page_title: Mark Satin
section_title: Radical Middle Newsletter
hierarchical_section_title: Mark Satin / Radical centrist politics, 1990s – 2000s / Radical Middle Newsletter
caption_attribution_description: KFC is big in Asia and here's the Vietnam version. I didn't see a McDonald's in Saigon but there were several KFC's. In China KFC outnumbers McDonald's 2 to 1.
context_page_description: Mark Ivor Satin is an American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher. He is best known for contributing to the development and dissemination of three political perspectives – neopacifism in the 1960s, New Age politics in the 1970s and 1980s, and radical centrism in the 1990s and 2000s. Satin's work is sometimes seen as building toward a new political ideology, and then it is often labeled "transformational", "post-liberal", or "post-Marxist". One historian calls Satin's writing "post-hip".
  After emigrating to Canada at the age of 20 to avoid serving in the Vietnam War, Satin co-founded the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme, which helped bring American war resisters to Canada. He also wrote the Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada, which sold nearly 100,000 copies. After a period that author Marilyn Ferguson describes as Satin's "anti-ambition experiment", Satin wrote New Age Politics, which identifies an emergent "third force" in North America pursuing such goals as simple living, decentralism, and global responsibility.
context_section_description: The 1990s are remembered, by many in the West, as a time of relative prosperity and satisfaction.  According to some historians, visionary politics appeared to be on the decline.  However, even after Satin entered New York University School of Law in 1992, he expressed no desire to abandon his project of helping to construct a post-liberal, post-Marxist ideology.  He did admit to being disillusioned with his approach.  "I knew my views (and I personally) would benefit from engagement with the real world of commerce and professional ambition", he wrote.
  After graduating in 1995, Satin worked for a Manhattan law firm focusing on complex business litigation.  He also wrote about financial and legal issues.  He did not dislike his work, but felt he was "sleepwalking" because he was not doing what he loved, writing about visionary politics.  With six former law school classmates, he began planning a political newsletter that could accommodate all he was learning about business and law.  In 1998 he returned to Washington, D.C., to launch Radical Middle Newsletter.
  As the title indicates, it sought to distance itself from New Age politics.  If the term "New Age" suggests utopianism, the term "radical middle" suggests, for Satin and others, keeping at least one foot firmly on the ground.  Satin attempted to embrace the promise but also the balance implied by the term.  One feature story is entitled "Tough on Terrorism, and Tough on the Causes of Terrorism".  Another feature story attempts to go beyond polarized positions on biotechnology.  Another argues that corporate activity abroad can best be seen as neither inherently moral nor inherently imperialistic, but as a "chance for mutual learning".  The board of advisors of Radical Middle Newsletter signaled Satin's new direction.  It was politically diverse, and many of its members sought to promote dialogue or collaboration across ideological divides.  By the end of 2004 it included John Avlon, Don Edward Beck, Jerry H. Bentley, Esther Dyson, Mark P. Painter, Shelley Alpern of the Social Investment Forum, James Fallows of the New America Foundation, Jane Mansbridge of the Harvard Kennedy School, John D. Marks and Susan Collin Marks of Search for Common Ground, and William Ury, co-author of Getting to Yes.
  Radical Middle Newsletter proved controversial.  Many responded positively to Satin's new direction.  A professor of management, for example, wrote that unlike Satin's former newsletter, Radical Middle spoke about "reality".  Scholarly books began citing articles from the newsletter.  In a book on globalization, Walter Truett Anderson said Radical Middle "carries the encouraging news of an emerging group with a different voice, one that is 'nuanced, hopeful, adult'. ... It is essentially a willingness to listen to both sides of the argument."  But three objections were often heard.  Some critics accused Satin of misguided policy proposals, as when peace studies scholar Michael N. Nagler wrote that the article "praising humanitarian military intervention as the 'peace movement' of our time, is nothing short of an insult ... to the real peace movement" [emphasis in original].  Other critics accused Satin of abandoning his old constituency, as when author and former New Options advisor David Korten chided him for consciously choosing pragmatism over idealism.  There were also accusations of elitism, as when the executive editor of Yes!  magazine said Satin favored globalization because it appealed to his interests and those of his "law school buddies".
  New Options Newsletter was based on the theories set forth in New Age Politics.  But Satin's approach to his radical middle project was eclectic and experimental. His contribution to radical centrist political theory, the book Radical Middle, was not published until 2004, the newsletter's sixth year.  Until then, the only glimpse Satin gave of his larger vision appeared in an article he wrote for an academic journal.
caption: KFC in Vietnam.  Satin's Radical Middle Newsletter saw American investment abroad as a "chance for mutual learning".
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