I AM NOT, I HOPE, INDULGING in that most middle-aged of pastimes, boasting of how terrible things were when I was young. And yet, it must be said that, for all the current talk of repression in American society, what …
Will an epochal transformation of the very conditions of human life be carried through by elites on behalf of their own purposes, or will people finally seize control of their destiny?
“Capitalism is dying,” wrote Michael Harrington forty years ago. “It will not, however, disappear on a given day, or in a given month or even year. Its demise will take place as a historic process that could lead to democratic socialism—or to a new kind of collectivist and authoritarian society.”
At the end of 1988, UNICEF reported that half a million children had died during the year, in part because of cuts in social programs in the Third World. At the same time the World Bank estimated that in 1988 …
China, one has been told since Deng Xiaoping’s market-oriented reforms began in the late 1970s, is becoming capitalist. So is the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, similarly with Hungary, Angola, Vietnam, and all the other economies that were once centrally planned …
Jesse Jackson’s 1988 campaign marks a historic breakthrough in American politics. It is the first time that a “social democratic” platform has been presented in the mainstream of American politics and attracted significant mass support. The journalistic cliché was, and …
What are the first steps—and then a few beyond—that a newly elected administration should take in 1989? If the Republicans win, the most we can expect is a backing-away from the more extreme versions of Reaganism. But suppose a Democrat, …
I cannot give the precise date when I first met Ed Koch. Encountering this unassuming if enthusiastic man, I had no idea that he was going to play a major role in the political history of New York City. Koch …
When Francois Mitterrand came to power in 1981, he promised a “rupture with capitalism.” If his policies of the first year were not the clean break with the past they were supposed to be, they were an audaciously consistent and …
The White House euphoria over the drop in the poverty rate to 14.4 percent in 1984 is deeply disturbing. In celebrating a statistical “triumph,” President Reagan and his staff have obscured a larger injustice. Any reduction in the number of …
Given two diametrically opposed projections of our economic and political future, what should the response of the left be? I pose the issue in this uncertain way for a reason. The United States and the other advanced industrial economies are …
“Now what I want is, Facts. Teach the boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else…Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities.” So Charles Dickens began his novel …
The American welfare state is in a profound crisis, and not just because the affably mean, pragmatic ideologue who is president of the United States is destroying some of the most important gains ever made by the people of the …
This past June, at Anaheim, California, the United Automobile Workers’ Union held its 26th constitutional convention. Almost a third of its membership has been left jobless as a result of the recession and the poor planning of the auto corporations. …
America is at a turning point. The radical nature of the period is recognized even by conservatives. When he was sworn in as secretary of the Treasury last summer, G. William Miller said that the nation had “inherited the most …
