ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book explores the debate that will ultimately contribute to an ability to take big bites rather than small nibbles out of capitalism, for it is a very powerful but declining capitalism that is the primary cause that sends us deeper into a future of global crises. The book argues that stronger forms of social democracy already offer alternative institutional arrangements that can move beyond capitalism. The perceived failures of both socialist experiments that commenced with the Soviet Union – and of even strong social democracy moving that step further toward socialism, as its early radical proponents had hoped – has, at this point in history, made the task of designing practical utopias ever more urgent. Modern dialogues about socialism go back as far as the 16th century, and ancient dialogues go back as far as Greece and Rome.
