"In quest of America's radical democratic tradition? Here it is: in the dreams of the early Progressives and in the 1960s lunch counter protests in Greensboro, North Carolina, in the early CIO commitment to justice by any means necessary and in the later Vietnam-era antiwar movement. Writing with a realist's appreciation of the complexities of politics, but with an idealist's care for the lives and fortunes of his subjects, Marc Stears tells the story of those who risked everything to take their place at the democratic table. Battles for a new citizenship, workplace democracy, participatory practices, and racial equality come alive, as do the voices of the intellectuals who helped shape them: Croly, Lippmann, Niebuhr, Dewey, Ellison, King, Carmichael, Walzer, and Arendt. But this is not just a work of history. This book finds in the ups and downs of American radicalism the resources with which to contest contemporary political theory's often settled opinion that utopianism leads to violence and that violence has no place in a properly liberal or deliberative politics. Demanding Democracy demands to be read by anyone committed to the reinvigoration of political theory and practice."--Bonnie Honig, Northwestern University

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 PART ONE 1900-1945 Chapter One: Making the Nation a Neighborhood 21 Chapter Two: After the Breach 56 Chapter Three: Radicalism Americanized 85 PART TWO: 1945-1972 Chapter Four: Doubt and the American Creed 119 Chapter Five: The Explosive Enclave 145 Chapter Six: "We Are Beginning to Move Again" 174 Conclusion: Renewing the American Radical Tradition 206 Bibliography 223 Index 243