In the spring of 1988, when I formed the intention to write this book, (big-C) Communism reigned over more than a third of the world's population, the Cold War still simmered, and the prospect of nuclear annihilation continued to threaten. Then, in a remarkably short time, Communism was overthrown as an economic system and mode of governance in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the Cold War ended, and the threat of nuclear war receded dramatically. It is not at all clear what impact these events ought to have on philosophical reflections on politics or on social theory. But, by accelerating a process evident for some time and in varying degrees throughout the world, they have had a definite effect on our intellectual culture. By 1992, as I write these words, forms of theorizing linked, however tenuously, with the Bolshevik Revolution and its continuations, with Marxism, and even with socialism have fallen into greater disrepute than at any time in this century.

To set out to defend (small-c) communism at a time when the Gorbachev Revolution was unfolding was already to go against the current. In the present conjuncture, it may seem incomprehensible. I maintain, however, that doing so is reasonable, timely, and even urgent. The discussions of Rousseauean political philosophy and Marxian communism that ensue will, I hope, partly vindicate this contention.