For two such different books, one by a single author concentrating on the future, the other a collection of many voices assessing and reminiscing about the past, there are unexpected points of contact and mutual illuminations. With contrasting degrees of scepticism and self-assurance, A Future for Socialism and Out of Apathy reflect a sustained argument about the meaning of ‘socialism’ – it almost seems to have shrunk to a struggle over semantics. In the end what remains is an unsavoury choice between the premature triumphalism of a Labour MP with the scent of a parliamentary majority in his nostrils, and the introspective and ritual self-criticism of the New Left’s leading lights who, in Lindsay Anderson’s words, ‘can envisage nothing more clearly than Maggie’s Fourth Term’.

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