IF ONE OF THE GREAT SOCIALIST LEADERS of a century ago could see us now — Debs, say, or Luxemburg — he or she would certainly be puzzled by the state of the world. In every direction they would be able to see struggles for liberation or the fruits of such struggles: of those with whom they would immediately be in solidarity, such as women, former slaves, indigenous people, former colonial people, and racial, religious, and ethnic minorities. Their hearts would be gladdened by the ways in which our world has been changed by such movements, but they would be shocked by the fate of socialism. By the end of the 20th century, the bureaucratic socialism erected by Communist revolutions in underdeveloped countries such as Russia and China, carried elsewhere on bayonets, and emulated by the least developed countries, had largely given up the ghost. And the welfare-state socialism of the advanced societies, having long since laid claim to being no more than an efficient and humane way of managing capitalism, was giving in to its harsher neoliberal cousin, or being pushed aside. Socialism? A world dominated by globalization and obsessed by terrorism and the "war" against it seems to have moved on to other concerns, other struggles. Rather than participants in a vast movement proclaiming history's next stage, socialists seem fated to be lone individuals making our loudest noises in universities, journals, bookstores, and conferences.
(via PTDR)