The Future of American Progressivism: An Initiative for Political and Economic Reform

Unless Americans prove themselves willing to be as open-minded about the institutional arrangements of the country as they have been about almost everything else, they will continue to find their hopes frustrated. It is not enough to rebel against the lack of justice unless we also rebel against the lack of imagination.

Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Cornel West argue that the path to progressive reform goes through reorganization of our economic and political instutitions; tax and spending are not enough. Breaking with the conventional ideas of American progressive politics, they show how we can stimulate economic growth and guarantee a minimum of resources for all citizens.

Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Harvard Law School professor and one of two "godfathers of the loosely organized leftist challenge to orthodox economic reform" (Institutional Investor), is author of Democracy Realized and other books.

Cornel West, the "preeminent African-American intellectual of our generation" (Henry Louis Gates, Jr.), is author of many books, including the best-selling Race Matters and, with Sylvia Ann Hewlitt, The War Against Parents. He is Alphonse Fletcher, Jr., University Professor at Harvard University.