Ever since Marx’s musings about the lumpenproletariat, the “underclass” has unnerved the left. Members of an underclass rarely behave in a manner leftists consider politically appropriate to their condition, let alone a manner that invites sympathy from a broader public. …
In my article in the Summer 1990 Dissent, I outlined what went wrong with the Nicaraguan revolution under Sandinista leadership. The article was written in March 1990. Events since then have confirmed the gist of what I said. One of …
I have been a subscriber to your journal for over a year and have found it enjoyable and stimulating. However, the Summer 1990 issue contained an unpleasant surprise: a highly questionable piece by Paul Berman about the Sandinista loss in …
A recurrent theme in three of the books under review is that the Palestinian intifada has made a peace settlement a goal of utmost urgency. The cycle of rebellion and repression is driving Israelis further to the right and Palestinians …
The term “scientific socialism” is an oxymoron. Science pertains to the study of what is, whereas socialism is a vision of what can or should be. To deny scientific status to socialism is not to denigrate its central importance. It …
In January 1988 Commentary magazine published an essay by a black professor of English at San Jose State University. “On Being Black and Middleclass” introduced Shelby Steele as a new interpreter of American race relations. Since then, Steele’s work has …
Can the mind confront a harder task than to imagine—truly, deeply to imagine—circumstances radically at variance with those of the immediate moment? Such an effort must be especially hard for intellectuals, who tend to impose theories drawn from the present …
Three middle-aged friends emerge from a movie cubicle in a postmodern pink stucco cinemadrome, where they have just seen the latest David Lynch film, Wild at Heart. Crossing the Culture Center, they confront twenty-three restaurants and food shops and, after …
We present here a slightly condensed version of a talk given by Bob Rae, leader of Canada’s New Democratic party (NDP) in Ontario and the new premier of that province. The text is taken from the Toronto Globe and Mail, …
The following interview with Alec Nove, the distinguished economist and author of The Economics of Feasible Socialism, was conducted by Dissent editor Irving Howe in late October 1990.—Eds. IH: It seems likely that there will be many changes and modifications …
Capitalism doesn’t work: the 1930s proved that. Communism doesn’t work: the 1980s proved that. So what works? Socialism—of the democratic variety, of course. But, viewed concretely, as it is applied in practice, what is socialism today? The answer is—the mixed …
Justice, Gender, and the Family by Susan Moller Okin Basic Books, 1989, 216 pp. Justice, Gender, and the Family hopes to continue work that political theorist Susan Moller Okin began in her useful Women in Western Political Thought (1979). The …
American socialism has endured many crises. But these have mostly been, or appeared to be, crises of agency and strategy, brought on by repeated failures to build the movement or by capitalism’s disconcerting capacity to emerge strengthened from depression and …
The State Department’s decision to stop supporting the Cambodian rebels reminds me of an experience I had that began in Bangkok and ended in a refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border. Although it happened three years ago, it might as …
Why go beyond an advanced welfare state—beyond what Robert Heilbroner calls “real but slightly imaginary” Sweden? How would the passage from welfare state to “socialism” be manifest? To create a more democratic society. By expanding substantive, that is, social and …
