The World After Communism: An Exchange

Dear X

This is a letter to help clear my head with respect to the ideas we chatted about last night. I am eager to pursue them as far as they lead, although I am not at all easy about their implications.

I start with the premises you are familiar with. There has been a massive collapse of the framework of centrally planned socialism and an equally unmistakable, although not so dramatic, falling away of the magnetic appeal of “socialism” in the capitalist world. Socia...