Whose Millennium?: Theirs or Ours

New York: Monthly Review Press, 1999. Near Fine. To many people, the end of the Soviet Union marked the death of socialism a nd the victory of capitalism. Not to Singer, European correspondent for the Nation. Instead, he presents a revised version of socialism as an alternat ive to present conditions. Part 1 recounts the disasters of communism in th e Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, along with the problems these areas enco untered on the road to liberal capitalism. Next, Singer uses the 1996 Russi an presidential elections and the sad shift of Poland's Solidarity movement from liberation to reaction as examples of corrupt idealism. However, Sing er sees light in the darkness. The 1995 worker strikes in France stand as a spark of resistance to unchecked capitalism. This leads to Part 3, which p resents an embryonic vision of a worldwide Socialist and democratic society as a "realistic utopia." Eduardo Galeano "Are we doomed to accept history, instead of creating it? Clone days, routines of pain, injustice as Destiny? This book helps us to believe that tomorrow is not another name for today.