Stanley Plastrik (1915-1981)

The other day I was asked to speak at a gathering on “the moral basis of socialism.” I was somewhat taken aback since it was not clear to me whether socialism can claim a moral basis apart from that of other humane persuasions, and if it can, in which ways and to what extent. But then, after visiting the hospital in which Stanley lay dying, it struck me that the moral basis of socialism had been on the phone with me almost every day these past seventeen years, had been my friend for forty, and my collaborator on Dissent for 27 years. In the experience we shared since the late 1930s the idea of socialism may have become increasingly problematical, but the rightness of being a socialist had remained clear. And to be one meant t...