Progressives have forgotten how to think about the constitutional dimensions of economic life. Work, livelihood, and opportunity; material security and insecurity; poverty and dependency; union organizing, collective bargaining, and workplace democracy: for generations of American reformers, the constitutional importance of …
In January 2010, I met a Bulgarian friend for dinner in a Georgetown pizza parlor. This friend, whom I will call Svetozara, had recently immigrated to the United States and was looking for a job in D.C. Recently divorced after …
However the French presidential elections turn out in the coming weeks, the campaign has produced one memorable moment—when François Hollande, the Socialist candidate, delivered a sharp critique of the austerity measures imposed on Greece by the European Union and the …
The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India by Siddhartha Deb Faber and Faber, 2011, 272 pp. In referring to his book as “a portrait of the New India,” Siddhartha Deb has opted to engage in a …
Even if you weren’t aware of the rising intensity of debates over food politics in recent years, the face-off between Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama probably caught your attention. One of Michelle Obama’s most high profile acts as First Lady …
The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics by Thomas Byrne Edsall Doubleday, 2012, 272 pp. Arizona has sold its state capitol. Government budgets are contracting, especially when it comes to services and goods essential for the poor. …
The 1950s: The food is salty, starchy, soothing. Milk arrives in glass bottles; eggs are delivered by a farmer. We can our own tomatoes and fruit. Frozen food is too expensive. I feed sugar cubes to the junkman’s horse. The …
In Henry James’s short story “The Middle Years,” an ailing writer is troubled by the conviction that only now, after many books, has he begun to find his true voice. All the work he’s done so far has been nothing …
This essay puts forward the basic premises around which the Occupy movements in the United States are organized, locates the movement globally, argues that the movements themselves are the ones that should determine their own success, and then distinguishes these …
I was seventeen and taking an elective course in Earth and Environmental Science. We were learning about farming and the food system—genetic modification, land use, organic labeling—when our teacher assigned us an article about beef. The article explained the following …
Michael Kazin’s bracing intervention asks us to consider why, despite circumstances of rising inequality and ample sources of discontent, it is the Right, not the Left, that has more effectively mobilized populist instincts and possibilities. His thoughtful historical answer is …
The Port Huron Statement of Students for a Democratic Society is the most ambitious, the most specific, and the most eloquent manifesto in the history of the American Left.
A decade before Abram Hewitt defeated Henry George’s bid for mayor of New York in 1886, he delivered a more lasting blow to the American Left. A prominent northern congressman and chair of the Democratic National Committee, Hewitt played a …
In December of 2011, I hosted a preview showing in New Jersey of Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation for an audience of approximately four hundred film-savvy professionals and retirees, predominantly Jewish. Before the show, I asked how many had ever seen …
Organic farming has been hijacked by big business. Local food can have a larger carbon footprint than products shipped in from overseas. Fair trade doesn’t address the real concerns of farmers in the global South. As the food movement has …
