NINETEEN PERSPECTIVES FOR THE LEFT

...The Left's thinkers and activists tend to be in less powerful positions, but perhaps the 1990s will see a radical change in that circumstance, particularly if we can act on some of the themes and program proposals put forward in the following essays...

...Worldwide forces are reshaping and threatening all aspects of our lives more rapidly and severely than most of us thought possible...

...The savings-and-loan bailout, the final costs of which we have not yet seen, will be an important barometer and potential organizing vehicle...

...The 1990s may be a "party-is-over" decade, when the American people will come to terms with the political and moral morass of the Reagan and Bush years...

...If we can take $50 billion, $100 billion, or $200 billion from the nation's "defense" budget each year, we can make short work of them...

...Chester Hartman is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies...

...There are some significant differences among our contributors...

...With no commies around to kill or fend off, people will be demanding an improvement in their lives...

...The absence of political leadership on the Left is striking...

...In a society as large and complex as ours, with its enormous backlog of problems, we will need intellectual, moral, and political figures to inspire cohesive political action...

...It promises to be an interesting decade...

...Also among the important themes in these essays are respect for diversity, the need for corporate accountability, adherence to international law and institutions, equitable taxation, improved living standards in the Third World, and concern for the fate of the planet...

...They had, as does Congress, many conservative Senators and Representatives, leaders of right-wing think tanks, and such stars of the Right's pantheon as Phyllis Schlafly, William Simon, Pete Du Pont, Fred Barnes, Paul Weyrich, Pat Robertson, Fred Ikle, and Russell Kirk...

...Cornel West stresses the intellectual task required, while Lappe believes the main thrust must be involving people in the rewarding process of practical problem-solving...

...But the degree of agreement is striking...

...While our gang—Institute fellows, colleagues, and friends—is half the size of the Heritage Foundation's, it is considerably more diverse demographically...

...the Heritage panel had not a single minority contributor and only three women...

...We have few national figures, few leaders who transcend narrow sectoral issues...

...His most recent books are "Housing Issues of the 1990s" and (with Marcus Raskin) "Winning America: Ideas and Leadership for the 1990s...

...As the Left confronts this extraordinary opportunity, it can draw on the basics of a progressive world view and program captured in these representative essays...

...Harry Magdoff attributes our society's problems to economic stagnation and proposes principles to initiate growth, while Murray Bookchin challenges the economic-growth model...

...That set of short essays provided the basis for an interesting discussion at our monthly fellows' meeting at the Institute for Policy Studies, and at the end of that session we decided to organize our own symposium, asking participants to address "the crucial foreign and domestic priorities for the progressive movement in the 1990s...

...And while the end of the Cold War appears stalled, even transmogrified, by the unpredictable crisis in the Persian Gulf, it is also clear that peace-dividend thinking and organizing can become a powerful force in American society...

...The Left must ask why this is so, and how we can identify, advance, train, and position women and men capable of inspiring the needed value transformations which, in turn, trigger effective political activism...

...All of the broken-down bridges and roads, the homeless millions, the medically unprotected, the families lacking child care—the list is long and formidable—are problems that can largely be addressed through government spending...

...Last Spring's issue of Policy Review, the Foundation's quarterly, contained a symposium entitled "The Vision Thing," in which thirty-nine conservative leaders responded to the question, "What should be the ten most important foreign- and domestic-policy priorities for the conservative movement in the 1990s...

...The two groups also differ markedly in their backgrounds and perspectives...

...Heather Booth thus calls on the Left to emphasize boldness and universal appeal in its programs...

...And as she and Frances Moore Lappe, Jesse Jackson, Howard Zinn, Leslie Cagan, and Jim Hightower stress, the keys are democratic participation, good organizing strategies, meshing of issues and constituencies, empowerment of nonelites, and revitalization of citizenship and an ethic of communal and personal caring...