Instead of a Conclusion

Abstract

Like many other socialists of my generation, my own ideas and political activities have been influenced over the last decade and a half by the ideas and arguments presented in this book, sometimes beneficially, sometimes in ways that I now regret. So much a part of everyday life have they become that, when I was approached with the idea of writing this book it seemed that it would be an easy thing to do. In fact, it has been one of the most difficult things I’ve ever attempted, and has turned into a kind of settling of accounts with my own intellectual and political biography. I have, in the course of the book, argued for views I never knew I held, seen problems in ways that had never occurred to me before (realising, at the same time, that others had always seen them this way!) and engaged in arguments whose implications are still beyond my grasp. This chapter, then, is a kind of provisional staging-post, not a conclusion. I want to indicate in a brief, and not especially rigorous way, how I now see some of the themes and debates I’ve described and engaged with in my earlier chapters.