Letters

On Socialist Thought

Editors:

Dissent is to be commended for publishing Robert Heilbroner’s essay and the critical responses to it. The essay and the various responses go to the heart of some of the most troubling aspects of the socialist tradition. It seems to me, however, that the whole discussion suffers from a certain abstractness that points to the need for a greater specificity about just what we mean when we speak of “democratic socialism.”

The democratic socialist tradition, it seems to me, has three great areas of strength and one great area of weakness. The merit of Heilbroner’s essay is that it forces us to face this weakness. The tradition is quite strong when it comes t...