Postmodern Socialism: Romanticism, City and State

Author(s): Peter Beilharz

Year: 1995

Have our lives changed as dramatically in these postmodern times as we are led to believe? One of the ironies is that we still face many of the same problems as earlier generations. Socialist arguments, now widely viewed as discredited, addressed questions still very much with us. These 'social' questions - injustice, poverty, living and work conditions - arose from a nineteenth-century recognition of complex problems created mainly in cities. At the same time socialism emerged from a romantic stream of Enlightenment concerned with nature and simplicity. Paradoxically, postmodernism has its roots in the same tensions. Questions of scale, of simplicity and complexity, of city and country, remain with us. the juxtaposition of postmodernity and socialism generates illuminating perspectives on the way we live now. Postmodern Socialism traces and criticises these perspectives.