Mark Satin (born 1946) is an American political theorist, author and newsletter publisher. Although occasionally reviled as a Vietnam-era “draft dodger,” he is better known for contributing to the development and dissemination of three political perspectives – neopacifism in the 1960s, New Age politics in the 1970s and 1980s, and radical centrism in the 1990s and 2000s. Satin’s work is sometimes seen as building toward a new political ideology, and then it is often labeled “transformational,” “post-liberal,” or “post-Marxist.” One historian calls Satin’s writing “post-hip.”
After emigrating to Canada at the age of 20, Satin co-founded the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme, which helped bring American Vietnam War resisters to Canada. He also wrote the Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada (1968), which sold nearly 100,000 copies, according to the Toronto Globe and Mail. After a period that author Marilyn Ferguson describes as Satin’s “anti-ambition experiment,” Satin wrote the book New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society (1976, U.S. edition 1979), which identifies an emergent “third force” in North America pursuing such goals as simple living, decentralism and global responsibility. Many years later, The Nation magazine described Satin’s book as the first of its kind, and social scientists Paul Ray ans Sherry Anderson spotlighted it in their book The Cultural Creatives.
Satin spread his ideas by co-founding a political organization, the New World Alliance (1979 – 83), and by publishing an award-winning political newsletter, New Options (1984 – 92). He also co-drafted the foundational statement of the U.S. Green Party, “Ten Key Values.” In her book Ecological Politics, Greta Gaard says Satin “played a significant role in facilitating the articulation of Green political thought.”
After a period of political disillusion, spent mainly in law school and practicing business law, Satin launched a new political newsletter and wrote an award-winning book, Radical Middle: The Politics We Need Now (2004). Both projects criticized political partisanship and sought to promote mutual learning and innovative policy syntheses across social and cultural divides. In an interview, Satin contrasted the old radical slogan “Dare to struggle, dare to win” with his radical-middle version, “Dare to synthesize, dare to take it all in.”
Although some critics felt Satin had become too pragmatic, in 2015 he surprised them by producing an updated “40th Anniversary Edition” of New Age Politics, with a new and more urgent subtitle, “Our Only Real Alternative.”
A lifelong advocate of simple living, he shares a small balconied apartment with his partner, a poet, in Oakland, California, USA.
