Progressive Intellectuals And The Dilemmas Of Democratic Commitment

The long-standing dilemma for the progressive intellectual, how to bridge the world of educated opinion and that of the working masses, is the focus of Leon Fink's penetrating book, the first social history of the progressive thinker caught in the middle of American political culture.

In this timely book, the first comprehensive study of the modern American public intellectual--that individual who speaks to the public on issues of political or ideological moment--Richard Posner charts the decline of a venerable institution that included worthies from Socrates to John Dewey. With the rapid growth of the media in recent years, highly visible forums for discussion have multiplied, while greater academic specialization has yielded a growing number of narrowly trained scholars. Posner tracks these two trends to their inevitable intersection: a proliferation of modern academics commenting on topics outside their ken. The resulting scene--one of off-the-cuff pronouncements, erroneous predictions, and ignorant policy proposals--compares poorly with the performance of earlier public intellectuals, largely nonacademics whose erudition and breadth of knowledge were well suited to public discourse. Leveling a balanced attack on liberal and conservative pundits alike, Posner describes the styles and genres, constraints and incentives, of the activity of public intellectuals. He identifies a market for this activity--one with recognizable patterns and conventions but an absence of quality controls. And he offers modest proposals for improving the performance of this market--and the quality of public discussion in America today. This paperback edition contains a new preface and and a new epilogue.

A concise and highly readable study of women’s influence on a crucial era in American political and cultural history. Kathleen Kennedy’s unique study explores the arrests, trials, and defenses of women charged under the Wartime Emergency Laws passed soon after the US entered World War I. These women, often members of the political left, whose anti-war or pro-labor activity brought them to the attention of federal officials, made up ten percent of the approximately two thousand Federal Espionage cases. Their trials became important arenas in which women’s relationships and obligations to national security were contested and defined. Anti-radical politics raised questions about the state’s role in defining motherhood and social reproduction. Kennedy shows that state authorities often defined women’s subversion as a violation of their maternal roles. Yet, with the exception of Kate Richards O’Hare, the women charged with sedition did not define their political behavior within the terms set by maternalism. Instead, they used liberal arguments of equality, justice, and democratic citizenship to argue for their right to speak frankly about American policy. Such claims, while often in opposition to strategies outlined by their defense teams, helped form the framework for modern arguments made in defense of civil liberties.

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.

The Science Communication Challenge explores and discusses the whys – as distinct from the hows – of science communication. Arguing that the dominant science communication paradigm is didactic, it makes the case for a political category of science communication, aimed at furthering discussions of science-related public affairs and making room for civilized and reasonable exchanges between different points of view. As civil societies and knowledge societies, modern democratic societies are confronted with the challenge of accommodating both the scientific logic of truth-seeking and the classical political logic of pluralism. The didactic science communication paradigm, however, is unsuited to dealing with substantial disagreement. Therefore, it is also unsuited to facilitate communication about the steadily increasing number of science-related political issues. Using insights from an array of academic fields, The Science Communication Challenge explores the possible origins of the didactic paradigm, connecting it to particular understandings of knowledge, politics and the public and to the widespread assumption of a science-versus-politics dichotomy. The book offers a critique of that assumption and suggests that science and politics be seen as substantially different activities, suited to dealing with different kinds of questions – and to different varieties of science communication.

Schutz demonstrates that progressive ideas of democracy emerged out of the practices of a new middle class, reacting, in part, against the more conflictive social struggles of the working-class. The volume traces two distinct branches of democratic progressivism: collaborative and personalist.

The Progressives offers comprehensive coverage of the origins, evolution, and notable events that came to define the pivotal period of American history known as the Progressive Era. Offers a rich, in-depth analysis of who the progressives were and the process through which they identified and attacked social, economic, and political injustices Features an up-to-date synthesis of the literature of the field including comprehensive treatment of the role of women in the Progressive Movement Considers the movement's enduring impact – and how its vision for a better society became transfixed in the American social consciousness and helped to create the modern welfare state Part of the well-respected American History series Integrates themes of class, race, ethnicity, and gender throughout, offering a concise and engaging account of a fascinating era in U.S. history that forever changed the relationship between a democratic government and its citizens

In American Labor and American Democracy, William English Walling drew on his close association with Samuel Gompers and other leaders of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) to write the authoritative history of the labor movement in the first quarter of the twentieth century.Walling's position was that twentieth-century American democracy was not stagnant. It was a living, developing trend in society, with the AFL as its most progressive force. There could be no passive acceptance of American institutions as they stood: government in the twentieth century would need to develop into a medium for attaining social ideals and needs beyond individual realization. The aim of American labor was a pluralistic economic democracy in which government and industry would be guided by economic organizations representing not only labor, but every essential social group. Richard Schneirov, in his introduction to this new edition of a classic book, paints a rich and detailed picture of Walling's political and intellectual journey, and of his many contributions to the synthesis of democratic and socialist principles. American Labor and American Democracy is an important work that will help reevaluate our understanding of labor and working-class history, establish a new perspective on today's labor movement, and shed light on the relationship of labor to socialism, capitalism, democracy, and social movements; the nature of the large business corporation; and the relationship of special interest groups to democracy.William English Walling (1877-1936) was a social reform activist who helped found the National Women's Trade Union League in 1903 and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. He authored several influential works, including Socialism as it Is: A Survey of the World-Wide Revolutionary Movement, The Larger Aspects of Socialism, Progessivism and After, and The Socialists and the War. Richard Schneirov is professor of history at Indiana State University, and has also taught at The Ohio State University and the Institut f(3)r England und Amerikastudien at the University of Frankfurt, Germany. He is the author of Labor and Urban Politics: Class Conflict and the Origins of Modern Liberalism in Chicago, 1864-97, which was awarded the Urban History Association's prize for best urban history in North America for 1998 and co-edited The Pullman Strike and the Crisis of the 1890s.