Duan Zhongqiao, the renowned Beijing based philosophy scholar and his colleagues, have analyzed the nine influential trends and movements of the times keenly observing how their prominent representatives have reflected on manifold problems of capitalism .With an original exegesis they have delved into the inner logic of those thoughts and thrown light on the major counterpoints in them. These trends in the spheres of philosophy, economics, politics, sociology and Marxist theory have shaken and challenged academy, parties, governments and peoples' lives, some of them defending the existing capitalist system, others sought how to transform to socialism and some tried to conserve it further by reforms. Current situation in the world especially the great financial crisis, increasing un-employment and growth hitting bottoms in the main centers of capitalism call for new changes and bring forth new questions for all the movements and trend of thoughts. And people all around the world seek alternatives and strive for subsistence, development, peace and more democracy. Marxists value these appeals highly, especially when social ferment for revolution is not full-blown.
The book was written by a group of scholars from Philosophy Department and researchers in the Marxism Institute in Renmin University of China. Duan Zhongqiao has edited and compiled the whole book; chapters on analytical Marxism and market socialism were written by him; futurism by Zhang Yunfei, neo-Liberalism by Zhang Xu, post-modernism by Xu Fei, post-colonialism by Zhang Libo, ecological socialism by Han Haitao, socialist feminism by Liu Jianjun and the Third Way by Qin Xuan.