Achieving Our Country : Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America

Rating:
Summary: A New Old Left
Review: This book is a most needed refreshment to the stagnation that is the current left. Though Rorty claims to belong to the 'old' or reformist left, rather then the new, identity based left, it is about as believable as his claims to not belong to the Postmodern set. No, instead of completely destroying the New Left, Rorty creates an imazing fusion of the identity politics of the new left, with the class based politics of the old. He manages to weed out the bad in both traditions, clearing the Old left of Marx, Lenin and Stalin, while at the same time bringing economic awareness and positivism to the increasingly pesimistic, overly theoretical New academic left. The prime focus of Rorty's lectures is the shift from what he terms the participatory Left, which was the reformist left that brought on the Progressive Era and the New Deal, to the Spectatorial left, which is the Current "new" left that bemoans the inequalities of the world but only spends its time theorizing about the problems rather than trying to find a solution. In doing this, he creates a view of a new reformist left that embraces the cultural and racial changes the New Left created. Though I do not agree with everything Rorty says, especially his views regarding the Cold War (he uses the word evil too freely for my tastes), he did manage to reinforce many views I already hold and open my eyes to many new ones.