Customer Reviews

Left Turn: Forging a New Political Future (The Radical Imagination Series)

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In a breathtaking Historical reconstruction of where the U.S. left has been and is now, Stanley Aronowitz provocatively and concretely proposes a new political formation that can confront the monolithic electoral party system and its array of special interests and takes to task the reformist tendencies of postmodern politics which usually manifest as single issue actions. The labor unions are also critiqued as becoming "sweethearts" to business, We are invited to rethink the totality of involvements from the notion of everyday praxis, historical agency, historical bloc in fresh radical terms and to consider real alternatives to market capitalism , first by rethinking our relationship to nature and to labor. Aronowitz has managed to uniquely synthesize the best of Lenin's, Luxemburg's,Pannekoek's,and Gramsci's thinking about political organization and has provided the left with a new starting point both for discussion and action. In a concluding chapter , Aronowitz critically engages three new utopian proposals and gives a harsh indictment of the Rawlsian political liberalism that dominates the landscape of contemporary political theory.

This book, in my view, is a must read for anyone interested in political theory, practical philosophy, radical praxis today, and the organizational problems facing the left today. Controversial, yet creatively provocative this work will stimulate much debate among those wanting substantive transformation in our political future.

Michael Pelias,
Philosophy, LIU-Brooklyn
Situations:Project of
the Radical Imagination,
co-managing editor