I think it makes sense for we on the post-modern left to distinguish ourselves from the left of past decades. In so doing, we may attract ideological brothers and sisters looking for an alternative to the present capitalist plutocracy, but who are turned off in some way by typical socialism.
This last presidential election has proven (maybe once and for all) traditional liberalism to be too weak and too corrupt to stem the capitalist plutocratic tide, much less reverse it; and traditional Marxist socialism has been debunked. However, the basic motivations behind socialism remain true: equal justice under the law without regard to wealth or social status, the right to work under humane conditions, the right to collectively bargain for wages and benefits, the right to a living wage, equal access to quality health care, protection from predatory capitalist enterprises. Fair-market socialism expands upon these priorities by accepting a central role of free markets, but within the constraints of a respect for human dignity, human rights and equal protection under the law.
There is another kind of socialism. It can be found in the political philosophy of Proudhon and Sartre. Neither were mainstream socialists, that is of the Marxian kind. Both were radical civil libertarians and argued, not unlike Jefferson, that all the powers of government are derived from the person being governed. In contrast to Marxism, this form of socialism acknowledges individual sovereignty and the principle that states are granted governing authority on condition from free and consenting populations. Where any community, or fraction thereof, is kept in chains, where each and everyone of its members hasn't an equal voice in his or hers governance, that society's government is illegitimate and just so much flotsam.
Now it is out of this starting point I rudely call myself a "socialist" instead of a "capitalist." As Proudhon so infamously said, "Property is theft." (The phrase is taken from the opening paragraph of chapter one, First Memoir: "If I were asked to answer the following question: What is Slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: What is property! may I not likewise answer, It is robbery, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?")
Proponents of capitalism claim it to be founded on free markets. That is a lie. A lie because they abuse the word "free" to mean a licentious marketplace where the bigger and wealthier may bully the smaller and poorer. This isn't freedom, economic or political, but plutocracy.
I don't see a post-modern socialist state needing to be preoccupied with the "redistribution of wealth" -- a phrase with which the right loves to beat us over the head. Rather, we believe that a civil society should govern the market in such a way that the accumulation of capital may not buy any single individual or group or corporation advantages over competitors or anyone else. Similarly, those who have accumulated wealth should not be granted a louder voice or an inordinate amount of political influence.
But a just society does not end there. The fair-market socialist is also a civil libertarian and a democrat, that person prefers small organizations over large ones, individuals and communities over bureaucracies, decentralized and limited government over centralized power.
The average American's fear of an overreaching and oppressive government is only surpassed by his xenophobia and fear of attack from without (our response to 9/11 being the latest example). Therefore, Marxian socialism was never able to develop deep roots in the society, largely because it emphasized class over individual rights. But American society is also capable of great compassion and a sensitivity toward social and political justice. A lot has been said about the need for a clear and well defined, true alternative to the capitalist plutocrats dominant both political parties. Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader and Howard Dean are among the most visible of these critics. However, they have yet to free themselves, at least in the "public mind," from the traditional ideological reaction to capitalism; and the reason I give for this being they have yet to fully articulate a new socialism, one not based on the Marxian critique of capitalism.