This is an analysis of an important issue facing the world in the 1990s, whose outcome will determine the kind of world in which children will grow up in. John Gray argues that societies and peoples all over the world are being forced to participate in an experiment in liberal social engineering. The new world order created by the fall of communism has given birth to its own utopian delusion: the idea that only the complete freeing of the market in all areas of human life, from global trade to private health, can deliver prosperity and stability. This dogma, energetically promoted by institutions, such as the World Bank, the IMF and the US Government, would have people believe that only the most radically libertarian version of capitalism can work. Anglo-American capitalism, as perfected Thatcher and Reagan, is seen as the only possible model for the coming century. In Gray's view, this cult of the unfettered free market will result, in most countries, in a mixture of anarchy and squalor on the one hand, and concentrated wealth and irresponsibility on the other. By ignoring the peculiarities of different cultures, the global utopians will dissolve the very networks that made the civilization possible in the first place.