Can I vote for Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class," even though it was first published in 1899?

Because he was far ahead of his time in predicting the problems of a consumerist culture.

Rawls, definitely. Should be required reading for all registered Democrats (well, Justice As Fairness, anyway. It's shorter...)

I'm pretty partial to Ursula Le Guin's fiction. There is a lot of political thinking in it, and it is mighty high quality stuff.

Mill's "Power Elite" was seminal - I'm sure a re-reading would determine that it's dated, but the fundamental concepts of inter-related corporate, political and military elites creating power centers that shape society fundamentally and over-ride any ideal of democratic decision-making and of "masses" vs. "publics" are essential to any effective liberal critique. Perhaps it's one of those works that's so seminal its thesis now appears totally passe. (Time to dig it out and re-read it.)

I'll also nominate Reinhold Niebuhr's Irony of American History for consideration.

Galbraith is a very strong contender.

I'd also add that any of the great cluster of books that came out in the late 1950s and early 1960s: Jane Jacobs's Life and Death of Great American Cities, Michael Harrington's The Other America, Paul Goodman's Growing Up Absurd, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed, Betty Frienden's The Feminube Mystique, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail and collected speeches. These books and essays all came out within a 5 year period really laid the groundwork for liberalism and progressiveness for the next two decades, if not longer.

If one were to widen the net and include radicals, and not just liberals and progressives, I should want to include Williams Appleman Williams's The Tragedy of American Foreign Policy, Noam Chomsky's American Power and the New Mandarians, Harold Cruse's Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, and the collected essays of Ellen Willis,

Jeet Heer's long list is a bit of a cheat it's so inclusive, but his point about that incredible wave of essential and powerful liberal "literature" emerging within a window of a half-decade is stunning and says something important about "critical mass" even within intellectual circles. Mills was most influential during that era as well.

I'd nominate William James for his robust defense of individuality and pluralism combined with his support for progressive social programs. James tried to hold these ideas in creative tension rather than trying to reconcile them into an ideology. His thinking defies labels, but grappling creatively with these ideas and objectives seems to define what is best about liberalism. Rawls lacks energy and is narrow and dull by comparison.

GORE VIDAL

The suggestions seem to me to bring to mind the question of where/how those being educated in the last 20 years learn the wisdom and experience of post-WWII liberal/progressive - much of which is highly relevent to the pickle/fuckup we find ourselves in today?

Here's chance for a lefty organization to use the net to set out summaries of this good stuff for the current generation, including comments on where things were right and wrong: The wisdom of the progressive/liberal philosopy.

I'd also include less than book length articles and speeches (like Kennen in Foreign Policy on realism), obviously some good stuff like MLK's letter from the Birmingham jail and 'I have a dream' speech on the DC mall.

Secondary schools and colleges don't include most of the underpinnings of our political philosopy and practice except in some specialised grad. courses in a few institutions.

I'm thinking here more than a Wiki entry, but multi-person contributions that grow over time, with some editors to give structure and coherency. Where's American's for Democratic Action (ADA) when we need them - or the American Prospect, CAP, The Nation, et. al. Let's call this the American Liberalism Project!

[god, I hate the error message "text entered wrong" when the captcha text expires and requires a re-entry. This is the only site I know of that demand that you copy your comment before you hit post - it is a total pain in the ass.]

I want to toss in Karl Polyani's "The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time" as the single best work of economic history and examination of the "market fetish" I've ever read. Absolutely crucial work for any "liberal bookshelf."

Progress and Poverty by Henry George?

Gotta go with Rawls' "Theory of Justice" and Galbraith's work on "Countervailing Power".

You could probably make a pretty strong case for Madison's "Federalist #10"

How about Rorty's work, maybe "Contingency, Irony and Solidarity" ?

This is a good question - I'd like to see some answers too!

Let me place another vote for Galbraith. Richard Dawkins begins his classic The Selfish Gene by explaining that his goal is not merely to expound a theory but also to change the way we think about genetics and natural selection. I think the same argument can be made for much of what Galbraith wrote. Reading (or re-reading) The Affluent Society (and American Capitalism) will not provide a rigorous understanding for some narrow aspect of the economy but rather provides a way of thinking about how our economy matches means and ends.

I think one should include Saul Alinsky on that list, with "Reveille for Radicals" and "Rules for Radicals."

Maurice Isserman's biography of Michael Harrington (and history of the post-war left), 'The Other American.' Is an indispensable book. Tough on the New Left, but also tough on Harrington and Cold War liberals.

I suggest John Dewey's "Democracy and Education". He laid out clearly why a "progressive" (as apposed to rote) education is essential if society is to remain democratic.

Only people who can think for themselves and find information on their own can hope to avoid the forces of propaganda and authoritarianism.

Dewey's ideas on education have become so ingrained that most people don't even consider the alternatives any more. The recent rise of authoritarian education, combined with NCLB, is a sign of push back. Those who don't want children exposed to a variety of ideas are those who don't want their dogmas challenged.

If one was to expand beyond the US I would add the works of Karl Popper, especially "The Open Society and Its Enemies". George Soros is a disciple of Popper and has extend his ideas in his recent books.

What is interesting about the conservative suggestions is how little impact any of the books nominated have had on intellectual thought. I read a great deal and I've never read a single one, nor have I seen any cited in the works I do read. I don't think this is because I generally read "liberal" authors. It's because, by definition, conservatism is a movement which is defined by its opposition to change and its support for the status quo. Expecting original ideas from those looking at an imaginary, utopian, past is improbable.

Conservatism isn't a philosophy, it is defined by what it is against, not its ideals.

The Paranoid Style in American Politics

I'd certainly second The Great Transformation, which had a powerful influence on me when I read it, although I found some of it to be almost absurdly overstated. But definitely a great book. I'd like to point out, however, that the author's name was Polanyi, not Polyani.

I'd also suggest some great works of leftist historians, such as Edward Thompson's Making of the English Working Class and Eric Hobsbawm's Labouring Men.

"I'd like to point out, however, that the author's name was Polanyi, not Polyani."

Good catch...and on reflection I guess he's ineligible for this list because he was an Austrian turned Brit. But people should read the book.

Homage to Catalonia, or Simone Weil. The vile criminals who sent us into Iraq with battalions of lies should be made to read these.
Murray Kempton, The Briar Patch: the trial of the NY Black Panthers ended up, one of the places where the 60s dried up. Very sad, very funny.
The Port Huron Statement. I don't think there's really a need to defend this one.

Maybe some Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and some Heilbroner (though, admittedly, most people only know his history of economic thought, "The Worldly Philosophers").

While he was not an American himself, it is hard to think of a book which had a stronger impact upon American liberal economic thinking in the twentieth century than JM Keynes' General Theory.

"GORE VIDAL"

His collected essays "United States" is really pretty amazing.

On point:

Reagan beat them all:

http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/6/9/171739.shtml

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter. Hands down. No contest. Everyone else can go home.

Although I do hold a soft spot in my heart for Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, '72, particularly since the end is so eerily prescient with respect to the GOP selling its soul to the religious right.

Definitely Rawls. Much better than Rorty, imho. Better than Okin too, though I like her a lot. (Saying "Rawls is better than X" is not saying very much about X.)

rawls AND rorty. Actually reading Rawls (e.g. ToJ), as some of you may know, is a hefty endeavor, and hard to do seriously outside of an academic setting. Liberals just need to get the two principles of justice down; that is what gets applied in public discussion. I'm sure there is a good article out there -- maybe by the man himself -- that does this.

Rorty's "Achieving Our Country" is a very readable, and informed overview of several major currents in the American left in the twentieth century; focusing especially on the shift from an earlier, social democrat left that was proud of the U.S.A. to the New Left and later academic left's focus on identity. As an anti-foundationalist philosopher, Rorty's basis for leftist values is much simpler, and perhaps less satisfying, than Rawls' system, but for that reason gets at why may are intuitively on the left.

What's also needed is a modern critique of capitalism. Galbraith? Robert Kuttner? I'd like to know -- which books specifically?

Great discussion. I agree with whoever said radicals should be included. I suggest:

A People's History of the US
The Souls of Black Folk
Orientalism

Since others are including works of fiction, don't forget Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath." Read it and feel the righteous anger.

It's fiction, and much more a moral tale than a political one, but I'd throw "To Kill a Mockingbird" in for consideration.

Yes, there should also be a list of politically significant fiction, and one for non-americans.

eli - check out Kuttner's "Everything for Sale."

What about Michael Walzer? On Tolerance, Spheres of Justice. Both are look for ways that we can live in the plural,diverse society that America seems to becoming.

unembargo the links to the photos mr. pointy headed

They are as follows:
Migrant Family, Nipomo CA
American Gothic by Gordon Parks
March in Selma
Cesar Chavez and RFK
Welcome to Manzanar.

Those photos are the broken social contract personified.

Rorty is horribly muddled at his best. Rawls' _Theory of Justice_ is most certainly one of the most important philosophical works of the last century. It's not as original as many people want to say, it's a very compelling statement of many liberal Enlightenment ideas. ('Justice as Fairness', Phil Review 1955 is a good paper to start with.)
_Political Liberalism_ is important, as well.

Thanks for the reminder about Dewey's _Democracy in Education_. I've never read it carefully, but had begun to do so and put it down to finish this post.

(I don't think Rawls has had a great deal of impact outside academia, not the way JKG and some others mentioned above (he's not the popular response to Buckley, e.g.).)

I've always wondered how much influence Russell's social/political works had outside academia.

The problem with using Rawls as a response to Buckley is that people play the lottery. That is, even behind a veil of ignorance, people choose the less equal society, because they're too dumb to actually believe in the law of probability.

Perhaps [Mills' Power Elite is] one of those works that's so seminal its thesis now appears totally passe.

Very good point (and nominee). The most pervasive influences are hard to trace because, well, "that's just common sense."

And another vote, if the nativist bar is dropped, for Polanyi's Great Transformation.

It seems to me that the body of writing in English is a more organic and useful category than the body of writing by Americans. So Polanyi, Orwell, Thompson, Hobsbawm, Keynes, and so forth seem to me just as relevant to an American political discussion as writers in English who happened to be American.

And speaking of Orwell, while it's not a single work, the four-volume Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell certainly occupies a prominent space on my bookshelf, and comprises some of the best political writing in English of the twentieth (or any other) century.

Anything by Max Weber... but if I must choose only one book then let it be the highlight of my undergraduate degree in political science: The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, by Daniel Bell.

Amazing that no one has mentioned Amartya Sen. From his amazing work on poverty and famine (demonstrating that social and political structures rather than "natural" ones are primarily responsible for much human suffering), to his powerful critiques of the utilitarianism all too prevalent in libertarian economic discourse, and his analysis of the root social causes of inequality, his work is a powerful and evocative defense of liberalism.

If it is possible for a Nobel laureate's work to be underregarded, his is.

Le Guin is a lyrical writer, but dull, dull, dull. I couldn't finish 3 separate novels of hers, and I love the New Wave.

I know I am a bit late to the discussion but I wanted to add to both big picture and close-up:

For the big picture, try Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought, by Sheldon S. Wolin. It is a classic history of political thought, recently updated to include the rise of corporate power.

Also, though they are not (yet) classics, I think some of the "Ever Since Reagan" books on how and why America went for tax cuts for the weatlthy, dergulation, rising inequality and economic insecurity, such as:

The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics by Jonathan Chait.

The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer & The United States since 1980 by Dean Baker.

Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) & Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else, by David Cay Johnston.

The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing, by Greg Anrig.

The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity, by Robert Kuttner.

The Politics of Inequality: A Political History of the Idea of Economic Inequality in America, by Michael J Thompson.

Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class, by Robert Frank.

Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America, by Eric Alterman.

The Assault on Reason, by Al Gore.

The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream & Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy, by Jacob S. Hacker.

I actually think Rorty is a much better political thinker than Rawls, and though it's hard to pin down a particular book, I'd nominate most of his work from the first two volumes of the Collected Philosophical Papers and Contingency, Irony and Solidarity on. I also would nominate Dewey - The Public and its Problems remains a very compelling book. "Letter from Birmingham Jail" too. A book that deserves to be a classic is Judith Shklar's Ordinary Vices.

And of course Discipline and Punish by that great honorary 20th-century American liberal Michel Foucault.

Finally, it probably can't count, and it's an oddball book that is probably wrong about all number of things, but I'll be damned if Boorstin's The Genius of American Politics doesn't speak in a most direct and smart way to fundamental questions about the U.S.' role in the world post-9/11.

Oh, look. The right thread.

I think you need to include works of fiction, if only to keep everyone reading. I would put....

Grapes of Wrath
Jungle
Slaughterhouse 5

Grapes is the finest politcal/fiction combination since Twain. Passion, outrage, and an argument for human decency which seem basic to modern liberal thought.

Jungle embodies this same philosophy, with the advantage of killer research and a historical echo effective today. Whistleblowers and speaking to power have their roots here.

there are lots of works that speak to the inhumanity of war. Catch 22 could fit here instead of Slaughterhouse 5, but Vonnegut's work isn't rooted in the absurdity of war but in the universal human rights and community.

I think Kill a Mockingbird is a neat book, and I teach it, but I don't think it fits this liberal political thread very well. What does one make of Scout learning to become a lady?

Marx

Amyarta Sen and Max Weber: Not Americans.

Marx and Madison:
Not 20th century thinkers.

The Grapes of Wrath and To Kill a Mockingbird:
Not great novels, whatever our high school English teachers thought.

I second all the votes for Rawls, Rorty, Galbraith, Schlesinger, Rachel Carson, and James Baldwin. But I'm surprised more people have not mentioned Michael Walzer, WEB Dubois, and Dewey. These three are giants of American liberalism, for worse, or (mostly) better.

One great writer that conservatives often claim, but liberals have more right to, is Christopher Lasch.
Reinhold Niebuhr is kind of in this same category.