Tom Nairn writes:

Unger defines his overall project as a philosophy for escaping from ‘the dictatorship of no alternatives’ that globalisation has imposed. When it comes down to imagining where the escape might take shape, however, he falls back on big places: ‘The societies with the greatest potential to be seats of resistance may be the continental developing countries – China, India, Russia and Brazil,’ nations with ‘the practical and spiritual resources to imagine themselves as different worlds’. Yet even there, he suspects that Ungerite institutions and policies may need help from Europe and ‘internationally minded Americans’. Slovenia, Ireland, East Timor, Finland and other tiddlers don’t count. The scale has to be big, and tending to get bigger.

(LRB 18 October 2007)

Verso | hardback 179 pp. |ISBN: 9781844670482