With the historic parties of the left and center-left largely discredited amidst neoliberalisms multiple economic, ecological, and migration crises, political space has opened up for the far right and its ultra-nationalist, racist, sexist and homophobic agendas. Yet it has also restored some credibility to the socialist case for transcending capitalism altogether. Amidst a significant shift from protest to politics on the contemporary left, Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin, and Stephen Maher provide an essential historical, theoretical, and critical perspective for understanding the potential as well as the limits of three important recent phenomena: the ongoing Sanders electoral insurgency in the USA; the Syriza experience in Greece; and Corbyns leadership of the Labour Party in the UK. Presenting a powerful argument for transcending earlier social democratic and communist practices, the authors stress the need for renewing working-class politics through new kinds of socialist parties. Most important, they insist, will be to foster the development of strategic and practical capacities to democratically transform state structures so as to render them fit for realizing collective democracy, social equality, sustainable ecology and human solidarity. This is the central challenge for democratic socialists today.This first US edition of The Socialist Challenge Today includes a new preface as well as additional chapters, bringing it up-to-the-present and making this slim volume 2020s must read introduction to democratic socialist politics.
