Last One Out  

The big question used to be, when did you leave the Communist Party? And the answer was always, too late, because the questioner had either left before you or had never joined. In this campaign season, the question is, why …















Behind the Masks  

Fanon: A Novel by John Edgar Wideman Houghton Mifflin, 2008, 240 pp., $24.00 The overall critical response to John Edgar Wideman’s Fanon was not positive. Carlin Romano wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “At a time when Barack Obama offers America …



The Legacy of the Clinton Bubble  

Bill Clinton after signing the Financial Services Modernization Act in 1999. Photo: Justin Lane/The New York Times/Redux The conventional wisdom has held that economic policy was a great success under Bill Clinton in the 1990s and a failure ever since. …





French Unions: Myths and Realities  

This past spring, French president Nicolas Sarkozy published a “point of view” article in the French newspaper Le Monde entitled “For Strong Unions.” After writing of his desire to enhance the “social dialogue,” he expressed his support for measures that …



B.J. Widick (1910-2008)  

B.J. Widick recently passed away at the age of 97. His death brings to a close the rich and lengthy life of a notable figure in the trade union and socialist movements. Born in a Serbian village in 1910, Widick …