The Left Alternative

by Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Confronting the major debates in the world today—about national alternatives and alternative globalizations—Unger shows that there is a set of initiatives that we can begin to develop with the materials at hand. Fully updated with a new preface, The Left Alternative equips the Left with the ideas that it needs to overthrow the dictatorship of no alternatives.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Law, Nonfiction

197 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (born 24 March 1947) is a philosopher and politician. He has written notable works including Politics: A Work In Constructive Social Theory and The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time. He has developed his views and positions across many fields, including social, and political, and economic theory. In legal theory, he is best known for his work in the 1970s-1990s while at Harvard Law School as part of the Critical Legal Studies movement, which is held to have helped disrupt the methodological consensus in American law schools and which led to the writing of What Should Legal Analysis Become? His political activity helped the transition to democracy in Brazil in the aftermath of the military regime, and culminated with his appointment as Brazil's Minister of Strategic Affairs in 2007 and again in 2015. His late work in economics culminates in his characterization and program toward The Knowledge Economy. His work is seen to offer a vision of humanity and a program to empower individuals and change institutions.

At the core of his philosophy is a view of humanity as greater than the contexts in which it is placed. He sees each individual possessed with the capability to rise to a greater life. At the root of his social thought is the conviction that the social world is made and imagined. His work begins from the premise that no natural or necessary social, political, or economic arrangements underlie individual or social activity. Property rights, liberal democracy, wage labor—for Unger, these are all historical artifacts that have no necessary relation to the goals of free and prosperous human activity. For Unger, the market, the state, and human social organization should not be set in predetermined institutional arrangements, but need to be left open to experimentation and revision according to what works for the project of individual and collective empowerment. Doing so, he holds, will enable human liberation.

Reviews

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unger's argument is ultimately for pragmatic innovation of institutions to become a calling card of the left. Moving away from the social demcratic-communist spectrum of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The first 40 pages are brilliant, inspiring and important. However after this point the writing is often dull, repetitive and at times falls into the traps he levels at the traditional left. Prescriptions such as reliance on VAT (which he acknowledges ie regressive) dont seem to be in keeping with his reimagining of the values and institutions of society. Especially seeing as there are other tax ideas such as Georgism which should have been mentioned.

The book is also glaringly weak in another area. He is talks of economic and social inequality but not enviromental and biodiversity issues. These issues will be core in the narrative of the left going forward so, even though he was writing in 2005, his almost total forgetting of this topic is a weakness of the book.

If you are on the left but dont feel you fit comfortably into the current imagining of the spectrum it is worth reading this book. However, due to what it misses and the weakness of some of the prescriptions the book would struggle to inform a approach to a wide set of ideas.

The prose is also tricky and phrasing often frustrating.

[Danny]

Last year I decided I was no longer going to rate books 1 out of 5 because that does not really work for a lot of the books I tend to read. That said I want it to be known this book is a 0 star for me.

[Wersly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has had a profound influence on my own personal politics / how I approach politics. Unger eschews a lot of the standard left-wing 'faith in the state' tropes without falling into the common right-wing trap of absolute faith / idealization of the market / of capitalism. Instead, there's a deeply humanist and refreshingly optimistic glow to Unger's writing, and a strong streak of 'fuck-it-let's-just-go-for-it' experimentalism in the policy prescriptions he provides that supplants any left or right wing platitude spewing. In this respect, I believe Roberto Unger is one of the most creative and important political theorists of our time. Read this book.

Or if you're lazy: watch this speech and you'll get a very solid idea of what this book is about;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CBW3...

[Michael Rohr · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good analysis of the current world economic situation and set of proposals and strategies for remedying it. Clearly and stirringly written, but mostly at a quite abstract level---it could use a lot more examples. Very much worth reading for those who want to know how to make the world a better place.

[Pete Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible. Highly recommend