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Radical Democracy

by C. Douglas Lummis

200 pages, Cornell University Press, 1997, Paperback

Lummis distinguishes true democracy from the inequitable incarnations referred to in contemporary liberal usage. He warns against the fallacy of associating free markets or the current world economic order with democracy and argues for transborder democratic action. Rejecting the ways in which technology imposes its own needs, Lummis asks what work would look like in a truly democratic society. He argues that democracy should mean a fundamental stance toward the world and toward one's fellow human beings.

Praise for Radical Democracy

"C. Douglas Lummis is one of the most thoughtful, honorable, and relevant intellectuals writing about society and democratic practice anywhere in the world. He happens to live and teach and animate activist groups in Japan, but his scope is international as his spirit is American in the best tradition. Radical Democracy is a model of lucid, independent thinking about what ought to concern everyone. I hope this book will bring Mr. Lummis the many readers and admirers he deserves in his native country."—Susan Sontag

"In Radical Democracy, Douglas Lummis has done something unique. He has written a primer on how to think about democracy that, while highly accessible, is far from being simplistic. . . . He creates a democratic conversation among equals about basic matters. It is a remarkable achievement--and a breath of fresh air."—Sheldon Wolin

About C. Douglas Lummis

C. Douglas Lummis was born in San Francisco in 1936, and raised partly there and partly in the Sierra Nevada. He entered U.C. Berkeley in 1954 on a Navy ROTC contract, and, when he graduated in 1958, entered the U.S. Marines for three years, the third of which he spent in a military base on Okinawa. He spent the years 1961-1963 in Nara and Kyoto, Japan, and returned to U.C. Berkeley in 1963 to study political theory, just in time for the Free Speech Movement. In 1968 he returned to Japan to write his Ph.D. thesis. He taught at Tsuda College, Tokyo, until his retirement in 2000. His books include: English Conversation as Ideology, 1976; A New Look at The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, 1982, Japan's Radical Constitution, 1987 and Radical Democracy, 1996.

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