What Should the Left Propose?

What Should The Left Propose is a manifesto that engages a vital question of our time: given that the major ideological proposals of the past two hundred years fail to address today's problems, where do we go from here?

Confronting the major debates in the world today—about national alternatives and alternative globalizations—Unger shows that there is a set of national and global alternatives that we can begin to develop with the materials at hand: opportunities available to us only if we learn to recognize them. These alternatives would, over time, vastly enhance our practical capabilities. They would also give greater reality to the central teaching of democracy: faith in the constructive genius of ordinary men and women.

For Unger, a programmatic argument is not a blueprint; it marks a direction and explores next steps.