Socialist Register 1990 Preface

Abstract

This twenty-sixth volume of the Socialist Register is devoted to the move away, as we see it, from earlier socialist positions on the part of Left intellectuals in the last decade. This trend has been particularly pronounced in regard to Marxism; but it has also involved a more general retreat from socialism conceived as a radical alternative to capitalism. The very notion of capitalism has come to be exceedingly blurred in much Left discourse; and the notion of a radical alternative to capitalism has been correspondingly devalued in the eyes of many intellectuals who had previously been committed to it. There are of course many Left intellectuals who would say that there has been no move away at all, but an essential reappraisal of socialist positions in the light of the extraordinary transformations which have occurred in recent times, and which have created an entirely new context, so it is claimed, in which to conceive socialist change. We too believe that constant reappraisal is essential for socialism to advance. But we also believe that much of the reappraisal undertaken by Left intellectuals in recent years has marked a retreat from socialist perspectives; and that such a retreat is unwarranted. The essays in this volume provide an analysis and a critique of many of the forms which the retreat has assumed; and we hope that the volume as a whole may play a modest part in halting the trend, and in creating an intellectual and ideological climate in the nineties very different from the climate which has prevailed on the Left in the past decade.