From Sweden to Socialism  

Capitalism doesn’t work: the 1930s proved that. Communism doesn’t work: the 1980s proved that. So what works? Socialism—of the democratic variety, of course. But, viewed concretely, as it is applied in practice, what is socialism today? The answer is—the mixed …



Talking to the Brothers  

Justice, Gender, and the Family by Susan Moller Okin Basic Books, 1989, 216 pp. Justice, Gender, and the Family hopes to continue work that political theorist Susan Moller Okin began in her useful Women in Western Political Thought (1979). The …



Market Socialism: Another View  

American socialism has endured many crises. But these have mostly been, or appeared to be, crises of agency and strategy, brought on by repeated failures to build the movement or by capitalism’s disconcerting capacity to emerge strengthened from depression and …



Cambodia: Faces Saved and Lost  

The State Department’s decision to stop supporting the Cambodian rebels reminds me of an experience I had that began in Bangkok and ended in a refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border. Although it happened three years ago, it might as …



From Sweden to Socialism  

Poking around Slightly-Imaginary-Sweden (SIS), even the skeptical socialist is impressed. A solidaristic wage policy (centralized bargaining to achieve equal pay for equal work nationwide) forces unproductive enterprises to shape up or go under. This boosts overall economic efficiency. Strong tax …



From Sweden to Socialism  

Why go beyond an advanced welfare state—beyond what Robert Heilbroner calls “real but slightly imaginary” Sweden? How would the passage from welfare state to “socialism” be manifest? To create a more democratic society. By expanding substantive, that is, social and …









A Model for Health Insurance  

Universal medical insurance and universal access to care under a system of responsible cost containment remain on the American agenda. Since Harry Truman proposed national health insurance (NHI), debates about this vital policy issue have waxed (as in the early …



From Sweden to Socialism  

Without an imaginative utopian dimension, socialist thought remains excessively rooted in the present. It ends up as something very worthwhile, that is, the reform of the existing system; but it remains restricted to what is “realistic” within the existing order. …



From Sweden to Socialism  

I accept for the sake of argument Bob Heilbroner’s way of posing his initial question, although he phrases it in terms (so it seems to me) of two separate, static forms of social governance—when in reality, capitalism and socialism are …





A Politics in America?  

It’s not the populist moment yet—not because the elements aren’t there, but in large part because the Democrats don’t know how to put them together. The 1990 election results point to a voter revolt in which neither the left nor …