Asked by the German periodical Die Zeit in August 1989 whether the opening of a MacDonald’s franchise in Moscow signified “the end of Communism,” Daniel Bell wrote the following reply.—Eds. To answer the question posed by Die Zeit directly would …
In 1956, Mao Zedong completed one of his proudest achievements: the abolition of private property in China. Over forty years later—March 17, 1999, to be exact—the Chinese Communist Party, led by Jiang Zemin, formally reversed course. The National People’s Congress …
As we approach the millennial year 2000, there seems to be a general expectation that the twenty-first century will be the Pacific Century. After about two thousand years of European centered civilization as we know it (in philosophy, religion, and …
Peter Glotz’s reply reminds me of the old witz: the young boy is asked, “Hans, where is your right ear?” “Right ear?” He raises his left hand, reaches over his head, and touches his right ear. So, with the reply. …
For five hundred years, Europe has been the center of world civilization. In that time, it initiated—one can even say invented—the idea and the fact of sustained economic growth. Since Galileo, it has been the cradle of modem technology, particularly …
I first met Irving Howe ca. 1938-39 in Alcove No. 1 at City College, the sandbox of radical politics. Revolutionary questions, from the theoretical to the practical, convulsed the Alcove: would the capitalist class peacefully surrender power if the working …
The European currency system today is in a shambles, the expectations of a unified monetary structure shattered. The paradox is that on January 1, 1993, all restrictions on the movement of capital within the European community were supposed to be …
Was the Soviet Union’s a planned economy? The simple, answer is no. Is a planned economy possible? That is a more difficult question to answer. Marx never had a theory of a planned economy, for he thought—from The Communist Manifesto …
History, said Oswald Spengler, is destiny. Combined with myth, the taproot of emotion, it becomes the fate of a people. Was destiny the foundation of the sonderweg, the “special path” to modernity that joined the powerful drive of Prussia with …
As we enter the 1990s, the outline of the twenty-first century, with respect to the configuration of issues and forces, already seems clear. We can identify four: 1. The collapse of communism 2. The reunification of Europe 3. The end …
We are today on the rising slope of a third technological revolution. It is a rising slope, for we have passed from the plus-minus stage of invention and innovation into the crucial period of diffusion. The rates of diffusion will …
We are pleased to print below two excerpts from a journal that Daniel Bell wrote after his trip to the Soviet Union last spring. The first excerpt describes a lecture he gave at the Leningrad State University.—Eds. In the afternoon, …
In the Communist Manifesto, which was completed in February 1848, Marx and Engels envisaged a society in which there would be only two classes—capitalist and worker, the few who owned the means of production and the many who lived by …
In 1956, the Regional Plan Association, a non-profit research agency, asked the Harvard School of Public Administration to conduct an economic and demographic survey of the New York metropolitan region—a 7,000-square-mile, 22-county complex that, with its core, inner ring, and …
I agree with much of what Dennis Wrong says in his “Reflections on the End of Ideology,” in the Summer 1960 issue of DISSENT. Mr. Wrong writes that the “end of ideology” is a fear of the “destructive mass emotions …
Socialist thought provides us with an imaginative and moral horizon.
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