Postmodernism and the Revival of Socialism as Critique

Socialism as a political philosophy confronts many theoretical and empirical challenges in our contemporary world. Some thinkers consider it obsolete and others aspire to reformulate it by couching it in a more pragmatist idiom. My aim here is to show that the salient features of socialism, those that are worth preserving, presuppose the indispensability of critique and reflective subjectivity in a sense that goes beyond pragmatism. To develop my argument for a socialist theory that can benefit from postmodern challenges without surrendering its critical force, I review some recent ideas in the socialist discourse and I contrast them with Cornelius Castoriades's theory of socialism. I conclude by defending the possibility for a new articulation of the socialist project, one that takes into account past failures as well as the shortcomings of current socialist trends.