Radical Democracy and Sacred Value

Abstract

Abstract This chapter elaborates the political conditions that are implicit within my social practical account of the political role of sacred value and social practical reasoning. To do that, I turn to how counterpublics like broad-based community organizing (BBCO) affiliates habituate individuals in radically democratic social practices and what political conditions are required for individuals and groups to engage in an ethical way of life free of domination, exploitation, expropriation. To make this case I turn to John Dewey, Sheldon Wolin and Cornel West to illustrate the way the everyday patient work of BBCO recasts Dewey’s, Wolin’s, and Wests’s theories of radical democracy. The chapter offers a unique theory of radical democracy that is capacious enough for political struggles involving sacred values and honest enough about racial capitalism and power in democratic life.