What Should the Left Propose? - Hardcover

Unger, Roberto Mangabeira

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1844670481 ISBN 13: 9781844670482

Publisher: Verso Books, 2006

Synopsis

What should the left propose is a manifesto that engages a vital question of our time: the program for which Leftists should stand, now that the major ideological proposals of the past two hundred years are exhausted. Confronting the major debates in the world today - about national alternatives and alternative globalizations - Unger shows that there is a set of national and global alternatives that we can begin to develop with the materials at hand: opportunities available to us only if we learn to recognize them. These alternatives would vastly enhance our practical capabilities. They would also give greater reality to the central teaching of democracy: faith in the constructive genius of ordinary men and women. For Unger, a programmatic argument is not a blueprint; it marks a direction and suggests next steps. He explores the form this direction could take in the European social democracies, in the United States, in the developing countries, and in the contest over the reform of globalization. He shows how the Left in power can do more than use compensatory redistribution to sugarcoat economic equality, and how it can make good on its ideals without reaffirming a discredited commitment to government control of the economy.

About this title

Review

"Roberto Mangabeira Unger is a restless visionary."--New York Times

"A philosophical mind out of the Third World turning the tables, to become a synoptist and seer of the First."--Perry Anderson

"[Unger] does not make moves in any game we know how to play ...[His] book may someday make possible a new national romance ... [It] will help the literate ... citizens of some country to see vistas where before they saw only dangers ... see a hitherto undreamt-of national future."--Richard Rorty

About the Author

Roberto Mangabeira Unger is one of the leading social and political thinkers in the world today. He is also active in Brazilian politics. Verso has published much of his work: Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy, Social Theory: Its Situation and Its Task, Plasticity into Power, Politics: The Central Texts (a selection of Unger's social theory writings, edited by Zhiyuan Cui), Democracy Realized: The Progressive Alternative, and What Should Legal Analysis Become?

Edition details

• Publisher: Verso Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1844670481
• ISBN 13: 9781844670482
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 179