Taking the High Road: Communities Organize for Economic Change (review)

Taking the High Road is an ambitious attempt to survey the anti-corporate community and labor activism in the United States today, and to make the case that this activism fits into a larger global social democratic project to reform and humanize capitalism. The book is divided into two parts, each of which might have warranted an entire book itself. The first half details European social democracy, putting a very positive spin on the German, Austrian, Swedish and other political and social systems. The second half details a wealth of U.S. social movements, electoral initiatives, labor movement changes, and social "partnerships" currently being undertaken. The recent living wage movements, labor-management-government training partnerships, corporate public subsidy accountability initiatives, the emerging "anti-sprawl" movement, the "new" AFL-CIO under John Sweeney, and third party and other progressive electoral initiatives are all examined. The author claims that these developments demonstrate great potential to blossom into a left-progressive version of the social democratic regimes covered in the first half of the book.

How one assesses this book depends greatly on expectations of what it should accomplish. So, a brief review of what the book is, and what it is not, is in order. The book is a very long (352 double column pages, equivalent to over 500 normally typeset pages) survey of European social democracies and left-progressive activism in the U.S. Readers looking for an accessible introduction to these topics will be well rewarded. On the other hand, it is not an in-depth look at any of the subjects covered. Readers looking for a deep probing of the inner dynamics of any of the phenomena covered will be disappointed.

For the most part, the book provides a picture of the accomplishments of European social democracy and U.S. social movements. It does not critically analyze failings in any depth, and it does not pay a great deal of attention to the obstacles or structural limits these governments and movements have faced. Thus, a reader familiar with most or all of the topics covered may be disappointed to see scant or no coverage of major criticisms or debates occurring within and around the governments and movements described. Unfortunately, the extensive scholarship and existing literature concerning these issues is largely ignored or given a short and superficial response.

In short, the book could be described as very wide but not very deep in its scope. It is a useful and relatively clear introduction to the topics of European social democracy and current U.S. labor- and community-based activism. This makes it suitable for certain purposes, such as a basic text in labor studies classes focusing on these topics. But it is less suitable for other uses that would require greater depth in the individual subjects covered.

There is, as well, something of a structural "gap" in this book: the first half and the second half are only loosely tied together by the text. Although all the social movements and initiatives outlined in the second half of the book are on what could vaguely be called the "left" of the political spectrum, the relationship between them and the social democracy examples described earlier is not always clear. Many of the people engaged in these movements have a wide range of political outlooks: liberal, social democratic, socialist, Marxist, anarchist, Green, or non-ideological. They may want to build upon their present movements in a variety of ways, only some of which would be compatible with the traditional European social democratic attempt to channel these movements toward the electoral fortunes of a social democratic party. It would have enhanced the overall value of the book greatly if the author had written a more thoughtful, in-depth analysis of the connections between social movements and political parties and ideologies.

All such criticisms aside, this book is...