Description

The Search for Alternatives to Neoliberalism in Latin America: Debates Among Left Liberals, Orthodox Socialists, and Renovative Socialists

In the midst of claims that history is over, capitalism is triumphant, socialism is dead, and the market is a magic bullet, Ed McCaughan has written a stimulating and enlightening book on debates among left intellectuals in two important Latin American countries, Cuba and Mexico. Left movements in both countries have “compositional integrity over time,” are influenced by revolutionary and nationalist traditions, and, like left movements elsewhere, face serious conjunctural crises and readjustments as a result of globalization and the rapid decline of Soviet socialism. McCaughan believes that a better understanding of left liberal, orthodox socialist, and renovative socialist ideas about the state, national sovereignty, socialism, democracy, market economies, and alternative economic models in Cuba and Mexico can contribute important elements to the construction of a new paradigm, with new strategies for change in the face of the serious crises faced by the previous dominant contenders, reform liberalism and orthodox (Soviet-influenced) socialism.

Cuba, Mexico, Left [the], social movements

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 26, No. 1 (1999): 242-245