Unger-West

Jim heartfield jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Thu Dec 3 02:02:43 PST 1998


In message <l03130300b28b309763b5@[209.54.19.66]>, rayrena <rayrena at accesshub.net> writes
>LBOers,
>
>Anyone read or read anything about the new book by Cornel West and Roberto
>Unger, "Progress: A Plan for Democracy"? Reformist placating or radical
>realigning? Some of both?
>
>What's the scuttlebutt?
>
>eric beck
>
>

I've just been sent Democracy Realized - the progressive alternative, by Roberto Unger for review, from Verso Press. I haven't properly read it through yet, but judging by the little manifesto at the back it is part of that theoretical Third Way literature, which is radical in its qualification of the market, but tentative in its solutions.

"Tenth Thesis: What it means to be progressive today

...

The error lies in believing that the alternative to resignation is the total substitution of one "system" by another. Revolutionary reform - the part by part substitution of formative institutional structures and ideas - is the exemplary mode of transformative politics. The idea of revolutionary change has, by its impracticability, become a pretext for its opposite."

p275 -- Jim heartfield



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