Spring 2025

Will Hutton and Anthony Giddens are playing leading roles in the British debate on globalization and the “third way.” This fall, their jointly edited book Global Capitalism will be published in the United States by the New Press. It begins …

Ordinarily, when a writer responds to a review, he discusses what is said in it. As Chomsky can’t be bothered, for those who missed what I wrote, I will summarize it in a few sentences. I said that Chomsky dismisses …

The governor of California charges that an industry-backed proposal to deregulate toxic waste disposal would put the polluters in charge of the pollution control setup. The director of the state health department adds that the plan would create “a backlog …

Aryeh Neier’s outrage over a “diatribe against NATO’s military intervention” (“Inconvenient Facts,” Dissent, Spring 2000) is understandable: the issues are too serious for that. His essay is presented as a review of my book The New Military Humanism (NMH), which …

In 1998, Congress passed the Internet Tax Freedom Act. The law will keep Internet purchases virtually tax free until October 2001. It also created an Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce. The commission is made up of eight representatives from state …

Not since Leonid Brezhnev’s death in 1982 has Russia had such a prospect of political stability. Vladimir Putin’s election to the presidency this past spring consummated the first voluntary transfer of power—instead of by death or a coup—in the entire …

A competent polemicist, David Goodhart has produced a slick diatribe against left critics of the third way in general and, in particular, my annotation of the Blair-Schroeder manifesto. He’s also reproduced in his writing the defects of the politics he’s …

The governing systems of the world economy have failed—in their missions and in their propaganda. Protests in Seattle, at Davos, and lately in Washington have crystallized the spirit of resentment, aimed at tiny elites with great power. Michel Camdessus, managing …

The Paradox of American Democracy: Elites, Special Interests, and the Betrayal of Public Trust by John B. Judis Pantheon, 2000, 305 pp., $26 John Judis has written a valuable book of the kind that rarely interests commercial publishers anymore. It …

Who are the nonvoters? Although they can be found in every stratum of society, there is no doubt they are disproportionately poor, less educated, black, and Hispanic—generally viewed as liberal and Democratic-leaning groups. Moreover, this bias, at least in terms …

When Americans tune inward, what do they hear in “globalizing” times? All too often that “the market” is the solution—whatever the trouble. It’s reminiscent of bad Marxism. Remember the advanced theorists who insisted: nationalize the means of production, all problems …

The Blair-Schroeder third-way manifesto published in the Spring issue (“The Third Way/Die Neue Mitte, annotated by Joanne Barkan) is not a pretty document. But it does not deserve the graffiti that Joanne Barkan splattered all over it. Or rather it …