Two decades after the fall of the Wall seemed to announce – by default, as an unexpected gift – the triumph of democracy, optimism appears at best naïve, at worst an ideological manipulation of the most cynical type. The hope …
This is an interesting and well-written book with a clear argumentative thread: American politics is bedevilled by a ‘yahboo’ discourse that must be replaced by reasoned (liberal) argument. Dworkin thinks the Republicans and Democrats, and their respective supporters, would stop …
The collapse of communism in the Soviet Union has not put an end to the long- standing debate over the pertinence of the concept of totalitarianism or on its more or less limited usage. [1] Its physiognomy has, however, changed. …
Afghanistan’s struggle to emerge from nearly three decades of war and establish peace and order is one of the most watched democratic transitions in the world today. Observant onlookers may have noticed something that has the potential to jeopardise this …
I approach my theme here today indirectly. [1] In his book Just and Unjust Wars, adapting a remark of Trotsky’s about the dialectic Michael Walzer proposes the aphorism ‘You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in …
Editors: Ms. Lyn Julius, who wrote a Letter to the Editor in response to my review of Abbas Shiblak’s book, seems to have misread my conclusion. I do not conclude that the bombings against Jewish and other targets in Iraq …
Hannah Arendt, the German Jewish political philosopher who had escaped from a Nazi internment camp, [1] had obtained international fame and recognition in 1951 with her book The Origins of Totalitarianism. [2] Feeling compelled to witness the trial of Adolf …
The Iranian revolution was not only a godsend for those Muslims who identified with its cause, it was also a blessing for those among the American Left who saw it as a significant blow against the evil American Empire. For …
In 1946, George Orwell described a man who is “…thirty-five, but looks fifty. He is bald, has varicose veins and wears spectacles, or would wear them if his only pair were not chronically lost. If things are normal with him, …
Editor’s Note: Gay human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell gave the opening keynote speech at the Moscow Pride conference on 26 May 2007. Around 20 lesbian and gay campaigners were arrested. Many were abused, threatened and assaulted. Peter Tatchell was one …
Let me start with what I see as a crucial contribution of theorists of totalitarianism (like Claude Lefort but also Hannah Arendt) to contemporary social theory. [1] It is that they confront what Hannah Arendt called ‘the burden of events’ …
Few among us would argue with the importance of promoting human rights. No one wants to live under a government that lacks the consent of its own people – and no such government can claim legitimacy. The effort to secure …
Are pro-poor redistributive policies feasible in an increasingly integrated global market economy? That is the key question posed in Globalization and Egalitarian Redistribution. It is certainly a timely question. A recent United Nations University report reveals, for example, that the …
The former director of the London School of Economics, Anthony Giddens, was fond of saying that there were two dull things to say about globalisation: the first that it meant everything, the second that it meant nothing. Saskia Sassen seems …
André Glucksmann is a man of considerable intellectual courage and integrity, who has waged many important battles in the past to rescue the honour of the French left. A member of the generation of May ‘68, he was among the …
