When Francois Mitterrand came to power in 1981, he promised a “rupture with capitalism.” If his policies of the first year were not the clean break with the past they were supposed to be, they were an audaciously consistent and …
Walk north on a balmy evening from Lincoln Center in Manhattan along Columbus Avenue for fifteen or twenty blocks and treat yourself to a vision of youth ala mode. No costume is outré when clothes are expected to make statements …
For the last two hundred years, with the exception of a brief interval between the two World Wars, Poland has been either partitioned, occupied, or governed by proxy. Squeezed between Russia and Germany, Poles took nourishment and continuity as a …
Though the headlines may tell another story, to anyone living in Vienna the most remarkable thing about Europe after Chernobyl is how most remarkably like Europe before Chernobyl it is. In the direct aftermath of the accident, Austria did join …
The following remarks were delivered at the Socialist Scholars Conference in New York City in April 1986, at the panel on Israel and the U.S. Left.” The participants were Noam Chomsky, Ellen Willis of the Village Voice, and myself.—P.B. The …
The Klondike Gold Rush of 1898 began a pattern of uneven economic development that continues nearly a century later in the Yukon, that vast, mountainous territory in the northwest corner of Canada. The discovery of an untapped resource creates fabulous …
Virtually every column I’ve read on New York City’s unfolding municipal corruption scandals seeks salvation in greater citizen vigilance and participation in public life. A prosecutor warns that only an aroused electorate can wrest reform from foot-dragging politicians. A senator …
Lasch argues that the values of tradition, family, and personal responsibility find their defenders today among conservatives, not among the left. But American conservatism has a fatal flaw: it fails to see that it is not some liberal “new class” …
The Reykjavik summit may have been a failure— as the demeanor of its participants clearly indicated when it was over; or, it may have been a tremendous success—after the participants reconsidered their Icelandic labors twenty-four hours later, both here and …
For individuals of a certain age and experience, Elizabeth Durbin’s sympathetic but clear-headed exploration of the British Labour party’s attempt in the 1930s to define a program at once intellectually coherent and politically appealing recalls their own groping for a …
At present I’m just an orange that’s been trodden on by a very dirty boot.” “[The BBC’s] atmosphere is something halfway between a girls’ school and a lunatic asylum, and all we are doing at present is useless, or slightly …
In 1937 George Orwell went to Spain; in 1980 Christopher Dickey went to Central America. Both set out to write about wars—Orwell to do articles on the Spanish Civil War for left-wing British periodicals, Dickey to do articles on the …
According to a new public opinion poll conducted for the Sunday Times of London, “South African whites are increasingly unhappy with the apartheid system and a majority want the nationalist leader Nelson Mandela freed from prison.” Even as the sound …
Jesse Jackson is an important figure in American politics and a 1984 presidential candidate who stands ready to repeat that race in 1988. Nonetheless, Jackson is not a credible, legitimate, or desirable leader for black America, argues black Yale political …
When compared to men like Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Malcolm X seems no more than a thorned bud standing in the shadow of sequoias. Given national recognition by television in 1959, Malcolm X was just beginning to realize …
