You can’t just wish away the current system.

Any criticism presupposes the possibility of a better way of life; to expose something as illusory or contradictory is to imply the possibility and desirability of a life without those illusions and contradictions. This much has been established by critical theorists such as Habermas and Apel. Yet the notion that critique implies a quest for the good is a highly abstract one. Up to a point, particular critiques do imply something a little more specific than the standpoint of a better life. The critique of capitalism's anarchic and uneven development implies a critical standpoint or contrast space of an imagined society with a rationally ordered and even process of development. The critique of class points to the desirability of a classless society. Naturally, society would be better if its illusions, conflicts and contradictions were reduced, but we naturally want to know how this could be achieved. The desirability of a life without contradictions or illusions does not make it feasible.

Critical social science does not merely identify illusions, irrationality or contradictions but attempts to provide explanations of their sources, locating the 'unwanted determinations' of behaviour, as Bhaskar (1989) puts it. It would be strange, to say the least, if an analysis of the causes of problems such as hunger and exploitation were unable to indicate anything about alternatives which would eliminate them. If a critical theory cannot begin to indicate how to eliminate problems we must inevitably be suspicious of its claims to have identified their causes. If the alternative implied by a critical standpoint is not feasible, then any critique made from that standpoint is thereby seriously weakened. Not to put too fine a point on it, the critique of, say, capitalism's anarchic and uneven development would lose much of its force if all [END PAGE 33] advanced economies were necessarily anarchic and uneven in their development, though one could still criticize advanced economies - not just capitalist ones - from the very different standpoint of a 'deep ecology', calling for a return to small-scale, more primitive economies (Dobson, 1990).

We need to know enough about the critical standpoint and the implied alternative to be able to judge first whether it really is feasible and desirable. Since knowledge is 'situated' and bears the mark of its author's social position, this includes assessing whose standpoint it is made from. Does it privilege the position of a particular group (e.g. male workers, advanced countries)? Does it imply a society without difference? If it suggests greater equality on whose terms is equality to be defined?7 We have also to ask whether remedying one set of problems would generate others (it usually does), and whether these would be worse than the original problems. This is rarely considered in radical political economy, the usual implicit assumption being that all bad things go together in capitalism and all good things under socialism/communism. Yet it is possible that some of the 'contradictions' involve dilemmas which can't be eliminated along with capitalism. Evaluations in terms of desirability therefore need to be cross-checked with assessments of feasibility, and optimistic assumptions of inevitable improvement suspended.

There are two kinds of feasibility which might be considered:

1 whether a certain desired end-state or goal can be realized - for example, how people can be politically mobilized to make it happen; and

2 whether, assuming enough people are willing to try to make it happen, the goal or end-state is feasible in itself, e.g. could one have an advanced economy without money?

It is usually only the first of these questions that radicals address, the standard response to utopian discussions being not 'would it work?' but 'yes but how are you going to get from here to there?' But while many might think it idle to ignore (1), it is surprising how little attention is given to (2), as if the journey mattered more than the destination. I fully accept that I am not offering suggestions on (1) in this book, and only ideas pertinent to (2): but then I don't see how large-scale political mobilization can precede a well-worked out conception of a feasible alternative.