The book is a critique of the capitalist world, including both the injustices it inflicts and the acts of resistance it provokes, which end up reproducing it. The book is also a critique of the ideas about this world, especially some of the ideas which are considered to be progressive. The book talks about why so-called critical thought as it exists is inadequate; why genuine critique is possible and necessary; what its different forms and attributes are; and who it is aimed toward: the masses or academia? This book presents what it considers to be the most adequate form of critique: the Marxist critique. This is a critique which explains humanity's problems, mainly in terms of the conflict-ridden social relations that determine how society's resources are used, which seeks to democratically transcend the current arrangements to establish popular democracy in all spheres of life; economic, political and cultural. The book then employs the principles of the Marxist critique to shed light on specific issues in the world as they exist or on the so-called progressive ideas about these issues, such as poverty and inequality in India; industrial disasters in the US; labour unfreedom in the capitalist North and South; the relation between economic and political power in modern society; social democracy; development of capitalism in rural areas and imperialism; pharmaceutical fraud and the consequent threat to human health in the US and the Maoist movement and protest politics (of the 'anarchist type' left) against dispossession and other forms of injustice.
