Socialism.

socialism is perhaps the single most important ideology of our time. A major influence on modern political consciousness, it has deeply canetrated other creeds throughout the world. There are scores of books devoted to the subject, and any number of slogans and emotive, partisan definitions that spring to mind at its mention. But what does socialism' really stand for?

R.N. Berki here discusses the doctrinal positions of major socialist thinkers, such as Saint Simon, Marx, Lenin and Mao Tse-tung, and argues that socialism can be better understood by reference to its lour basic tendencies-moralism, rationalism, egalitarianism and libertarianism-than by attempts to reduce it to any one central idea These tendencies, though cutting across conventional divisions, illuminate the leading ideas of western social democracy, the European Marxist establishment, socialism in the Third World, and the New Left

With his vivid and concise analysis of the development and interaction of these tendencies, and his exposition of the growth of the major socialist movements, from their emergence in the nineteenth century through to the present day, R. N. Berki offers a fresh and persuasive interpretation of this controversial subject.