Stears Demanding Democracy

American Radicals in Search of a New Politics
Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-3504-1
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten

What today's political thinkers can learn from the radical democratic movements of twentieth-century America

This is a major work of history and political theory that traces radical democratic thought in America across the twentieth century, seeking to recover ideas that could reenergize democratic activism today. The question of how citizens should behave as they struggle to create a more democratic society has haunted the United States throughout its history. Should citizens restrict themselves to patient persuasion or take to the streets and seek to impose change? Marc Stears argues that anyone who continues to wrestle with these questions could learn from the radical democratic tradition that was forged in the twentieth century by political activists, including progressives, trade unionists, civil rights campaigners, and members of the student New Left.

These activists and their movements insisted that American campaigners for democratic change should be free to strike out in whatever ways they thought necessary, so long as their actions enhanced the political virtues of citizens and contributed to the eventual triumph of the democratic cause. Reevaluating the moral and strategic arguments, and the triumphs and excesses, of this radical democratic tradition, Stears contends that it still offers a compelling account of citizen behavior—one that is fairer, more inclusive, and more truly democratic than those advanced by political theorists today.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Stears, Marc

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

PART ONE 1900-1945

Chapter One: Making the Nation a Neighborhood 21

Chapter Two: After the Breach 56

Chapter Three: Radicalism Americanized 85

PART TWO: 1945-1972

Chapter Four: Doubt and the American Creed 119

Chapter Five: The Explosive Enclave 145

Chapter Six: "We Are Beginning to Move Again" 174

Conclusion: Renewing the American Radical Tradition 206

Bibliography 223

Index 243

Über Autor(innen)

Marc Stears is professor of political theory, university lecturer, and fellow at University College, Oxford. He is the author of Progressives, Pluralists and the Problems of the State and the coeditor of Political Theory: Methods and Approaches.