Supply and the Housing Crisis: A Debate
How do we achieve housing for all?
Spring 2025
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After Globalization
Neoliberal globalization shifted the social risks of the economic system away from companies and the wealthy and toward workers and citizens. As this system unravels, leftists must develop a politics of social protection to counter a surging right.
Balancing Act
If two recent analyses of populism agree on one thing, it’s that democracy and capitalism have fallen out of balance. Less clear is how—or whether—the truce between them should be restored.
The Gospel of Wealth
How did the “moral economy”—a concept that once encompassed a radical critique of capitalism—become the province of billionaires?
Booked: The End of an Illusion
Born on the radical left and then seized by the right, has the concept of “capitalism” outlived its usefulness?
Naming Our Desire: How Do We Talk About Socialism in America?
The millennial embrace of socialism has allowed a new generation to draw inspiration from a long legacy of struggle.
The Elusive Karl Polanyi
Since the Great Recession, Karl Polanyi has become a totem for social democracy. But as a new biography of him suggests, Polanyi himself is an uneasy fit as spokesman for any specific social order.
Breaking with Capitalist Orthodoxy
Western capitalism has not been functioning well in recent years. But there is nothing inevitable about its collapse. A more innovative, sustainable, and inclusive economic system is necessary.
Karl Polanyi for President
Whether they realize it or not, millions of Bernie Sanders supporters across the country have embraced a version of socialism developed by political economist Karl Polanyi in his 1944 classic, The Great Transformation. Dissent explains.
The Return of Karl Polanyi
Karl Polanyi, whose ideas took form in 1920s Vienna in direct opposition to the free-market orthodoxy of Ludwig von Mises, has gained belated recognition as one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. His central argument, contra von Mises, is that a self-regulating economic system is a completely imaginary construction, impossible to achieve or maintain.
Socialism and the Current Crisis 
Today, because of the crisis, the relevance of socialism can and must be addressed not simply as a desirable long-term goal but as a question of practical policy, focused on securing jobs, benefits, and social provision. After giving some examples …
Keynes Lost and Found
Keynes: The Return of the Master by Robert Skidelsky Public Affairs, 2009, 256 pp., $25.95 Keynes: The Rise, Fall, and Return of the 20th Century’s Most Influential Economist by Peter Clarke Bloomsbury, 2009, 211 pp., $20 A fierce debate raged …
Capitalism as Catastrophe
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein Metropolitan Books, 2007, 576 pp., $28.00 A strange contradiction afflicts nonhierarchical social movements. Those activists who are most hesitant to create formal mechanisms for naming leaders give the media …
Can Social Democracies Survive in the Global South?
To succeed, social-democratic movements in the global South must steer a course toward a society without poverty or social exclusion, avoiding two current utopian projects. The first utopia is a neoliberal fantasy, the self-regulating market. In the words of Karl …
Rediscovering Social Democracy
Two shibboleths dominate contemporary discussion about the future of the left in advanced industrial democracies. The first is that globalization is creating a fundamentally new environment for leaders and publics, imposing burdens and constraining choices. The second is that traditional …
