Publisher's Synopsis
Hal Draper (1914-1990), widely regarded for several decades, both in the United States and abroad, as the most prolific and articulate advocate of a revolutionary, democratic alternative to capitalism and the new social system of bureaucratic collectivism, was a scholar, political journalist, and polemicist. This collection of essays concentrates on what was most unique about Draper's writing - his understanding of the meaning of socialism.;The collection opens with Draper's pamphlet, "The Two Souls of Socialism" which has been for over 20 years the most widely read and succinct statement of his radically different view of contemporary politics. The important distinction, for Draper, was between those socialists who looked for some outside authority that would hand down salvation to the masses from above and those who saw the key to the reform of existing society in the struggle for self-emancipation from below.;The first part of the collection also contains several historical studies showing how Marx was the only major 19th-century thinker to defend unequivocally the democratic movement from below. The second section, entitled "In Defense of Radicalism", contains Draper's main articles on the New Left of the 1960s, when Draper was one of the few leftists of his generation to support unreservedly the student radicalism of the Berkeley generation. The concluding section contains several polemical articles in defence of the Marxist approach.
