A Vision of Socialism

“Socialism,” writes Michael Harrington, “is the hope for human freedom and justice under the unprecedented conditions of life that humanity will face in the twenty-first century. Socialism?” he asks in the same breath: “How can a nostalgic irrelevance be the precondition of anything?” That poignant question, posed on its initial page, is the central focus of Socialism: Past and Future. As the title suggests, the book presents a wide-ranging overview of the evolution of the socialist idea, from its early Utopian yearnings to its present confused condition. The Stalinist nightmare aside, it is a story of gradual deterioration from an activist social movement to a debating society. Harrington tells...