Abstract
This article explores why over the past thirty years political theorists largely failed to address the emergence of neoliberal capitalism and the debilitating effects of growing inequality on the lives of ordinary people and on the nature of democracy. The article argues that the predominant focus of political theory from the 1980s onwards on the role of group identity in political action and on epistemological questions of the nature of the self, while having the positive effect of helping theorists to interrogate forms of domination that cannot be reduced to class, also led many "radical" political theorists to downplay how the macro-structural workings of late capitalism—and the neoliberal erosion of social rights—limit the possibilities for human freedom. The article concludes by arguing that if radical political theory is to inform political practice it must revitalize a theoretical understanding of social solidarity and of democratic equality.
