The Left Alternative

Confronting the major debates in the world today—about national alternatives and alternative globalizations—Unger shows that there is a set of initiatives that we can begin to develop with the materials at hand. Fully updated with a new preface, The Left Alternative equips the Left with the ideas that it needs to overthrow the dictatorship of no alternatives.“A good book to stir up leftists.”—Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg Business Week

“Roberto Mangabeira Unger’s book may someday make possible a new national romance ... a hitherto undreamt-of national future.”—Richard Rorty

“A restless visionary.”—New York Times

“A philosophical mind out of the Third World turning tables, to become a synoptist and seer of the First.”—Perry Anderson

“Brazil’s answer to John Stuart Mill ... a political philosopher extraordinaire.”—Chronicle of Higher Education

“This book has influenced how I think and what I do. It sets out the principles for a future Left and crucially challenges us to think not just about how we spend revenues but how we might create them.”—Neal Lawson, Chair of CompassRoberto Mangabeira Unger is one of the leading social and political thinkers in the world today. He is also active in Brazilian politics. Verso has published much of his work: False Necessity: Antinecessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy, What Should Legal Analysis Become?, Democracy Realized: The Progressive Alternative, Politics, and The Left Alternative.