Jay mandle devotes most of his argument to setting up a straw man—the notion that those of us who have opposed Washington’s corporate-driven global economic policies are “protectionists,” ignorant of the textbook benefits of expanded trade, or else people with …
Horst brand faults me for failing to identify market ideology as a “coherent system of thought, embodying a politically legitimating purpose.” I don’t think that this charge withstands even a casual reading of my essay, which inveighs at length against …
The Politics of Meaning: Restoring Hope and Possibility in an Age of Cynicism by Michael Lerner Addison-Wesley, 1996 338 pp $24, $13 paper Those of us who are trying to rethink left politics cannot avoid coming to terms with Michael …
In his article “Markets and Social Pain” (Dissent, Winter 1998), James B. Rule argues that market ideology “poses a historic challenge to the kind of thinking we do in Dissent.” He observes that no question is currently more important for …
There’s something odd about living in a city of three million (and not having it be New York). What’s odd is this: live theater. Chicago has pages of it. Maybe a third as much as New York’s, often at a …
HONG KONG’S “transition” seems to have faded from the international headlines. Contrary to the expectations of doom and gloom, the handover to China, or the “takeover,” as the New York Times put it on July 1, did not have a …
Some of us Dissenters agitated year after year for a design overhaul and a new logo for the magazine. So I had high hopes when the revolution began last January, that is, when Michael Walzer, Mitchell Cohen, the staff, and …
Allen Graubard notes my claim that the alliance between so-called progressive school reformers and conservative critics who dominate our public education debates serves only the latter’s purposes. As the growing strength of voucher plans and for-profit contractors (such as Chris …
When historians of ideas go to work on the last decade of the twentieth century, the market will surely appear as one of our intellectual totems. What the Rights of Man were to the French Revolution—or what Manifest Destiny or …
One hundred fifty years after its publication, and almost a decade after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, can something still be learned from The Communist Manifesto? The Manifesto is perhaps the most unabashedly rhetorical and flamboyant of Marx …
Mitchell Cohen’s essay “Why I’m Still ‘Left’ ” (Dissent, Spring 1997) presents a strong argument for the continuing relevance of a “left” political identity. Cohen addresses the widespread sense that “left” politics has become outmoded, a sense given powerful expression …
Underworld by Don DeLillo Scribner, 1997 827 pp $27.50 Underworld has the makings of a masterpiece. It’s a novel of the historical imagination on a vast scale, with uncompromising perceptual rigor. On the level of the sentence, it pulls off …
The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century by Michael Denning Verso, 1996 556 pp $25, cloth; $20, paper In 1950, Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) published Yertle the Turtle. A brief summary of this illustrated story …
In a recent essay in Dissent (“The Real Costs of Education,” Spring 1996), Richard Rothstein provided an illuminating critique of the contention by many critics of the public schools that budgets have steadily risen over the past three decades while …
Why should college and university professors have job security, when so many other Americans are losing theirs? From U.S. News & World Report to the Los Angeles Times to the Washington Post, powerful voices are asking that question, and answering …
