Fall 2025

I support a war on the grounds that the current regime of the Ba’ath Party in Iraq is a criminal state that has gone beyond the pale even as judged by the very low standards of the Middle East region, …

The name James Chapin may not be familiar to many Dissent readers. He didn’t write a great deal for the magazine. Until the last year or so of his life—when he turned out superb political analysis for an unlikely outlet, …

Like a few million other people, I consider George Orwell one of my favorite political writers, but I don’t riffle through his books, looking for wisdom whenever a political crisis comes along. In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, …

Telecom companies are staggering into the emergency rooms of the world economy, candidates for life support or even euthanasia. Long viewed as leading the way into the “information age” of productivity and enlightenment, they are suddenly presenting symptoms of what …

Civic Nationalism and the Left

WHAT WAS THIS? I’d been invited to some Washington think tank for a May Day symposium on socialism, which also seemed to be a reunion of the old Shachtman-Meany-Kirkland Social Democrats USA. What strange error had led the planners to …

Hackers never were part of the mainstream establishment, but their current reputation as villains of cyberspace is a far cry from the early days when, first and foremost, they were seen as ardent if quirky programmers, capable of near-miraculous, unorthodox …

How long has it been since we heard that old catchphrase “late capitalism”? The collapse of the Soviet Empire, and the rush of the leftovers of “real existing socialism” to find a place in the global market economy, give that …

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 …

I love my country. I love its passionate and endlessly inventive culture, its remarkably diverse landscape, its agonizing and wonderful history. I particularly cherish its civic ideals-social equality, individual liberty, a populist democracy-and the unending struggle to put their laudable, …

Union Perspective on the War on Terrorism

“An immature outlook on life”

Slowly, an intelligent opposition to the Bush administration’s domestic and foreign policies is taking shape. Not only from leftists: some thoughtful conservatives have begun to worry out loud about the ideological stridency and rigidity of their own leaders. There was …