Since Marx's dismissal of tinkering with the "cook-shops of the future," socialists have largely set aside what socialism might actually look like. But with the defeats and integration of the working class into capitalism, the parallel defeats of the left and the failed attempts at alternatives to capitalism through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, a powerful sentiment to 'naturalize' capitalism has taken hold—there is, even critics assume, no other way to organize a complex, developed society. In this context, convincing others that capitalism is not the end of history demands a return to defending the plausibility of a socialist society. David Mandel's rediscovery and presentation of the work of the iconoclastic Soviet political economist Yakov Kronrod—whose grounded lessons from the failure of the Soviet experience are systematically rooted in the absence of the deepest democracy—soberly and creatively reopens this crucial question of socialism's viability. For those hoping to rejuvenate the socialist idea, Mandel's book is a timely, absolutely-must-read.

David Mandel teaches political science at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada. He has written extensively on workers and their movements in the Russian Revolution, the Soviet period, and after the collapse of the Soviet system. He has been actively involved in labor education in Russia for the past 25 years.