Sudden deaths of friends still leading vital lives are always shocking. I suspect we were especially shocked by Irving’s death because we assumed, despite his deteriorating physical health, that he would somehow live forever. Irving was such a towering figure …
Ever since Marx’s musings about the lumpenproletariat, the “underclass” has unnerved the left. Members of an underclass rarely behave in a manner leftists consider politically appropriate to their condition, let alone a manner that invites sympathy from a broader public. …
There is now widespread concern about the tension between America’s economic interests and its continued geopolitical role as “hegemon” of the world system. At the simplest level this tension is embodied in the escalating gap between the cost of policing …
In 1926, three years before the Great Crash and a decade before publication of his own grand synthesis, Keynes wrote a prescient essay titled The End of Laissez-Faire. “Some coordinated act of intelligent judgment is required,” he wrote, “as to …
He looks like Central Casting’s idea of an organizer. Domenic Mario Bozzotto, president of Local 26, is bearded, olive-skinned, tieless, with the bravura and streetcorner patois of a Damon Runyon tough guy, but also the sweetness of a parish priest. …
Labor unions, most progressives believe, are essential institutions of a democratic industrial society. Particularly in the social democratic model that emerged after World War II unions played a crucial, dual role. First, of course, unions served as direct instruments of …
This is the story of a gifted and effective trade unionist who finds himself president of America’s most battered major industrial union. The story raises the perennial question of how much difference one leader can make when historical forces are …
This article is one in a group of six that will appear in a volume entitled Alternatives: Proposals From the Democratic Left, edited by Irving Howe, © 1984 by the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc., and …
