Forty years ago in Dissent, Irving Howe and Lewis Coser wrote: “To will the image of socialism is a constant struggle for definition.” Ever since then one of the distinguishing characteristics of Dissent has been that “struggle for definition.” The …
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. …
Out on the high plains and mountains of Montana and Idaho, the gray wolf is returning to part of its old homeland. Responsibility for the wolf’s comeback ought to rest with the many government land agencies that have spent millions …
There has been a certain rapprochement between the American and European lefts over the past several years—a rapprochement in weakness and uncertainty, perhaps, but one marked also by a recognition of common interests and values, and common problems, too. One …
Midway through Year Two of Bill Clinton’s presidency, the most striking aspect of his tenure in office is the demobilization, the silence, of the coalition that brought him to power. As far as the nineties are concerned, the Schlesinger thirty-year …
One of the fault lines within political economy is between theorists of continuity and theorists of discontinuity. The former argue that current institutions are a continuation of the past with only superficial changes. The latter argue that big changes are …
In front of the Mississippi State Capitol, resting securely between the artillery that points toward Mississippi Street, is a statue dedicated “to the women of the Confederacy whose pious ministrations to our wounded soldiers soothed the last hours of those …
Politically it may be correct for American foreign policy to be “involved” without being “overexpanded,” as Stanley Hoffmann advises and as Clinton’s waffling already makes a foregone conclusion. Our foreign economic policy, by contrast, has been aggressive, not just in …
The American left has proved very adept at identifying the misuses of American military power and the distortion of national priorities that defense spending has entailed. But despite the left’s consistent attention to military matters, it lacks a coherent approach …
The Clinton administration’s 1993 decision to establish a Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations has opened a far-ranging debate about the U.S. collective bargaining system. Organized labor generally argues that its priority should be strengthening workers’ rights to organize …
We print here a substantial part of the testimony given in May of this year by the political philosopher Jurgen Habermas at a public hearing of a Commission of Inquiry of the German Parliament on “the history and consequences of …
Stanley Hoffmann seems to believe that the United States cannot and really should not behave as the singular great power that it is. He offers as an alternative full American membership in “a kind of world steering committee” of various …
In May 1970, as a college student in Portland, Oregon, I took part in the national campus strike protesting the U.S. invasion of Cambodia and the killing of four students at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard. Every …
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 …
The Waterworks is E.L. Doctorow’s latest meditation on history, memory, genius, and the City of New York. And also on municipal corruption, big-city newspapers (and toadying big-city newspaper tycoons), science, technology, the homeless, and the evils of private health care …
