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An introduction to Rabbi Lerner’s book Revolutionary Love

From the social theorist and psychotherapist Rabbi Michael Lerner comes a strategy for a new kind of socialism built on love, kindness, and compassion for each other. Revolutionary Love proposes a method to replace what Lerner terms the capitalist globalization of selfishness with a globalization of generosity, prophetic empathy, and environmental sanity.

Lerner challenges liberal and progressive forces to move beyond neo-liberal politics that served the interests of the rich and powerful while pretending to have served the economic interests of middle income people (which led some working class people to abandon the Dems in the 2016 election). Yet ot was NOT ONLY economics that is decisive for many in the U.S. Lerner discovered while leading a multi year study of working class consciousness. What moved many away from the Dems over the course of the past 50 years has been their seeming embrace of a materialist reductionist view of human beings that ignores their hunger for higher meaning in life than the accumulation of money and power--the very value that shape the policies of their Republican opponents. Dems make wonderful promises when running for office but actually have done little to decrease the vast inequalities of wealth and power between the top 10% of wealth holders and the bottom 80% of the wealth and income available to them. In that situation, people often make their political commitments more on the basis of who seems to respect them most, and have often encountered an elitism in the liberal and progressive world that makes them feel "dissed" and deeply disrespected. 

Liberals and progressives need to build a movement that speaks both to the mind and the heart, and can reverse the environmental destructiveness and social injustice caused by the relentless pursuit for economic growth and profits. 

Revisiting the hidden injuries of class, Lerner shows how much of the suffering in our society, including most of its addictions and the growing embrace of right-wing nationalism and reactionary versions of fundamentalism, is driven by frustrated needs for community, love, respect, and connection to a higher purpose in life. Yet these needs are too often missing from liberal discourse. No matter how smart progressive programs are, they cannot be won without speaking to the heart and to the pain so many people experience. By showing how an economy and politics can be infused with an ethos of caring and love, Lerner presents a winning strategy for liberals and progressives in the 2020s and 2030s if they can realize that it’s not enough to have smart programs—one must also communicate respect and empathy.

Liberals and progressives need coherent alternatives to capitalism, but previous visions of socialism do not address the yearning for anything beyond material benefits. Inspired by Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Carol Gilligan, Revolutionary Love offers a strategy to create “the Caring Society.” Lerner details how a civilization infused with love could put an end to global poverty, homelessness, and hunger, while democratizing the economy, shifting to a 28-hour work week, and saving the life-support system of Earth. He urges us develop the courage to stop listening to those who tell us that the vision of an economy and a society shaped by caring for each other and caring for the earth (Revolutionary Love) is “unrealistic.” And he shows in this book what a love-infused-socialism (or call it a post-socialism world of "the Caring Society--Caring for Each other and Caring for the Earth) could be, and why it is really the only alternative to compromised politics that will never overturn the dynamics of the capitalist marketplace with all its planetary-destroying consequences. Here is a coherent plan for an alternative future that readers of this book could build together to avoid the likely alternative of a planet no longer able to sustain human life 

Rabbi Michael Lerner is the editor of Tikkun magazine www.tikkun.org. His national tour to discuss this book can be found at www.tikkun.org/lj .  He is the author of eleven books including two national bestsellers, Jewish Renewal and The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right. His other books include The Politics of Meaning, Spirit Matters, The Socialism of Fools: Anti-Semitism on the Left, and Embracing Israel AND Palestine.  Rabbi Lerner received Morehouse College’s Martin Luther King-Gandhi Award for his work for peace and nonviolence, the PEN-Oakland award for “courageous work seeking peace and reconciliation between Israel and Palestine.” He was chosen by the Utne Reader as one of the world’s top 100 visionaries, and by Newsweek as “one of the most influential rabbis in America.” In 2019 he was awarded the “Humanitarian Award” from the International Association of Sufism. 

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