Not long ago I was told about a debate raging among the top political organizers of one of the larger AFL-CIO affiliates, a union that traditionally sent sizable delegations to the Democratic National Convention and is easily capable of doing …
Writing at the turn of the twentieth century, W.E.B. DuBois argued that the color line would remain the distinguishing feature of American civilization. At the center of this observation was a proposition about the character of modern American society— namely, …
Recent films about the 1960s belong to one of the basic romantic genres: nostalgic retrospect. The great pioneer of this genre in English was the poet William Wordsworth. Wordsworth gave us several luminous visions of his rural childhood and of …
There are two oddities to George Bush’s “New World Order”: (1) he didn’t create it and (2) it doesn’t exist. There is a new flux, but not a new order in the world. Its sources, all of which preceded the …
Fashioning models for a successful socialist economy is an idiosyncratic inclination these days, but one that we share with John Roemer. He’s not willing to concede that the socialist project has been buried irretrievably beneath the wreckage of communism, and …
In the late 1950s, Jean-Paul Sartre decided that it was necessary to rethink his entire philosophy. Writing for twenty hours a day, taking amphetamines to spur himself on, Sartre wrote the two enormous volumes of the Critique of Dialectical Reason. …
Pessimism about India is nothing new. Right now, there is no dearth of gloomy news from the subcontinent. Not only was former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi assassinated in a particularly violent election campaign last spring, but two separatist insurgencies continue …
The soot-darkened skies and fouled waters of Eastern Europe have given apologists for laissez-faire capitalism a new rallying cry: the “free market,” far from being nature’s enemy, is the environment’s savior. Some environmentalists have argued that there is no fundamental …
A political reporter by trade (first with the New York Times, now with the Washington Post), E.J. Dionne has written a book that historians ought to envy. It offers a well-integrated, carefully argued interpretation of a large chunk of our …
PAUL RICOEUR: If we are to discuss the kind of society we live in and what kind of society we wish to promote, then we must agree on a common description. That is why it seems necessary to clarify the …
Traditionally, the British Tories have been known as the stupid party. At key moments in twentieth-century British history, such as Munich, Suez, and the destruction of manufacturing after 1980, they have taken decisions as a government that beggar belief. However, …
In 1984, Washington Post reporter Thomas Edsall authored The New Politics of Inequality, a groundbreaking work that is still the single best study of Reagan-age politics and that established Edsall as one of the nation’s foremost political analysts. The New …
As I write (in July) the administration has proclaimed that the recession is over. One should view such a pronouncement with caution. It’s noteworthy, however, that the administration expects no more than a weak recovery, with a growth rate of …
I will respond to the Barkan and Belkin points seriatim. On government control of investment: There have been, and are, selective credit controls in many capitalist countries, and the “lobbying hordes” that Barkan and Belkin fear have not swept down …
Feminism Without Illusions by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. University of North Carolina Press, 1991. 348 pp. $24.95. During the earliest skirmishes between the women’s liberation movement and its New Left progenitors, one of the charges that flew our way, along with “man-hater” …
