All African wisdom is to be found in oral culture—in words, speech, symbols, and rhythm. So the highest form of artistic expression is storytelling: not merely the narrative as such, but the whole scene of storyteller and audience, with pauses …
The idea of a market-based form of socialism was first given serious attention in the 1920s, when it was promoted by moderates within the socialist movement as an alternative to the marketless form of socialism identified with Marx’s vision of …
This is a moment for questions. Probably the ones we ask ourselves are not very different from those our readers would ask. So here’s an effort by one Dissent editor to provide, not exhaustive or definitive, but brief and provisional …
Moshe Lewin is one of the leading scholars of Soviet history in the United States, currently professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include The Gorbachev Phenomenon, Lenin’s Last Struggle, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power, and The …
There is a nascent women’s movement in Eastern Europe, different from that in the West. Where the women’s movement in the West was built in a milieu of relative economic plenty, feminism in the East is being built in a …
When Ron Carey learned that he had been elected Teamsters union (IBT) president, his first words, addressed to the old-guard officials who were using the union’s treasury as their private money market fund, were: “The party’s over.” An unstated message, …
The problems of the American health care system have been with us a long time. In 1948 Harry Truman fought for National Health Insurance (NHI); in the 1950s and 1960s political efforts concentrated on Medicare, yet even that was viewed …
All over the world today, but most interestingly and frighteningly in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, men and women are reasserting their local and particularist, their ethnic, religious, and national identities. The tribes have returned, and the drama of …
Gertrude Ezorsky presents a powerfully reasoned argument in favor of raising out of misery that part of the American population that has been relegated to the most miserable jobs and deprived of civil rights and humane treatment. The book starts …
John Diggins has written an irritating but provocative book. First, the annoyances: He calls the work a history of the left in the United States but slights everyone but intellectuals. He says almost nothing about the labor movement, but devotes …
It was raining when we pulled up in front of a low, nondescript factory in Tver, two hours’ drive northeast of Moscow. The Tveris glass plant, built as a state enterprise, was celebrating its first anniversary of employee ownership. Tveris …
There is a touch of farce to some incidents in the Iran-contra affair: Robert MacFarlane carries a cake from a Tel Aviv bakery as a gift on his secret mission to Teheran; Fawn Hall smuggles official documents out of Oliver …
Legalization of drugs, or decriminalization, means different things to different people. For some it means taking the crime or the money out of the drug business. For others it has become a rallying cry, in much the same way that …
The growing importance of Islam was made suddenly clear with the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the subsequent rise of Moslem political activism and religious fundamentalism in countries as disparate as Syria, Sudan, the ex-Soviet Central Asian republics, and Algeria. Far …
“Civil society” became a catchword for the democratic dissidents of East-Central Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. For them, the creation of a vibrant sphere of voluntary associations outside of state structures represented both the most practical and attractive democratic …
