What lies behind the veil of economics? Vision and ideology. What does the complicated subject matter of economic analysis conceal from view? Our deep-lying, perhaps unanalyzable notions concerning human nature, history, and the like; and the various disguises by which …
Since the early years of the twentieth century, historians have characterized the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the preeminent organization of American trade unionists from the 1890s through the early 1930s, as craft-dominated, procapitalist, and politically tame. America’s pioneer labor …
No one seriously interested in higher education can afford to read The Closing of the American Mind. Or so the late Dwight Macdonald might have put it. He practically did. Substitute “international relations” for “higher education” and you have the …
Much of American political history can be interpreted as a long series of deliberate betrayals of some of the ideals that inspired most of the troops that fought and won our War of Independence. While they were fighting, these ideals …
Although Soviet writers have been repeatedly exhorted to employ the “weapon” of satire, the range of its “permissible” subjects steadily shrank over the years. The New Economic Policy of 1921-25, with its tolerance of a relatively pluralistic economic structure and …
When I saw the Soviet film Repentance in Moscow last year, it was still being withheld from general distribution. Since it could only be seen at private screenings in places like the Writers Union, it had the cachet of the …
America declared “war on poverty” twenty-five years ago, yet in most inner-city neighborhoods conditions are worse now than they were then. In the years since Michael Harrington opened an innocent nation’s eyes to the sorry reality of “the other America,” …
The Historikerstreit or historians’ controversy that erupted in summer 1986 was an intellectual event unprecedented in postwar West Germany. Its importance lies less in its originality or profundity than in its intensity. Never before have the “spirits” been so divided, …
The Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement will be ratified by the Senate this spring, setting new precedents for arms control agreements: (1) actual reductions in the number of nuclear warheads held by the superpowers; (2)asymmetrical reductions of weapons; (3) …
The deep farm crisis of recent years has made the urban majority aware of anguish in the countryside, even if the world of modern farming—and even more of farm policy—is so remote that it is hard for outsiders to grasp. …
The more thoughtful leaders of the American establishment realize that serious economic problems will be inherited from the Reagan administration. These include enormous budget and balance-of-trade deficits; a banking structure weakened by deregulation and vast indebtedness not only of developing …
When I first met Brendan Sexton in the mid-1930s, he was pure flame: an activist in the then still-vital Socialist party, a leader in the unemployed movement, a young man full of blazing energy. I saw him from a distance, …
After twenty-one years of Israeli occupation, the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza lingers on, with dire implications for the future of the entire area. Palestinians and Israelis compete in denying each other’s interests and aspirations, or, on …
The astonishing thing about the Reagan administration’s policy toward Nicaragua is its resiliency. Twice in the space of a year, it appeared that the administration’s sponsorship of a proxy war was on the brink of failure: in November 1986, when …
Lech Walesa says that glasnost makes him uneasy. “In my twenty-five years as an electrician I’ve had to tighten and loosen many screws. When tightening them I’ve broken only one, but I must have broken several hundred in my attempts …
