Economic Democracy

Radical economists were ready to join movements calling for social justice as organizers and advocates but they were also ready to step into the role of policy experts to advance those causes. At a time when think tanks were proliferating as a new way to conduct politics through knowledge making and policy design, radicals worked with leading Washington DC institutions on the Left. Radical economists joined the Institute for Policy Studies to advance its political economy programmes and to counter federal budget orthodoxy. Radicals joined the Cambridge Institute to advance its vision of grassroots urban socialism and community empowerment. Radicals’ relationships with trade unions aligned it with the research mission and themes of the Economic Policy Institute. And it was thanks to the initiative of a radical that the Institute for Women’s Policy Research was formed. Through decades of involvement in public policy, albeit always outside government, radicals have enriched understandings of the inequities of American capitalism and focused attention on those policies that can bring about repair and redress.