This book was born out of a desire to create an alternative with mobilization potential. My attempt has been to show that socialist principles and individual rights and freedoms are not mutually exclusive. If socialist utopias dismiss the individual for the sake of the collective, they will fall short of depicting a society in which human rights can fit and fail in mobilizing contemporary citizens for whom individual rights and freedoms have become inalienable. Thus, for socialism to climb out of the heavy shadow of the socialist experiments of the 20th century and the horrendous human rights record of communist countries that turned people against socialist ideals, it is necessary to address the concern about the suppression of individuality in socialism and reconcile the socialist utopia with human rights values.
In a radical approach, I also argue that only reconciliation with socialism can guarantee the complete and comprehensive protection of human rights, because liberalism alone fails in fully protecting and fulfilling all of the human rights that arise from its basic principles of freedom and equality. Here, political liberalism must be distinguished from economic liberalism, because although human rights essentially belong to the tradition of political liberalism, the application of liberalism to the economic sphere (i.e., neoliberalism) prevents the fulfillment of many human rights standards.
Thus, this book argues that socialism and the human rights discourse are mutually reinforcing and that each is dependent on the other for full success. Ending the left-wing melancholia and creating a mobilizing and progressive alternative depends on reconciliation of socialism and political liberalism.
