Recently, a number of French intellectuals endorsed an appeal urging Europeans to address seriously the negative consequences on social life of neoliberal economic trends. The following is an abridged version of their “Call,” translated and edited for a U.S. audience. …
Editors: I very much appreciated the symposium on Jeffrey C. Isaac’s critique of a revived progressivism and his hymn to localist democracy (“The Poverty of Progressivism,” Fall 1996). Still, I am concerned that the discussion surrounding the piece so quickly …
Editors: Nicolaus Mills (Affirmative Action Symposium, Fall1995) is correct to point out that “[t]he left needs to acknowledge all that affirmative action cannot do…” and that “liberals [should] worry more about…undoing [the past] altogether [rather than compensating for it].” Affirmative …
We mourn the death of our friend and comrade, former Dissent editor George Eckstein.
Editors: It is true, as Dennis Wrong wrote (“PR on PC” Spring 1994) that political correctness has been widely discredited and often ridiculed (though it is significant that this happens far more often outside than inside academia). However, the fact …
Editors: Robert Post’s critique of “liberal” First Amendment theory, “Outrageous Speech and the Constitution: Thoughts on Hustler v. Falwell” [Dissent, Summer 1990] raises more issues than can be treated in a letter. However, a few points should not pass without …
Editors: Writing the history of Local 1199 (Upheaval in the Quiet Zone) was a humbling experience. We were (and remain) sympathetic to the political ends of the union and impressed by the extraordinary achievement of leaders and members alike in …
Upon receiving my Summer 1989 issue of Dissent, I was dismayed to see that you had changed the title of my review of Arno Mayer’s book without consulting me. My title— “The Holocaust as Byproduct?” — was meant to focus …
Last March Dissent organized, under the leadership of editor Fred Siegel, a round-table discussion on the problems of New York, with emphasis on the possibilities of solutions. We print below a transcript, sharply reduced for reasons of space. The round …
We have lost a dear friend. Muriel Gardiner was a distinguished psychoanalyst, author of several valuable books on psychological and social themes, and the wife of Joseph Buttinger, a leader of the Austrian socialist movement during the 1930s and, for …
Editors: I was impressed by Bob Kuttner’s article, “Jobs,” in the Winter 1984 Dissent. I was struck by the boldness and simplicity of the “procurement” approach to full employment and economic growth. Pointing first to the experience of World War II—when, …
Editors: Richard Appelbaum, Peter Dreier, and Michael Harrington (“A Faded Dream: Housing in America,” Dissent, Winter 1984) rightly argue that the free market cannot solve America’s housing problem, but their proposed solutions neglect an important consideration: most Americans don’t want …
Editors: Gordon Beadle, in “Orwell and the Neoconservatives”(Dissent, Winter 1984), has disposed of the neoconservative attempt to “steal” the Orwell who wrote throughout his life as an unorthodox leftist and fought in Spain on the side of the revolutionary anti-Stalinist …
Editors: I have been much interested in your article by Michael Walzer on “Failed Totalitarianism” in the Summer 83 Dissent. It has set me to thinking that possibly we (in the U.S.) are living in a period of somewhat “Failed …
Michael Harrington argues persuasively in his article in Dissent, Fall 1982 [“A Path for America”] that we will soon be entering the age of social democracy in America. The failure of Reagan’s policies to end the recession is becoming apparent …
