellectuals in a cloud of cigarette smoke, or the carnage of a terrorist attack-have colonized the modern consciousness to such a degree that any retelling of the story seems well nigh impossible. Even after more than a decade since the fall of the Wall, as unfettered capitalism has left its troubling legacy in the former communist states, and as a vibrant coalition of protest groups has risen to challenge the human and environmental costs of globalization, Marx rarely makes an appearance in the rhetoric. Instead, such groups rally under generic rubrics such as anticapitalism, progressivism, or grassroots activism, sensing, perhaps rightly, that the historical drama of Marxism has run its course.
