The first issue of Dissent appeared 30 years ago this month. Some weeks after reading it, I went home from Brandeis University, where Irving Howe and Lewis Coser were then teaching, and told my parents that I didn’t want to …
My concern here is not primarily with Michel Foucault’s political positions, the statements he has made, the articles he has written, his response to “events”—May ’68, the prison revolts of the early ’70s, the Iranian revolution, and so on. Though he …
George Orwell’s 1984 was first published in 1949. By then many of its major themes had been anticipated, both in conservative literature and in the internal debates of the democratic left (and in such earlier antiutopian novels as Zamiatin’s We …
George Orwell’s 1984 was first published in 1949. By then many of its major themes had been anticipated, both in conservative litera- ture and in the internal debates of the demo- cratic left (and in such earlier antiutopian novels as …
I: Welfare and Philanthropy A few years ago, the New York Times carried a long article on the decline of philanthropy and volunteer service in the more advanced welfare states of Western Europe. In such countries as Sweden, Denmark, and …
In the early 1970s, I taught a course at Harvard on the moral arguments for capitalism and socialism. It was easy to find readings in defense of capitalism. The rights of entrepreneurs, contractual freedom, contribution and “desert” as the basis …
Among many liberals and leftists, the deepest worry generated by Reagan’s victory is the thought of the Supreme Court justices he is likely to appoint. That seems to me a misplaced worry, but it does reflect the enormous importance the …
The Polish workers fought for themselves and their families and won a victory for all of us. In coming issues of Dissent we will try to report extensively on the social basis and political meaning of that victory. Here (we …
What has happened to the young men and women of the New Left? The movement is invisible these days, a specter regularly invoked only in neoconservative writings. Where have all the “kids” gone? Many of them are simply burnt out, …
Introduction There are 13 arguments for socialism; they have to do with distributive justice, equality, the need for planning, self-respect, fraternity, and so on. But the one that seems to me the easiest and best is a political argument, an …
After Vietnam and Watergate, years of racial conflict, sad stories of apathy, party disintegration, the breakup of traditional alliances, media domination, the United States has had its most conventional, its most “normal” election since 1960, perhaps since 1944. I confess …
The municipal elections held on the Israeli-occupied West Bank this April resulted in a decisive victory for a new generation of Palestinian nationalists. In town after town, the enlarged electorate (including women for the first time) turned out in record …
One day, not soon, the welfare state will extend its benefits to all those men and women who are at present its occasional victims, its nominal or partial members. That day will not be the end of political history. But …
When Hamlet says, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” he means that the king is corrupt. He is not making any comment on the political life of ordinary Danish citizens, for there were no citizens and no political …
At the very center of conservative thought lies this idea: that the present division of wealth and power corresponds to some deeper reality of human life. Conservatives don’t want to say merely that the present division is what it ought …
