The New Labour “project” is often regarded outside of Britain as a successful example of how social democracy can be modernized. “The progressive consensus” is what the country’s new prime minister, Gordon Brown, calls it. Tony Blair, his predecessor, often …
Nick Cohen’s is perplexing, characterized as it is by daft hyperbole (I’m Maoist now?), denial of his own statements, and arguments that he knows I agree with and have done more to advance than he. It’s disappointing he doesn’t try …
The French President after his May election. Photo: Guillaume Paumier This past spring, French President Nicolas Sarkozy won 53 percent of the votes. Dissent co-editor Mitchell Cohen, Philippe Askenazy, Françoise Gaspard, Nancy L. Green, and Jean-Baptiste Soufron consider how the …
Spirit is a power only by looking the negative in the face and living with it. Living with it is the magic power that converts the negative into being. —Hegel, Preface to The Phenomenology of the Spirit, 1807 My city’s …
Internet and new digital technologies played remarkable, novel roles in the 2007 French presidential campaign. They produced unexpected shifts in daily operations of parties, which had to reverse their tactics as a result of information flows and the need to …
Attempting to answer the question “What is the meaning of life?” over the space of a short essay might be considered an enterprise worth avoiding. The chances of falling flat on your face or coming up empty-handed, of not having …
As before, I shall not debate the specific facts concerning Israel and Palestine; this must be left to those whose expertise lies in that area. As my article went to press, however, the National Association of Teachers in Further and …
Last November in Vienna, fifteen years after the demise of the Soviet Union and well into the third decade of corporate-driven globalization, the international trade union movement was reorganized to eliminate its debilitating cold war political divisions and to enhance …
Just six months after the American invasion of Iraq began, President George W. Bush went before the United Nations General Assembly to announce that he was prepared to make “the greatest financial commitment of its kind since the Marshall Plan” …
The French have a curious custom. Whenever the Cabinet changes, the names of the ministries change as well. This is theoretically linked to deep thoughts about theories of state and which functions are best connected to which rubrics, but for …
If you had attended the most recent National Conference for Media Reform, held in Memphis, Tennessee, this past January and sponsored by Free Press (www.freepress.net), you might think that the media reform movement is on a roll. There was a …
We’ve got to keep our patients safe, and our doctors out of jail.” The speaker is a physician who performs abortions at a large clinic on the West Coast. Her remarks come at a professional meeting attended by many abortion …
Many Americans were perplexed when a French Socialist government introduced a thirty-five-hour workweek nearly a decade ago. It seemed anomalous, especially given the constraints imposed by globalization. How could the French accept a uniformly imposed reduction of the workweek, even …
There’s no place like home—unless you’re one of the 1.4 million home aides who assist elderly and disabled people but whom the Supreme Court last June abandoned to the feudal manors of the past. In Long Island Care at Home …
House of Meetings by Martin Amis
