Articles - Dissent Magazine

A Museum for the Working Class

Joanne McNeil ▪ Winter 2023

The Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art offers a place for working-class art without tokenizing or empty gestures of representation.

Disastrous Job Losses in Michigan

Marc Baldwin ▪ Spring 1987

It was expected that General Motors would announce plant closings. But when the announcement came last November, the scale was astounding: 29,000 workers in 11 plants laid off. Almost two-thirds of the affected unionized workers (17,450) live in Michigan. As …

China: A Specter Is Haunting Communism

Joseph Clark ▪ Spring 1987

It’s almost as though an “iron law” operates in all the communist countries, varied though they are. They seem haunted by the specter of democracy, especially when they seek to reform their moribund economies. Their economic growth and individual well-being …

Letters

Editors ▪ February 28, 2023

Editors: Julian Mayfield’s letter rebutting Lewis Coser’s assessment of his piece in the “Young Radicals” symposium was printed without comment, I suppose, on grounds that it damns itself. It does. One hates to fall back on labels, but the fact …

Whose Taxes, Whose Economy?

Ben Seligman ▪ February 28, 2023

Make no mistake about it—the great American economy is stumbling over its feet. Between 1958 and 1962, according to the Council of Economic Advisers, the gap between what we produced and what we could have produced amounted to almost $1000 …

The Mexican Revolution Today

Octavio Paz ▪ February 28, 2023

The revolutionary movement, as a search for—and momentarily finding of—our own selves, transformed Mexico. To be oneself is always to become that other person who is one’s real self, that hidden promise or possibility. In one sense, then, the Revolution …

McCarthyism, Angela Davis, & the Berrigans

Michael Harrington ▪ June 1971

I AM NOT, I HOPE, INDULGING in that most middle-aged of pastimes, boasting of how terrible things were when I was young. And yet, it must be said that, for all the current talk of repression in American society, what …

The Moon: Enough is Enough

H.P. ▪ September – October 1969

So we have left footprints on the face of the moon. An admirable feat. We can congratulate ourselves, we can be proud, we have shown that it can be done. Most likely, it had to be done even though the …

Styron and His Black Critics

Jervis Anderson ▪ March – April 1969

ONE AFTERNOON last summer I happened to be watching a TV discussion among five or six black teenagers. All were speaking out of a deep pride in their blackness, as it is almost mandatory to do today, and also out …

Teaching Negro History

Henry Pachter ▪ March – April 1969

Like other minorities, black Americans have a history of their own peculiar sufferings and peculiar experiences, as well as special forms of resistance or of protective evasion. But this history is distinguished from the history of all other minorities in …

Michael Walzer Responds

Michael Walzer ▪ February 21, 2023

A quick word from a third Michael. I agree entirely with the second Michael’s response to the first, but want to add a few comments as co-editor of Dissent. Instead of arguing about the state of the left, Michael Wreszin …