In Chapters 1 and 2, I discussed a range of social and economic alternative societies. Many of these are utopian, and in the last chapter I outlined utopianism and discussed criticisms of it. Many alternatives also have socialist elements, and in this chapter I will focus in more depth on socialism as an alternative society and how it may respond to criticisms. The chapter discusses the extent to which socialism must revise itself to respond to criticisms, or is so inherently vulnerable to their points that it must limit itself to meet their objections. I will be looking at green, feminist, liberal, and neoliberal criticisms. I have chosen these perspectives because I believe they address the core components of socialism and represent very important points of view in themselves.

I think that while socialism is vulnerable to green and feminist criticisms, it is not inherently contrary to green and feminist aims so can adapt its framework to meet them. In relation to liberal criticisms, while socialism has distinctive things to contribute to achieving liberal aims and so should be expanded to do so, I argue it is also structurally vulnerable to liberal criticisms and so adaptation to tackle their points is not enough and socialism must also be self-limiting to meet liberal concerns. The possibilities for responding to criticisms are expansion, adaptation, or self-limitation. Socialism needs to adapt and expand to meet green and feminist criticism, but must both expand and limit itself to meet liberal concerns.

Socialism is a much-criticized ideology, and its advocates have had to work hard to defend it. Attempts at socialism in practice have gone badly wrong (of course, capitalism has too), and capitalism has spread while socialism has not developed in recent decades in an ongoing way (though there has been a revival of support for socialism in recent years). Criticisms have been fierce, and responses from socialists are often very defensive. However, socialists need to be open to criticism, to see if it does expose problems and, if so, whether these are inherent and so require revisions to the ideology or more nonessential and require adjustment rather than more structural change.