If the author isn't a genius, and I'll say he is, he at least has the elements of genius at his disposal. He has read, of both the good and the bad, and this book is an expression of his bioligical and spiritual drive to let us know about the variables we are dealing with in our project to kill pain and feel pleasure, enhance cognition and engage sensuality. Everyone who's brain's structure is remotely similar to mine might want to read this book. Unless you've been lucky enough to be immersed in the depths of the realest and most dream-logical philosophy for your whole life, in which case you could conceivably know the material in Beyond Capital. Even so, reading the book would be a reminder, as if you need reminders.

Istvan Meszaros is one of the foremost Marxist intellectuals writing and working today. Professor emeritus at the University of Sussex (where he held the chair of Philosophy for fifteen years) his has created an impressive body of erudite scholarship ranging from Marx's Theory Of Alienation and The Work Of Sartre: Search For Freedom to The Power Of Ideology and Beyond Capital. In Socialism Or Barbarism Meszaros analyses the historical choices facing us at the outset of the new millennium. Drawing on the theoretical arguments of his early work, Beyond Capital, Meszaros gives new meaning and urgency to the alternatives posed by Rosa Luxemburg at the beginning of the century. Meszaros also provides a detailed analysis of the roots and development of American global power -- a supremacy that came at the cost of exhausting the universalizing pretensions of capitalism. Meszaros argues persuasively that Capitalism today is potentially more destructive of humankind and the environment than ever before. Socialism Or Barbarism is highly recommended reading for students of philosophy and political science.