92 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Thus the praxis that was evolved within both streams constructively engaged with each other in the context of and on the plane of social reality even as the theoretical outbursts continued. It is this richness of questions thrown up by the social movement and the momentum of mobilisational strategies which is missing in the book. It would be important to see how the debates of the 1970s influenced the campaign for women^s rights and social movements in general. However, the editor has chosen to steer clear from historical analysis per se. In the post-cold war era when erstwhile and seeming arch enemies are consistent fellow travellers, the book seems to have been published rather late in the day to make an impact. In the era of globalisation when most of the goals of the early decades have been changed for theoretically more fashionable concepts which suit the age of consumer durables, Marxist theory, along with other philosophical precepts, has been put away in the attic, if not thrown out altogether. Although unduly lengthy and repetitive, the book puts together a whole debate which even in the 1970s was largely confined to leftist papers and journals of the new left era or private collections. It is no doubt important to record this debate. At a time when gender equality has become the buzzword in developmental/NGO jargon and is part of the conditionality of donor-driven agendas, it is not just a symbolic gesture of setting the record straight, but part of a necessary exercise of acknowledging how even tendencies and forces inimical to the very concept of social equality (such as the Bretton Woods institutions), have been compelled by social movements to profess adherence to the principles of equality and to reckon with goals and aspirations of people inspired by the ideals of socialism and feminism. The struggle for women^s equality has been an integral part of socialist practice for a century and a half. If this struggle has today received recognition from oppositional forces, it stands testimony to the achievements of that stream of politics and remains one of the lasting contributions of socialist ideology to defining the contours of the discourse on democracy for all time to come. Indu Agnihotri Swami Vivekanand College, Delhi University, Delhi