Dilemmas of the Dollar  

Our sacred dollar, reigning deity of the world’s currencies, has able prophets and apostles. And it needs them. Though it has soared this past decade, the dollar now faces rising domestic and global forces that seek to humble it. Do …



Con Games and Gamblers on Wall Street  

Two vast worlds co-exist in the capitalist universe we now know: one, the world of finance (banking, insurance, and securities markets), and two, the corporate “real economy” that produces nonfinancial goods and services and provides the underlying “fundamentals” of the …







The Road to Moscow  

The road from Leningrad to Moscow stretches some 450 miles, a distance that I, on advice of my doctor, my conscience, and a consuming curiosity about some hidden aspects of Soviet life, set out to walk recently, in the company …





The Epidemic of Homelessness  

In response to a segment on the homeless, a TV anchorperson recently quipped, “Well, that’s the price of progress!” Those who had tuned in to this Reaganite one-liner (an ideological relative to the old Stalinist quip, “You can’t make an …



The Life of the Homeless  

Outcast groups vary historically in their composition and in the political meanings and symbols attached to them. What we observe about one group of outcasts, the homeless in New York City, finds its reflections on a historical screen of alternating …





World of Our Mothers  

We Were There: The Story of Working Women in America, by Barbara Mayer Wertheimer. New York: Pantheon Books. 427 pp. America’s Working Women: A Documentary History – 1600 to the Present, compiled and edited by Rosalyn Baxandall, Linda Gordon, Susan Reverby. …



Aborting Medicaid  

We have come a long way on the abortion issue, but we still have a long road ahead, especially with a preacher-president who is reconciled to the fact that, in this world anyhow, “there are many things in life that …



Ms./Comrade  

Participating in the Geneva meetings of the International Socialist Congress last November was a moving experience for me, comparable in its impact to my first encounters with Norman Thomas and with the auto workers’ union. The Congress confirmed for me …



Workers (Female) Arise!  

Girls, you must take this matter to heart seriously now, for you have established a union, and for the first time in woman’s history in the United States, you are placed, and by your own efforts, on a level with …



Organizing a Labor College  

It might not speed us on our road to socialism, but it might nudge us a bit in that direction if the organizations we look to for leadership and enlightenment had names that were compelling or at least rememberable. Take …



Women Debate the Equal Rights Amendment  

In the last few months there has been a vigorous debate among women activists concerning the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, which would void all state and local laws with special provisions on women. The Amendment passed the House, …