Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2002
If socialism and liberalism are rivals, one ambition these rivals have shared is that of being a transnational, even universal doctrine. Socialists and liberals have each thought of their own view as being well designed to expand, to reach out and be taken up in an ever-growing number and variety of societies. I do not know whether now is the time to write the final obituary for the socialist version of this dream. But the universalizing dream most vivid before the minds of the inhabitants of the world today clearly is not the socialist one, but the liberal one. “Globalization,” in our day, has come to mean something very close to “liberalization.” For some this is a cause of celebration; for others, it is a cause of protest and despair.