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Roberto Mangabeira Unger is widely regarded as one of the leading living social theorists In Democracy Realized, he gives detailed content to his conception of a progressive and practical alternative to neoliberalism in contemporary politics. His efforts to inspire this have drawn increasing attention throughout the world as well as in his native Brazil where they are currently informing a network of politicians and business leaders called The Latin American Alternative. But the United States and Europe, argues Unger, are equally in need of a fresh alternative to the status quo..
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In what kind of world and for what kind of thought is time real, history open, and novelty possible? In what kind of world and for what kind of thought does it make sense for a human being to look for trouble rather than to stay out of trouble?

In this long-awaited work of general philosophy, Roberto Mangabeira Unger proposes a radical reorientation of established ideas about nature, mind, society, politics, and religion. He shows how we have to change our beliefs if we are to succeed in doing justice to our most distinctive contemporary experiences, discoveries, and ideals.

The Self Awakened mobilizes the resources of several philosophical traditions, and develops the unrecognized revolutionary implications of the most influential of these traditions today--pragmatism. Avoiding technical jargon and needless complication, this book makes a case for philosophy as the supreme activity of the intellect at war, insisting on its power to deal with what matters most.

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Free Trade Reimagined begins with a sustained criticism of the heart of the emerging world economy, the theory and practice of free trade. Roberto Mangabeira Unger does not, however, defend protectionism against free trade. Instead, he attacks and revises the terms on which the traditional debate between free traders and protectionists has been joined.

Unger's intervention in this major contemporary debate serves as a point of departure for a proposal to rethink the basic ideas with which we explain economic activity. He suggests, by example as well as by theory, a way of understanding contemporary economies that is both more realistic and more revealing of hidden possibilities for transformation than are the established forms of economics.

One message of the book is that we need not choose between accepting and rejecting globalization; we can have a different globalization. Traditional free trade doctrine rests on shaky empirical and theoretical ground. Unger takes a new approach to show when international trade is likely to be useful or harmful to the socially inclusive economic growth that every nation wants. Another message is that the movement of people and ideas is more important than the movement of things and money, and that freedom to change the institutions defining a market economy is just as important as freedom to exchange goods on the basis of those institutions.

Free Trade Reimagined ranges broadly within and outside economics. Presenting technical issues in plain language, it appeals to the general reader. It puts a disciplined imagination in the service of rebellion against the dictatorship of no alternatives that characterizes life and thought today.

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Volume 2 of Politics, a work in constructive social theory.

Social theory: its situation and its task is an introduction both to Unger's ideas and to the major debates of contemporary social, political and economic thought. Unger shows how the failures of social science and the criticism of such ambitious, deterministic theories as Marxism offer materials for an alternative practice of social understanding. This alternative severs, once and for all, the link between the explanation of social arrangements and the vindication of their necessity.

Unger argues that the disappointment of so many liberal and socialist hopes coexists with unforeseen opportunities to advance progressive commitments. To seize such opportunities, however, we must rethink many of our basic beliefs about society—about what it is and what it can become. Social Theory: Its Situation and Its Task shows that what at first seems a circumstance of intellectual and political paralysis turns out to be rich in unrecognized transformative possibility..
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This new edition of False Necessity marks the beginning of Verso's reissuing of Roberto Mangabeira Unger's major works in political and social thought, first published together as Politics. Unger's ideas have helped to inspire progressives across the world who look for alternatives to the ruling political and economic orthodoxy. Here he develops a radical explanation for society that is different from both Marxism and neoliberalism, and offers a program for change. His new and comprehensive introduction explores the limits to our understanding of society and politics and reconsiders the proposals in the book as examples of many untried intellectual and political possibilities..
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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..
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