Conclusion

Abstract

In this concluding chapter Cowling starts by emphasizing that he finds every reason to deeply admire Geras’s work. Cowling then raises three questions. First, Geras seems to implicitly move away from his youthful Trotskyism, but never really gets to grips with the extent to which he has departed. Second, Geras says remarkably little about concrete means for achieving socialism, other than by spreading socialist ideas via the Internet. In Britain the possibility of socialist change is bound up in one way or another with the Labour Party: either it is hopeless and needs in some way to be replaced, or it offers real possibilities of change. Geras did not appear to be tremendously interested in this issue, nor in social democratic parties elsewhere in Europe, nor in the possible merits of Chinese Communism as an engine of poverty reduction. Finally, in the light of Geras’s critique of Marx’s economics, there is the issue of to what extent Geras remained a Marxist as opposed to a liberal influenced by some Marxist ideas.