I just read a quite interesting book by Marc Stears called Demanding Democracy: American Radicals in Search of a New Politics. It is not an unflawed book. Indeed, in one chapter it treats Arthur Schlesinger and other consensus liberals as if they were radicals. The book has some irritating exclusions (feminism gets short shrift ; ditto for the democratic socialists – communists are not treated, presumably because they are not demanding democracy). For an excellent review that also recommends the book, but finds much to criticize, see Peter Dorman.
What I like about the book is its combination of history, political theory, and persistent themes in activist radical politics. It compares progressives, the C.I.O., the civil rights movement, and the SDS in an interesting way and ties the intellectual contributions of Niebuhr, Lippman, and Dewey to this history in an interesting way.
A central theme of the book is to explore the question of what tactics are ethical and practical to employ in a non-democratic society in an effort to get to a democratic society where such tactics would be out of bounds. Stears also usefully contrasts deliberative democrats, agonistic realists like William Connolly, (who believe conflict is ineradicable and there is no harmonized utopia at the end of the rainbow) and his democratic radicals. Dorman criticizes the American focus of the book suggesting that it forfeits the richness of European comparisons. I am not bothered by this, but I am moved by Dorman to order up Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age by Dan Rodgers which apparently traces the influences of European thought .
Dorman liked the book because it put ‘60’s radicals in historical perspective. I like that as well, but I like the fact that the book offers a well written historical and theoretical perspective on the questions that confront the Occupy Wall Street movement.
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