Renewing Socialism

This title offers a vision for the renewal of socialist theory and practice in the 21st century. It examines the failures of socialism in the 20th century, trenchantly explores the nature of global capitalism, and offers a vision of a reinvigorated socialism that ambitiously counters debilitating pessimism. While democracy and equality remain the goals of socialism, new conditions require imaginative strategies. Panitch stresses the need for refounding, reorganizing, and redemocratizing labour movements and calls for a movement away from the focus on the accumulation of capital to an emphasis on the accumulation of capacities: political, economic, social, environmental, and human. As an affirmation of optimism at a time some despair, this book revitalizes socialist thought and rethinks socialist practice towards a realistic utopianism.