Mississippi Fever  

In River of Dark Dreams, Walter Johnson draws on slave narratives and planter magazines that the slave order was riven by contradictions and headed for a crisis. At a certain point, the desperate lurches of the slaveholders, the intense longings of the enslaved, and the increasing boldness of abolitionists, both black and white, had to lead to a steamboat-style explosion, whatever the precise political conjuncture.



Socialism and the Current Crisis  

Today, because of the crisis, the relevance of socialism can and must be addressed not simply as a desirable long-term goal but as a question of practical policy, focused on securing jobs, benefits, and social provision. After giving some examples …



Symposium 1968: Robin Blackburn  

These last forty years, as each decade grinds to a close, there arrives the anniversary of 1968, with its invitation to nostalgia, the reconsideration of dashed hopes, or a pondering of the paradoxes of frustrated rebellion. Already in 1978 Régis …



How to Tax the Rich—And Live Happily Ever After  

Sharpening inequality, rocketing “financial partnership” income, and obscene levels of executive “compensation” make all the more unacceptable the accompanying massacre of job-related entitlements to health care and pensions. Mounting foreclosures, bankruptcies, and threats to employment itself have led to a …



The Irrepressible Left  

Some advanced thinkers would like to deprive us of the distinction between left and right, but a world that is getting more unequal and insecure, more divided and dangerous, belies such talk. There have always been issues and policies that …