Books - Base and Superstructure

I’ve published two books, and I’m always thinking about ideas for another. So, read on for a brief description of these books.

Classify and Label: The Unintended Marginalization of Social Groups

Classify and Label is a philosophical treatment of classification in the social sciences and in everyday life. In the book, I focus on the moral, social, and political implications of how we put people into labels.

Labels are essential to how we navigate and understand the world. But at the same time, they carry a dark side. In classifying others, we might misrepresent them. And these misrepresentations disrupt how people think about themselves and how they treat others, sometimes leading to social marginalization.

I focus on rich case studies across a variety of domains, including gender and sexual orientation, paraphilias and gender disorders in psychiatry, and everyday concerns such as the production and use of pornography. This broad sample reveals deep links between what social scientists do and what society does at large. Finally, I use this study to link such seemingly disconnected issues as the status of underrepresented groups in academia, new models of parenting and the family, the nature of sexual orientation, and the nature of scientific bias.

Left Foreign Policy: An Organizer’s Guide

On domestic issues, the U.S. left reached striking consensus by the 2020s: a program built around Medicare for All, free college, a $15 minimum wage, and a Green New Deal for climate and jobs. It built this program around a demand for social democracy. From this starting point, leftists recruit and educate new members, win battles against bosses and landlords, and contend at the ballot box.

Equally striking, the left seems lost on foreign policy. It disagrees on when and how to wage war and when and how to support global trade. And without an international movement, it will never build the solidarity it needs to create a new world.

Left Foreign Policy shows the way to a vision for international social democracy. In it, I lay out the building blocks for left foreign policy, and I connect them to four key world regions. Those building blocks include international solidarity, anti-interventionism, pluralism, and fighting global capital.

Only through organizing will the left build the world it must build.