The anti-Beck reading list

Michael Lebowitz writes about the past, present and future of socialism in The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development. He concentrates on explaining the “socialist triangle” (made up of the people’s wealth, production and “the solidarian society”) and then discusses the means to rebuild the socialist triangle. Lebowitz follows Marx in arguing that developing human capacities to their fullest rises and falls in socialist practice and theory. Accordingly, he critiques the strengths and weaknesses of the socialist models in China, the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia. In the first two chapters of the book’s final section, he fleshes out the interdependence of the socialist triangle’s three sides. The final two chapters suggest answers to concrete questions about what a shift to socialism would require. Yes, there is an alternative to current practice; it is the anti-capitalist struggle.