Examines how events in the Cold War and post-Cold War periods shaped the intellectual projects of Perry Anderson and Immanuel Wallerstein. Contesting the Global Order explores what it means to be a radical intellectual as political hopes fade. Gregory P. Williams chronicles the evolution of intellectual visionaries Perry Anderson and Immanuel Wallerstein, who despite altered circumstances for radical change, continued to advance creative interpretations of the social world. Wallerstein and Anderson, whose hopes were invested in a more egalitarian future, believed their writings would contribute to socialism, which they anticipated would be a postcapitalist future of relative social, economic, and political equality. However, by the 1980s dreams of socialism had faded and they had to face the reality that socialism was neither close nor inevitable. Their sensitivity to current events, Williams argues, takes on new significance in this century, when many scholars are grappling with the issue of change in a world of declining state power.Gregory P. Williams is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the University of Northern Colorado.

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Radical Political Economy for an Age of Uncertainty
• Chapter 1 Cosmopolitan Beginnings
  • The Capital of the World-Economy
  • British Marxism, Not Nationalism
  • Conclusion
• Chapter 2 Ideational Lineages
  • A Reading List for the World (-System)
  • A Reading List for Olympian History
  • Conclusion
• Chapter 3 The Year that Changed Everything
  • The Year in New York
  • The Year in London
  • Conclusion
• Chapter 4 Ideas Need Institutions
  • The Study of Everything at Once
  • Totalities at the Braudel Center
  • Totalization at the New Left Review
  • Assessing Totalities
• Intermission I: Immanuel Wallerstein’s New Pair of Glasses
• Chapter 5 There Is No Alternative
  • Capitalism Does Not Care About Your Passion
  • Our Dream Is Slipping Away
  • Conclusion
• Chapter 6 Shed a Tear for East European Communism?
  • Beware of the Liberal Chameleon
  • We Must Change Our Expectations, Not Give In
  • Capitalism = Utopia
  • Conclusion
• Intermission II: Perry Anderson’s Clear-Headed Radicalism
• Chapter 7 Do Not Believe What Great Powers Say
  • All this Moralizing and the Bombs Keep Falling
  • When It’s Convenient, We Always Stand for Human Advancement
  • Conclusion
• Conclusion: The Point Is to Interpret, and Then Change, the World
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index