Product Description

Roberto Mangabeira Unger is widely regarded as one of the leading social thinkers of our time. In Democracy Realized Unger gives detailed content to a progressive and practical alternative to both neoliberalism and institutionally conservative social democracy. His efforts to inspire and develop this alternative have drawn increasing attention throughout the world as well as in his native Brazil.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #469395 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-27
• Released on: 2000-04-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 309 pages

Review
"Roberto Mangabeira Unger's project is breathtaking ... He is writing what may be the most powerful social theory of the second half of the century." - Geoffrey Hawthorn "A philosophical mind out of the Third World turning the tables, to become synoptist and seer of the First." - Perry Anderson "[Unger] does not make moves in any game we know how to play... [His] book may someday make possible a new national romance ... [I]t will help the literate citizens of some country to see vistas where before they saw only dangers ... see a hitherto undreamt-of national future." -- Richard Rorty

About the Author
Roberto Mangabeira Unger is Professor of Law at Harvard University and a political activist in Brazil. Verso has published What Should Legal Analysis Become?, and a one-volume selection from his writings, Politics: The Central Texts. A new three-volume edition of Politics is forthcoming from Verso.

Customer Reviews

Recommended book with one flaw
Unger is a proactive progressive who does not want to sit idle when the world is being taken over by currency speculators, multinational investors, and global mutual fund managers, what Thomas Friedman calls the 'electronic herd'. Unger's substantive plea needs to be heeded by every right-thinking denizen of this planet.

Unger is in serious error, howewer, in one important aspects of his action program. His program of taxation, saving and investment flows from the same faulty premises of establishment economists. His sugestion to replace the progressive income tax by a flat consumption tax is outrageous. Several studies have shown that this would exacerbate income inequalities and, in particular, enrich the top income group at the expense of the bottom income group.

I agree with him so far as the desirability of flat tax is concerned so that, among other advantages, this eliminates the scope for discretionary decision-making by the powers that be. But, the way to make sure the change does not adversely affect the lower income groups is to adopt the 'basic income/flat tax' approach advocated by by A.B. Atkinson and others.