The American left's political agenda for the last few decades has been mostly defensive: fighting the erosion of gains made in the 1960s and '70s by women, gays and lesbians, and communities of color. As morally imperative as these struggles have been, the left has lost its traditional popular identity as the bearer of majoritarian values and interests, and diminished its political efficacy.

In The Future of Democratic Equality, Joseph M. Schwartz imagines feasible, progressive, majoritarian, global politics in a post-industrial world. What would it look like, and how could we get there? Reducing inequality among Americans, as well as globally, will take a high level of social solidarity-a level far from today's fragmented and particularist politics. Schwartz balances anachronistic conceptions of the left as the defender of an illusory, homogenous working class and the assertion that social fragmentation transcends the need, or possibility, of constructing democratic political majorities. In focusing the left's attention on the need to reconstruct a governing model that speaks to the aspirations of the majority, Schwartz provocatively applies this vision to such real world political controversies as welfare reform, race relations, childcare, and the democratic regulation of the global economy.

• A fascinating and controversial look at the need to rebuild a governing project for a majoritarian left, bridging social theory and contemporary real world politics.
• Dissects postmodernism's effect on leftist politics and how the left can transcend the false dichotomy of difference and citizenship.

Joseph M. Schwartz is AssociateProfessor of political science at Temple University. He is the author of The Permanence of the Political (1995), winner of the North American Society for Social Philosophy's best book award.

Why, with the huge growth of inequality in the United States over recent decades, have self-styled radical political theorists largely ignored the issue? Starting with that question, Schwartz (political science, Temple U.), provides an empirical and normative analysis of the politics of inequality that seeks to reinject social solidarity into the discussion while still retaining contributions from difference theorists concerning the role that socially constituted groups play in the shaping of individual identity and post-structuralist contributions concerning the dangers of "essentializing" group identity. Having built his normative framework, he turns to a political sociology of the growth of inequality in the United States (and, to a lesser extent, other Western advanced democracies). He stresses the politics of neoliberalism over structural economic reasons and argues that neoliberal hegemony rests on the conservative ability to construct a "white identity" that transplanted previous ethnic political identities and has a strong moral affinity with a meritocratic ideology that dismisses social solidarity. He concludes by surveying the debates on the left about how to respond to the right's racial politics. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The left's main political agenda for the last few decades has been defensive: protecting the gains of women, gays and lesbians, and communities of color. As worthy as those causes may be, identity politics have marginalized the politics of the left, and have been popularly perceived as being outside the majority and protecting the interest of the few. The right has capitalized on this, attacking social programs as disproportionately benefiting only those left-leaning minorities and not the majority.

"In The Future of Democratic Equality" Joseph Schwartz attempts to imagine a progressive global politics. What would it look like, and how could we get there? Reducing inequality among Americans, and beyond that, among member of the developing and developed world, will take a high level of social solidarity-a level far from today's fragmented and factionalist politics.

Schwartz finds hope in the work of theorists like Nancy Fraser, who notes that having the powerful "recognize" the powerless is not the same as redistributing the power downwards. Schwartz maps out an ambitious program that could transform class relations, a program that would take a cohesive, solidified left, and examines the effects of alternate vision on welfare reform, race relations, childcare, and other problems of real world politics.

Why has contemporary radical political theory remained virtually silent about the stunning rise in inequality in the United States over the past thirty years? Schwartz contends that since the 1980s, most radical theorists shifted their focus away from interrogating social inequality to criticizing the liberal and radical tradition for being inattentive to the role of difference and identity within social life. This critique brought more awareness of the relative autonomy of gender, racial, and sexual oppression. But, as Schwartz argues, it also led many theorists to forget that if difference is institutionalized on a terrain of radical economic inequality, unjust inequalities in social and political power will inevitably persist.

Schwartz cautions against a new radical theoretical orthodoxy: that universal norms such as equality and solidarity are inherently repressive and homogenizing, whereas particular norms and identities are truly emancipatory. Reducing inequality among Americans, as well as globally, will take a high level of social solidarity--a level far from today's fragmented politics. In focusing the left's attention on the need to reconstruct a governing model that speaks to the aspirations of the majority, Schwartz provocatively applies this vision to such real world political issues as welfare reform, race relations, childcare, and the democratic regulation of the global economy. Joseph M. Schwartz is Associate Professor of political science at Temple University. He is the author of The Permanence of the Political (1995), winner of the North American Society for Social Philosophy's best book award.

In The Future of Democratic Equality, Joseph Schwartz imagines a feasible, progressive, majoritarian, global politics in a post-industrial world. What would it look like, and how could we get there?