Few issues concern the American public today more than health care. Just ask anyone who has sat for hours in an HMO waiting room or made countless phone calls trying to have a claim settled-or anyone who can't get coverage. But whenever basic reform is proposed the insurance industry opens a massive campaign against it.

Health care today is part of big business, which in defeating the Clinton plan successfully pushed any kind of basic reform off the political agenda. Continuing citizen support for some form of public insurance is, says Milton Fisk, a sign that basic reform is still possible. In his new book, he argues persuasively that basic reform goes beyond a matter of life and death-it's integral to maintaining a society where concern for others holds its own against the market.

Health care, observes Fisk, is not simply an individual responsibility but a public good much like education, and commitment to the social values underlying these public goods is essential to any just society. A healthy society as a value worth pursuing becomes an empty slogan when the poor get inferior health care, when workplaces are dangerous to health, and when a focus on medical treatment leaves out our bodies' environment.

Taking in the broad sweep of social policy in the last half-century, Fisk describes the shift from welfare toward competitiveness as a key factor in the rise of corporate care in the United States. He analyzes the failure of the Clinton health care plan in detail and shows that its commitment to corporate health care was at odds with its reforming intent. He then argues that without national health insurance, needless obstacles will stand in the way of a healthy society. Ideally, the public fund behind this insurance would be derived from a progressive income tax.

Skillfully blending philosophy, economics, and public policy, Fisk's book breaks new ground in political morality and raises important questions about the way people's needs for health care are being defined to satisfy corporate priorities. At a time when so many Americans can barely afford to get sick, no one concerned with this issue can afford to ignore this work of realism and vision.

When speaking of society's role in ethics, one tends to think of society as regimenting people through its customs. Ethics and Social Survival rejects theories that treat ethics as having justification within itself and contends that ethics can have a grip on humans only if it serves their deep-seated need to live together. It takes a social-survival view of ethical life and its norms by arguing that ethics looks to society not for regimentation by customs, but rather for the viability of society. Fisk traces this theme through the work of various philosophers and builds a consideration of social divisions to show how rationalists fail to realize their aim of justifying ethical norms across divisions. The book also explores the relation of power and authority to ethics-without simply dismissing them as impediments-and explains how personal values such as honesty, modesty, and self-esteem still retain ethical importance. Finally, it shows that basing ethics on avoiding social collapse helps support familiar norms of liberty, justice, and democracy, and strives to connect global and local ethics.

Taking Socialism Seriously raises essential questions about what socialism is and how socialists can reach it by addressing a long list of potential quandaries. The contributions compiled by Anatole Anton and Richard Schmitt describe how socialism differs from a reformed and more humane form of capitalism. Various chapters discuss suitable forms of love and family in a socialist society and economic arrangements within a socialist system. They also break important new paths by calling for significant social change, examining detailed questions that have previously been neglected and setting a new direction for radical theorists. Critics are often convinced that there is no alternative and therefore are content to reform capitalism. This book affirms that another world is possible.

When speaking of society's role in ethics, one tends to think of society as regimenting people through its customs. Ethics and Social Survival rejects theories that treat ethics as having justification within itself and contends that ethics can have a grip on humans only if it serves their deep-seated need to live together. It takes a social-survival view of ethical life and its norms by arguing that ethics looks to society not for regimentation by customs, but rather for the viability of society. Fisk traces this theme through the work of various philosophers and builds a consideration of social divisions to show how rationalists fail to realize their aim of justifying ethical norms across divisions. The book also explores the relation of power and authority to ethics-without simply dismissing them as impediments-and explains how personal values such as honesty, modesty, and self-esteem still retain ethical importance. Finally, it shows that basing ethics on avoiding social collapse helps support familiar norms of liberty, justice, and democracy, and strives to connect global and local ethics.

Offering a new political theory combining elements from the Marxist and liberal traditions, this book presents a disturbing view of the contemporary state at war with itself. This internal conflict stems from the state's having the double task of spurring on the economy and protecting the welfare and rights of all its citizens. Such conflict does not end at national boundaries but extends through the system of any imperial state. This perspective illuminates the fractures and instability within the imperial system.

This book offers a political theory combining elements from the Marxist and liberal traditions. It presents the reader with a disturbing view of the contemporary state as at war with itself. This internal conflict is no accident but stems from the state's having the double task of spurring on the economy and protecting the welfare and rights of all its citizens. Such conflict does not end at national boundaries but extends through the system of any imperial state. This perspective illuminates the fractures and instability within the imperial system. This book will be of particular interest to political scientists, political philosophers, and those engaged in policy studies.