This is a well-written, well-argued book. It is a critical assessment of the private pension system and an account of its transformation into a major element of capital accumulation and corporate finance strategy. The author devotes a large part of …
When it died last April, at age fifty-two, the liberal Christian magazine Christianity & Crisis left a host of mourners. The symbolism of its demise occurring close to Easter was not lost on them, and there was speculation about whether …
Whether moral decisions are evaluated by universal standards or by those of local traditions, moral conflicts are always contextual. Kant’s categorical imperative is absolutely universalistic, but its test cases are concrete and particular; one should, for example, return a deposit …
During the presidential campaign, Bill Clinton delivered a foreign policy speech in Los Angeles; the first question from the audience was a predictable, “Who are your foreign policy advisers going to be?” Clinton demurred, calling such considerations premature. Next, a …
There is an island that must be seen: a model that is being phased out. Hurry to visit before the last traces are obliterated, for the victors will not put up with any leftovers, and in Miami people are already …
My father moved in a world of stories. He told his own in World of Our Fathers and A Margin of Hope; he wrote about those of Faulkner and Hardy, Anderson and Wharton, Dreiser and Sholom Aleichem, Leskov and George …
Communist Russia, though oppressive and secretive, was an open book compared to the murky contradictions and competing ideological illusions that mark the new Russia. The country is far more open than it was, but it makes less sense. Furthermore, Westerners’ …
I have tried these last weeks at all hours of the day to evoke Irving’s voice, its cadence, its fluency, and a freshness of tone that the years never made stale. There were moments when I would listen so closely …
A specter is haunting Europe—and the world in general: the specter of Islamic fundamentalism. All the world powers have entered unto a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: the pope and the president of Russia, Helmut Kohl and Françors Mitterand, …
I met Irving Howe in 1970; I had written a review of a book about campus radicals and sent it unsolicited to Dissent; a few days later a postcard came back that was not a rejection, not a formal letter …
Bill Clinton’s charge that “we are working harder for less” was repeated at campaign bus stops all the way to the White House. Echoing a decade of policy debate among Democrats, he talked of the need for America to seek …
What was the source of Irving’s distinctive prose style? The lyricism that you find in World of Our Fathers, the tender and quizzical humor in that book, the immigrant pathos that manages to remain light, and the lightness that manages …
Not long ago Irving told me of a pact he and Alfred Kazin had made: whichever one died first would not be eulogized by the other. As it turned out, Kazin breaks the pact in these pages, as Irving would …
I first met Irving Howe ca. 1938-39 in Alcove No. 1 at City College, the sandbox of radical politics. Revolutionary questions, from the theoretical to the practical, convulsed the Alcove: would the capitalist class peacefully surrender power if the working …
I first encountered Irving during merger negotiations between his political organization, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, and mine, the New American Movement. It was 1979, and among NAM’s ex New Leftish, Gramsci-loving negotiators, Irving was known as the leader of …
