So, why Socialist?

Living, as we are alleged to be, in the post-ideological, post-political era, why should we continue, as a movement, to fight for socialism? Given the abject and apparent failures of supposed "socialist" regimes, given their appalling human rights abuses and their obvious inability to provide a comparable standard of living to that enjoyed in the capitalist bloc, why would one persist in the belief that a socialist society is not only possible but is necessary?

1. Introduction

Karl Marx once remarked that the generations of the dead weigh like a nightmare upon the brains of the living.

Never has this been truer than in the history of the Socialist Left. Our decades of grasping failure from the jaws of victory have left us, as a movement, in a weaker position than ever, despite the reality that at the dawn of the last century, and with the coming of the economic crisis in this one, many felt that the future was and is ours to inherit.

It has also exposed the fallacy that the election of people from nominally Socialist parties, firmly ensconced as they are within an ideological idea that would have been anathema even a couple of decades ago, signifies anything at all.