Record numbers of Americans describe themselves as “independents” and reject the conventional agendas of Left and Right. In this widely acclaimed book, Ted Halstead and Michael Lind explain why today’s ideologies and institutions are so ill-suited to the Information Age, and offer a groundbreaking blueprint for updating all sectors of America society. Taking on partisans and experts on both sides of the political divide, they propose far-reaching reforms for the way we provide health and retirement security, collect taxes, organize elections, enforce civil rights, and educate our children. Twice before the United States has dramatically reconfigured itself, shifting from an agrarian to an industrial society after the Civil War and successfully adapting to the massive technological and demographic changes of the early twentieth century during the New Deal era. Uniting a sweeping historical vision with bold policy proposals, The Radical Center shows us how to reinvent our nation once again so that all Americans can reap the benefits of the Information Age.

Capek's best plays, stories, and columns take us from the social contributions of clumsy people to dramatic meditations on mortality and commitment. The Reader includes a new and, at last, complete English translation of R.U.R., the play that introduced the literary robot.

This remarkable collection traces central themes in the work of Erving and Miriam Polster, two of the best-known and best loved Gestalt therapists in the world. The writings herein span 4 decades in the history of psychotherapy, bringing together practical, theoretical and aesthetic dimensions of the Polsters' work in a single book. Ranging across diverse subjects and distinct historical periods, the work collected in this volume will educate, provoke, inspire and nourish Gestalt therapists for years to come.

Against the centre ground Since 1989, politics has been a contest to see who can best serve the needs of the market. In this urgent and wideranging case for the prosecution, Tariq Ali looks at the people and events that have informed this development across the world. It is an investigation that reaches its logical conclusion with the presidency of Donald Trump, the success of En Marche! in France, and the dominance of Merkel’s Germany throughout Europe. In this fully updated edition of The Extreme Centre, Ali considers recent events that suggest, despite everything, that there is room for hope. He finds promise in Latin America and at the edges of Europe. Emerging parties in Scotland, Greece, and Spain, formed out of the 2008 crisis, are offering new promise for democracy. Even in the UK, with the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, there are indications that the hegemony of the centre may be weaker than imagined.

Histories of American radical left groups abound. The Communist party, the tiny Trotskyist movement, and the New Left have all been abundantly chronicled. Very little information has been available, however, about the radical left today. "Far Left of Center "remedies that deficit. Many people erroneously assume that with the collapse of the New Left in the early 1970s, American radicalism disappeared. It is true that the 1980s have not been good years for radicals. Their ideologies, particularly Marxism-Leninism, have been discredited, their tactics and visions have been repudiated, and they have been plagued by internal problems. Even so, the history of American radicalism suggests that such movements have rebounded in the past; and in any event, Marxist-Leninist groups have often had an impact far out of proportion to their size. Part One deals with the Communist party of the United States, the largest and most influential Marxist-Leninist group in the United States. Its membership is only about 15,000, but it has been growing steadily in recent years. This section also discusses a variety of front groups which the party has created to facilitate work and to garner support from people who would not otherwise cooperate with Communists. Part Two deals with Trotskyist, Maoist, and other Marxist-Leninist organizations in the United States. Far more militant than the CPUSA, these sects are usually quite small, often under a thousand members. They include the tiny offshoots of the New Left. Part Three deals with organizations that eschew formal ties to Marxist-Leninist parties and are not under the control of these parties, although they may work with them toward some of the same objectives. Many of these have especially targeted Israel as a danger to world peace and security. They are also hostile to American foreign policy and support Marxist revolutionary regimes abroad. The basic premise of "Far Left of Center "is that these far-left groups support and defend oppressive and totalitarian regimes, and cooperate with those dedicated to the destruction of democracy and intellectual freedom. The author is careful to distinguish these groups from democratic socialists in the United States, who have vigorously and continuously denounced Marxism-Leninism and those regimes founded on its principles. This book is not about these organizations. The focus is, instead, on groups whose denunciations of American society and political life go hand-in-hand with testimonials to some of the most repressive regimes in the world. Klehr has written a sober, well documented, comprehensive account of the radical left in the United States today.

Enough of the imbalance that is causing the degradation of our environment, the demise of our democracies, and the denigration of ourselves. Enough of the pendulum politics of left and right and paralysis in the political center. We require an unprecedented form of radical renewal. In this book Henry Mintzberg offers a new understanding of the root of our current crisis and a strategy for restoring the balance so vital to the survival of our progeny and our planet. With the collapse of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe, Western pundits declared that capitalism had triumphed. They were wrong—balance triumphed. A healthy society balances a public sector of respected governments, a private sector of responsible businesses, and a plural sector of robust communities. Communism collapsed under the weight of its overbearing public sector. Now the “liberal democracies” are threatened—socially, politically, even economically—by the unchecked excesses of the private sector. Radical renewal will have to begin in the plural sector, which alone has the inclination and the independence to challenge unacceptable practices and develop better ones. Too many governments have been co-opted by the private sector. And corporate social responsibility can't compensate for the corporate social irresponsibility we see around us “They” won't do it. We shall have to do it, each of us and all of us, not as passive “human resources,” but as resourceful human beings. Tom Paine wrote in 1776, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” He was right then. Can we be right again now? Can we afford not to be?

Epoch-making political events are often remembered for their spatial markers: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the storming of the Bastille, the occupation of Tiananmen Square:. Until recently, however, political theory has overlooked the power of place. In Radical Space, Margaret Kohn puts space at the center of democratic theory. Kohn examines different sites of working-class mobilization in Europe and explains how these sites destabilized the existing patterns of social life, economic activity, and political participation. Her approach suggests new ways to understand the popular public sphere of the early twentieth century.This book imaginatively integrates a range of sources, including critical theory, social history, and spatial analysis. Drawing on the historical record of cooperatives, houses of the people, and chambers of labor, Kohn shows how the built environment shaped people's actions, identities, and political behavior. She illustrates how the symbolic and social dimensions of these places were mobilized as resources for resisting oppressive political relations. The author shows that while many such sites of resistance were destroyed under fascism, they created geographies of popular power that endure to the present.