Revolutionary Love: A Political Manifesto to Heal and Transform the World

by RABBI Michael Lerner

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Author: RABBI Michael Lerner

Publisher: University of California Press

Hardcover:
ISBN 10: 0520304500
ISBN 13: 978-0520304505

From social theorist and psychotherapist Rabbi Michael Lerner comes a strategy for a new socialism built on love, kindness, and compassion for one another. Revolutionary Love proposes a method to replace what Lerner terms the “capitalist globalization of selfishness” with a globalization of generosity, prophetic empathy, and environmental sanity.

Lerner challenges liberal and progressive forces to move beyond often weak-kneed and visionless politics to build instead a movement that can reverse the environmental destructiveness and social injustice caused by the relentless pursuit of economic growth and profits. Revisiting the hidden injuries of class, Lerner shows that much of the suffering in our society—including most of its addictions and the growing embrace of right-wing nationalism and reactionary versions of fundamentalism—is driven by frustrated needs for community, love, respect, and connection to a higher purpose in life. Yet these needs are too often missing from liberal discourse. No matter that progressive programs are smartly constructed—they cannot be achieved unless they speak to the heart and address the pain so many people experience.

Liberals and progressives need coherent alternatives to capitalism, but previous visions of socialism do not address the yearning for anything beyond material benefits. Inspired by Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Carol Gilligan, Revolutionary Love offers a strategy to create the “Caring Society.” Lerner details how a civilization infused with love could put an end to global poverty, homelessness, and hunger, while democratizing the economy, shifting to a twenty-eight-hour work week, and saving the life-support system of Earth. He asks that we develop the courage to stop listening to those who tell us that fundamental social transformation is “unrealistic.”

Review

“Peels apart the insidious myths of capitalism that keep people hopeless and apathetic, daring its audience to practice optimism as activism. . . . Filled with big-picture vision, Revolutionary Love is a manifesto for recovering cynics looking for a place to plug in, or for those wrested out of apathy but not sure where to start.”

, Foreword

From the Inside Flap

&;Michael Lerner is one of the most significant prophetic public intellectuals and spiritual leaders of our generation. Secular intellectuals and those who yearn for a major change in the direction of American society can learn a lot from reading his book.&;&;Cornel West, Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy, Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University

&;Michael Lerner takes the universal qualities wrongly diminished as &;feminine&;&;caring, kindness, empathy, love&;and dares to make them guides to a new kind of politics that can challenge the cruelty, competition, and dominance wrongly elevated as &;masculine.&; Revolutionary Love opens our minds and hearts to a fully human way of living and governing.&;&;Gloria Steinem, feminist, activist, and author of My Life on the Road

&;In these times of rage and fear, when despair can so easily tempt us, Michael Lerner&;s voice of fierce compassion calls out to humanity to trust in the redeeming power of revolutionary love and wisdom as a way toward a different future.&;&;Ariel Dorfman, author of Death and the Maiden

&;Here&;s the thing: people actually want a world based on love, kindness, generosity, and environmental sanity. They actually care about their neighbors and have a great capacity for compassion for other people. The thing is, they just don&;t believe that an affirming world is &;realistic&; because we&;ve all been told so. What we must do? Make it realistic. In fact, the caring society is the only realistic path for humanity to survive, and in Revolutionary Love Rabbi Lerner lays out a powerful and compassionate plan for building that caring society. I love this book. Please read it and join with others to build the movement that can enable these ideas to reshape our society, which so badly needs this vision.&;&;Keith Ellison, Attorney General of the State of Minnesota

&;What is post-socialism? Can we conceive of a society that is based on community and love? Rabbi Michael Lerner can. Anyone wanting to overhaul the inequities and mean-spiritedness of our social system should read this book&;and incorporate its message into the array of social-change movements. Going beyond the narrow confines of what we are resisting, this book not only puts forward a positive vision, drawing much from the wisdom of feminists and peace activists, but provides a coherent strategy for how to get there. It liberates readers to go beyond the &;be realistic&; command of our ruling elites and embrace the beautiful and love-filled world that Michael Lerner proposes.&;&;Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Code Pink

&;In Revolutionary Love, Rabbi Michael Lerner provides a great theoretical and political service. He provides a new language of critique and possibility, one that addresses the most basic traits of what it means to be human and compassionate, and to embrace communities rooted in justice and care as part of a broader understanding of politics in desperate times. No one that I am aware of does a better job of using love as a theoretical tool to address these issues and suggest what a politics based on a love of the other might look like. This book is not merely innovative&;it is ground breaking in its scope, depth of scholarship, insight, and originality.&;&;Henry Giroux, Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy, McMaster University

&;Rabbi Lerner is no innocent romantic about love. His call for a new bottom line is of immense importance not only for my colleagues and students in the Christian and Jewish worlds, but for all in the United States, Canada, and Europe who are seeking a path out of the narrow materialist, ultra-individualist, and competitive-acquisitive approach to politics that has severely limited the appeal of both Left and Right in the Western world. This book must be required reading for every opinion maker, every spiritual leader, every political leader, every college student hoping to understand American politics, and any citizen hoping to avoid the drift in Western societies toward reactionary nationalism, fascism, and the destruction of the life-support system of Earth.&;&;Walter Brueggemann, William Marcellus McPheeters Professor Emeritus of Old Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary

&;Love is the thread that connects and heals us all. Rabbi Michael Lerner&;s Revolutionary Love shows us a meaningful path toward healing our hearts, minds, souls, society, and planet. Highly recommended.&;&;Dean Ornish, MD, Founder and President, Preventive Medicine Research Institute, and Clinical Professor of Medicine at University of California, San Francisco

&;Revolutionary Love is a much-needed antidote to today&;s hardball politics of cynicism and self-interest über alles. Drawing from Rabbi Michael Lerner&;s spiritual wisdom and lifetime of social activism, it provides a treasury of practical tools to counter the drift to domination and violence, and to build a more caring and sustainable society for us all.&;&;Riane Eisler, President of the Center for Partnership Studies, and author of The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics

&;Michael Lerner is a tough-minded, bold, and intellectually brilliant writer and speaker. Read this book, and he will show you that survival as a nation and a planet depends on not being so embarrassed by the concept of love that you dismiss it as too soft. It isn&;t. He spells out a detailed plan for a new way of living in which love is taken seriously and soberly. I feel that my brain cells, speaking metaphorically, have been rearranged by this energetic book that inspires with its clarity and visionary power.&;&;Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

&;This visionary and hopeful book&;s argument for the fusion of love, compassion, and politics counters narrowly economistic progressivism, narcissistic spirituality, and the reigning forces of oppression. Its model of respect and care should be widely read, widely discussed, and&;because it would work beautifully in the classroom&;widely taught.&;&;Roger S. Gottlieb, author of Morality and the Environmental Crisis

&;Bringing together the critical with the theological in purposeful and humanitarian ways, this book benefits from Lerner&;s evident passion. It is sufficiently grounded in a number of the philosophical debates and does a very good job of proposing love as something that can have real and tangible effects.&;&;Brad Evans, coauthor of Histories of Violence: Post-War Critical Thought

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Revolutionary Love: A Political Manifesto to Heal and Transform the World