Up until the 1960s and the 1970s, before the West became fully aware of the human and environmental damages caused by the Soviet Union and China, we had a readymade alternative to the terrible effects of unbridled capitalism and currency. It was called Socialism. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent conversion of the former Socialist countries, or at least of most of them, to capitalism (often a particularly radical capitalism) eliminated the utopian alternative. But, in the process, they did not eliminate the very real negative effects of an increasingly globalised society, where the concentration of capital and an unchecked scientific and technological development make the rich increasingly richer and the poor increasingly useless; where 20% of the world's population consume more than 80% of the world's natural resources; and where, despite the very weak development of a significant part of the planet, we consume yearly more than one and a half of what the same planet is able to reproduce.

So, the collapse of Communism has left the West facing all of its responsibilities: it now has to invent, on the basis of its own foundations, a radical alternative that will allow the world's soonto- be eight billion human beings to live in harmony and dignity and at the same time to make sure that the main balances of the biosphere are not completely destroyed, with all that this implies for the future of our human adventure. Searching for such an alternative and stating that another world is possible are therefore not simply matters for philanthropists: elementary lucidity tells us that this is the very condition for the long-term survival of humankind.