I think this author is at least trying to grapple with the difficulties in being a 'man of the left' after the fall of the Soviet empire and the utterly devastating effect of the discrediting of Marxism as a serious tool of analysis, let alone as a viable political ideology over the past decade, with the opening of Soviet and Eastern European archives and the realization of the totalitarianism that infected Marxism in every place it seized power.
Unfortunately, I don't think he can make the intellectual leaps necessary to realize that the only 'leftist' or liberal politics that make any sense at all would be a return to the classical liberalism of the Enlightenment and the early 19th century before the development of socialism and Marxism (very different in the early stages, before the fomer was infected by the latter). The values embodied in the classical liberal worldview -- liberty, private property, equality of opportunity and under the law, etc.- are under attack today from both those who describe themselves as liberals and many on the right whose authoritarian impulses are strong.
Well stated. I think that many who are berated as "libertarians" here on FreeRepublic really lean towards a classical liberal worldview. It is a shame that the term "liberal" has been so misused to describe one step along the path liberal-socialist-communist, that it is almost unusable in the classical sense.