The world today, however, presents a totally changed scenario. Not only has the Soviet Union collapsed and the socialist project regressed, but the hope of freedom that underlay the loss of support for extant socialism has been completely belied. On the other side, the ‘golden age’ of capitalism has become a faded and distant memory, with pervasive unemployment. Above all, there has been a veritable rolling back of ‘decolonization, with the third world once again being pushed back under metropolitan hegemony. Poverty has increased over much of the third world. And, almost everywhere, there is a growth of fascism of different hues.

An important factor underlying this substantial change is the emergence of a new form of international finance capital. This has undermined the capacity of the nation-state the only agency hitherto available that could, in principle, intervene to improve the human condition. If progress along the road to freedom has come to a halt and has in fact been reversed, if there is a retreat to unfreedom, as the title of this book suggests, then, the analysis of the this book suggests, then, the analysis of the causes of this retreat requires an exploration of the immanent logic of this new form of international finance capital. The essays in this book constitute a preliminary attempt at such an exploration.

About Author
Prabhat Patnaik is professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is the author Of Time, Inflation and Growth (1998), Economics and Egalitarianism (1991), Whatever Happened to Imperialism and other essays (1995), Accumulation and Stability under Capitalism (1997), and has edited Lenin and Imperialism: An Appraisal of Theories and Contemporary Reality (1986) and Macroeconomics (1995).