Abstract

It hardly needs saying that the Left in the advanced capitalist economies is in a state of severe disarray. Inspired, or perhaps more accurately, dis-inspired, by the dull conflation of globalisation and welfare retrenchment that marks the neoliberal orthodoxy of the times, the former social-democratic Left has abandoned all socialist advocacy. It marches instead towards a ‘Centre’ that itself continues to drift rightwards. Meanwhile, at least in the industrially developed world, serious movements and parties to the left of social democracy have become harder and harder to find.