›he mobilization in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001, underlined not only the movement's growth but also the challenges it faces. In this issue, we offer a range of analysis and opinions on the questions raised by neoliberalism and capitalism, on the movement for global justice, and on possible alternatives to corporate globalization.

The contributors to this issue are from many parts of the globe and write from various political perspectives. They are united, however, in their opposition to neoliberalism and by their efforts to speak out and to help to organize this new international movement.

The phenomenon that has come to be called "globalization," as well as the movement against corporate dominance of the global system, has generated a number of debates, many of them reflected in these pages. The Genoa protests, for example, have brought to a head the discussion within our movement about the questions of strategy and tactics.

In Genoa, the Italian state overstepped itself when it attempted to repress the movement. The July 20 police murder of 23-year-old protester Carlo Giuliani and the massive police attack on the protesters in Genoa produced a flurry of demonstrations by tens of thousands of people who are outraged by the attempts to criminalize our movement. Rather than intimidating the movement, the repression gave it a renewed vigor and public sympathy.

As many of the authors here show, there is also a growing debate about how to link the proliferating demonstrations against the institutions of global capitalism with the local struggles of workers, students, and the oppressed over privatization, cuts in social services, wages, police brutality, racism, immigrant rights, and so on.

The movement has reached a stage where debates move inevitably from the realm of tactics to the realm of social forces (who has the power to challenge the system?), and from the realm of social forces to the question of what kind of alternative world we are seeking. In short, the movement has progressed from a discussion of what we are fighting against to encompass a discussion of what we are fighting for.

«or us, the most striking feature of the contributions compiled here is the sense throughout that the days are over when politicians can declare, as former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher famously did, that "there is no alternative" to free-market capitalism. This movement has given expression to a renewed sense of optimism in fighting for a different kind of world. It has given birth to a new left. The olitics of revolutionary socialism are once more immediately relevant to a new generation.

The editors of the ISR would like to thank all of those who contributed to this issue. We hope that it will promote discussion and help to inform activists in their organizing for the upcoming protests against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C., in September. But this issue of the ISR is also intended as a contribution to the ongoing debates that will continue to be vital for the movement well beyond this fall's mobilization.

Anthony Arnove

Paul D'Amato

Tom Lewis