Liberal Commitments
An interview with Michael Walzer on The Struggle for a Decent Politics.
Winter 2025
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Tributes to Michael Kazin
Celebrating Michael Kazin as he retires from co-editorship of Dissent.
Mr In-Between
Working on Dissent has been both a great pleasure and a ceaseless responsibility. It is time to let others have all the fun and carry most of the burden.
A Response to Michael Walzer
The point of theorizing about racial capitalism is to focus our attention on the broader forms of organization that are constitutive of social life under capitalism, beyond how it organizes work and production.
We Own the Future
A stunningly original and timely collection that makes the case for democratic socialism—American style.
To Build a Movement
Michael Walzer’s Political Action, written nearly half a century ago, contains many useful guidelines for organizers today. But social movements are often messy and unpredictable affairs.
[Event Canceled | April 17] Acts of Resistance
Unfortunately, this event has been canceled. Please stay tuned for further Dissent events. Acts of Resistance: Civic Alternatives to Executive Overreach Monday, April 17 6:30–8:30pm CUNY Graduate Center 365 5th Ave New York, NY 10016 Rooms C201/C202/C203 Atossa Araxia Abrahamian …
At the Women’s Marches
Dissent editors reflect on the weekend’s marches.
(Grand)father of Nasty Women
Someone on the march told me that this was the best line I had ever written. But I didn’t write it. It was a collective product, written down by my grand-daughter. The “grand” is in parenthesis because my daughters are also nasty women. And my wife has been a bolshevik feminist since she was twelve. I am absolutely certain that they will win.
[EVENT | December 14] Michael Walzer: On Democratic Internationalism
Join Michael Walzer for a lecture on politics and democratic internationalism.
What Is Democratic Socialism?
A selection of key essays on democratic socialism from the Dissent archives.
In Place of a Hero
Young people today have no spokesmen. The day of the youth league and its ideology seems to be over. Today we have the club again, and the gang, and perhaps the family. It might even be wrong to say that …
A Foreign Policy for the Left? Defending the “Default Position”
In their responses to Michael Walzer’s “A Foreign Policy for the Left,” Eric Alterman and Jeff Faux make the case for the “default position”: minimal engagement, at least until we get democracy right here at home. Michael Walzer responds.
A Foreign Policy for the Left
Is there such a thing as a leftist foreign policy? What are the characteristic views of the left about the world abroad? When have leftists, rightly or wrongly, defended the use of force?
A Decent Leftist 
A few months after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Michael Walzer wrote an article for Dissent, “Can There Be a Decent Left?,” which made a number of American leftists rather mad. In it, Michael reproached those who saw the …
