Today, radical thinking about social alternatives stands under prohibition. According to defenders of the neoliberal transformation of every facet of human existence into a market, Marxism has failed. The catastrophe of historical Communism – the human rights abuses and totalitarian repression characteristic of the so-called “socialist states” of the former Soviet Union and contemporary China – is adduced as the proof. Anything that goes beyond the advocacy of human rights, it is claimed, necessarily ends in disaster. Parliamentary democracy is the final horizon of good government; capitalism is the ultimate form of the just society; Marx is supposed to be directly responsible for the atrocities of Stalin and Mao; and Marxism, benevolent as it might seem, is said to result in totalitarian dictatorship. Anybody who dares to question this is promptly arraigned on charges of moral and political irresponsibility.

Not so long ago, a philosopher in the pay of a multinational think tank linked to the US State Department triumphantly announced that radical free-market capitalism was the “end of history”. Such voices have muted somewhat of late, in light of unprecedented financial crises and continuing foreign wars. They have had little to say in the face of the persistence of untold millions in the slums of this planet, whose quiet misery silently refutes the great lie of our time, that the market is the best and fairest way to deliver prosperity and justice to all.