You are about to read the account of a wrestling match between Richard Rothstein’s “Immigration Dilemmas” (Dissent, Fall 1993) and me. The struggle began when I came upon the following passage in Rothstein’s essay: American upper-middle-class life is dependent on …
Midway through Norman Rush’s award- winning novel Mating, a renowned leftist sociologist named Nelson Denoon rails against those who turn socialism into “an orientation or aesthetic or feeling.” For Denoon socialism is about “concrete institutional propositions that could be shown …
I first encountered Irving during merger negotiations between his political organization, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, and mine, the New American Movement. It was 1979, and among NAM’s ex New Leftish, Gramsci-loving negotiators, Irving was known as the leader of …
What boggles the mind is not the pervasiveness of corruption in Italian society, but its thorough institutionalization. So when magistrates exposed the nature of the rot (their ongoing inquiry began in early 1992), perhaps no one should have been surprised …
National Public Radio wrapped up its presidential campaign coverage in November with a piece on the Clinton waffle, that is, the candidate’s habit of slipping from side to side on disputed issues. Listeners heard journalist Sam Donaldson ask Clinton if …
No sable-hatted bureaucrat with a corner office in the Kremlin ever held onto power and privilege more tenaciously than the gaggle of political bosses who run Italy. Thus anyone in the past who bet on a thorough (and much needed)shake-up …
During a recent trip to Sweden, I sat through the opening of the new session of Parliament. As I waited along with several hundred other people for King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia to arrive, I was struck by how …
Poking around Slightly-Imaginary-Sweden (SIS), even the skeptical socialist is impressed. A solidaristic wage policy (centralized bargaining to achieve equal pay for equal work nationwide) forces unproductive enterprises to shape up or go under. This boosts overall economic efficiency. Strong tax …
The Berlin Wall falls down, and the electoral fortunes of the Italian Communist party (PCI) come tumbling after. The party plummeted by 6.2 percent in regional elections in May. The drop was massive, from a regional average of 30.2 percent …
I first encountered Michael in 1976 when he spoke at Wesleyan University. The audience was peppered with people like myself who wanted, more than anything else, not to be “social democrats.” Unable, or unwilling, to comprehend his politics, we badgered …
The Italian Communists have finally tied the knot. Led to the altar by a new secretary general, Achille Occhetto, the party (PCI) has unmistakably espoused West European social democracy. The prenuptial maneuvers had dragged on for years, with a squeamish …
I heard this story several times in Stockholm: It was the final television debate before the 1982 parliamentary election. Olof Palme, then a former prime minister of Sweden, was about to speak. His Social Democratic Labor party (SAP)—out of office …
Every socialist knows how to fantasize; it comes with the territory. Even reading the newspaper becomes an exercise in imagining what should be rather than what is. But who develops the capacity to fantasize and who doesn’t? What—beyond genes and …
I was embarrassed at first to admit how good I felt about the Democratic party convention; then I realized that the four evenings I spent in front of the tv were a training period—like an athlete’s spring training for a …
It’s 1987. We’re celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the drafting of the Constitution, and the Reagan administration has done much to make the occasion relevant. With a fine sense of timing, it’s gone public with the notion that the …
