Do some artists—authors, painters, composers—have an uncanny capacity to jell a political moment and anticipate the next in their own media? It’s an old, admittedly romantic question, and it crossed my mind as I watched Patrice Chéreau’s treatment of Leoš …
In the still unfolding national debate about the economy, everything opposed by the extreme Right and the Republican Congressional caucus (the two can hardly be separated) is labeled as socialism. Repeal the Bush tax cuts? Obama wants to redistribute wealth. …
“The Socialist movement is as wide as the world,” Eugene V. Debs told the large crowds that came to hear him all over the United States, “… its mission is to win the world, the whole world, from animalism, and …
On October 8, 2009, a woman from Hanoi named Tran Khai Thanh Thuy was on her way to Hai Phong, a city on Vietnam’s coast, to witness the trial of six pro-democracy activists. But she would never reach the courthouse. …
My object is to defend Barack Obama against attacks on him by what has been his liberal constituency. Again and again he is accused of timidity and excessive caution for not fighting for their agenda. The assumption is that his …
Welfare is the most despised public institution in America. Public education is the most iconic. To associate them with each other will strike most Americans as bizarre, even offensive. The link would be less surprising to nineteenth-century reformers for whom …
Despite the black family in the White House, this seems an odd moment to think about the possibilities for minority mobility and ethno-racial integration. Recent Census Bureau data demonstrate what we could have guessed from past economic downturns: African Americans …
Although much ink has been spilled on the contemporary economic crisis, one question remains puzzling: what happened to the European Left? Capitalism is in crisis; greed, irresponsible behavior, neoliberal ideology, and unrestrained markets are seen as largely to blame, and …
Sometime this summer, if all goes well, the United States will disengage its combat troops from Iraq—and next summer from Afghanistan. In the Dissent/Penn Press book Getting Out, a number of our writers look at historical examples of imperial and …
In the field of performance art, Marina Abramović is a legend, and her recently concluded six-week show, Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, has been a turning point in giving performance …
Jesse Larner sounds a shrill alarm in his broadside against hate crime laws (“Hate Crime/Thought Crime,” Spring 2010), raising a variety of seemingly dire libertarian, First Amendment, and slippery-slope arguments. Yet, despite the fact that federal and state hate crime …
Early in the morning of June 28, 2009, the president of Honduras, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, was rousted out of his bed by soldiers and sent out of the country in his pajamas. It was an old-fashioned coup d’état, evoking, seemingly, …
The idea of the nation-state is in a grip of two pictures: first, the nation as an extended family; and second, its territory as home. The nation as an extended family is a metaphor for an ethnic nation, whereas a …
Michael Foot, who died on March 3, 2010, at the age of ninety-six, was the soul of the democratic Left in England. His political engagements started in the late 1930s, with editorials against the appeasement policy of Neville Chamberlain and …
Against the background of Barack Obama’s attempt to defend the idea of “two states for two peoples” in Israel/Palestine, consider a recent talk given by the Palestinian Sufian Abu-Zayda. Abu-Zayda is fifty years old. He was born in the Jabalya …
