As we endure the worst world economic crisis since the Great Depression, the need for an alternative to capitalism is increasingly urgent. Capitalism's destructiveness is seen in unemployment, economic uncertainty, the world food crisis, endless wars, ever-growing prison populations and police repression, resurgent racism, anti-immigrant hysteria, homophobia and sexism, and the havoc wrought by global warming. Obama's election cannot solve these problems. People across the world are looking for a far deeper change—for a new human society, a humanist socialism that doesn't settle for state-capitalism.

Can this be achieved by state initiatives without a social—not just political—revolution? Can revolutions of the 21st century avoid transformation into one more form of state-capitalist totalitarianism? Can revolution unite with a philosophy of total human liberation, of Marx's revolution in permanence?