Haves Without Have-Nots: Essays for the 21st Century on Democracy and Socialism - Hardcover

Adler, Mortimer Jerome

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0025005618 ISBN 13: 9780025005617

Publisher: Macmillan Pub Co, 1991

Synopsis

Essays discuss Abraham Lincoln, Judge Bork, the decline of Communism, human nature, and the future of democracy

About this title

From Library Journal:

While diverse, these six essays by the popular philosopher share a unifying theme: the merger of capitalism and socialism in a new democratic world society. Arguing that we are creating a society free of the "have-nots," Adler, author of Intellect: Mind Over Matter ( LJ 2/15/90) and Truth in Religion ( LJ 10/1/90), admirably analyzes the importance of liberal education for citizenship, offers useful criticism of Robert Bork's strict constructionism, praises Lincoln's stance on human (natural) rights, evaluates recent events in Eastern Europe, and provides a trenchant critique of the existentialist misunderstandings about human nature. Yet, Adler's essays are uneven in quality, and his treatment of socialism distorts the meaning and history of that political philosophy. Still, recommended for general and public philosophy collections.
- Gordon Tolle, South Dakota State Univ., Brookings
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly:

In six didactic essays dedicated to Mikhail Gorbachev, popular philosopher Adler ( Truth in Religion ) examines the spread of capitalism-based constitutional democracy along with the rise of totalitarian communism and its subsequent fall-- due, he avers, to a failure to achieve true economic socialism. Two of these broad-ranging essays, derived from lectures and seminars held at the Aspen Institute of Philosophical Research (headed by the author), contrast the strict constructionism of Judge Robert Bork with Lincoln's philosophy of "unalienable rights" for all, which in Adler's view should include economic rights. Adler concludes, perhaps prematurely, that with the end of conflict between the two systems, democracy--embodying private-property capitalism combined with legislated welfare provisions-- will prevail on a global scale.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Macmillan Pub Co
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0025005618
• ISBN 13: 9780025005617
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 337