This volume, dealing with the situation in the world (particularly in the third and first world parts of it) following the collapse and disappearance of the Soviet Union, is essentially a theoretical exercise focused on the question of socialism in our times. The issues dealt with include socialism in one country, the world-system theory, post-colonial national projects, the current long-term crisis of capitalism (a depressed continuum Meszaros has called it), globalisation, welfare capitalism, the role of the state, the necessity and possibility of a socialist transcendence of capitalism, etc. There is a detailed discussion of globalisation, both as a response to the current crisis of capitalism and as a concept that has come up to present the international expansion and domination of capitalism in a favourable light, an alternative to Marxist vocabulary with its concepts of capitalism, imperialism, etc. It specificities (including the information revolution) as also the opposition to it, are noted and analysed.
Of the former second world, the chapter on Russia is focused on the beginnings of capitalist restoration in the country and that on China on the country’s road to capitalism. The author sees Cuba as a hopeful legacy: in the midst of the worldwide crisis of socialism, with the former communist regimes and parties succumbing one after another to the lure or power of the market, Cuba has stood almost alone and defiant, so far, against the global offensive of capitalism. Cuba remains the one society which has retained a revolutionary commitment although having to make concessions to global capitalism. Even as it retreats in some spheres of life, it has come to lead the world in others for example, in the vision of an ecological society and development of socialist democracy.
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