I have recently posed a question to which I have no answer, but which seems to me to go to the heart of the outlook for democratic socialism, at least in the advanced capitalist countries. The question is: how far …
In order to find out how much a country is socialist, it is necessary first to define socialism. Characteristically, no clear, precise, and commonly accepted definition exists. My own definition is extensively discussed elsewhere (The Political Economy of Socialism, Sharpe, …
For over thirty years the Hungarian economist Janos Kornai has been a sophisticated analyst of the communist command economies. His writings have been characterized by a mixture, rare among economists, of rigor, skepticism, and sympathy. Until recently Kornai rejected the …
“In the revolutionary year 1989,” said Willy Brandt, “not only is the social democratic idea impelled toward reality—now also reality is impelled toward the social democratic idea.” In a small way, his prophecy was confirmed by the surprising election of …
Why did we make the Bomb? The question is, of course, naïve. There was no single reason. Nor could there be a one-word answer, such as fear or deterrence, or a two-word answer, for example, unjustified fear, that would be …
Just wars, inevitable wars, alternatives to war—can they be sorted out as we think our way through to a position on the Gulf crisis? Are there any sturdy principles to grab hold of? When close to a million soldiers face …
Our colleague Jack Rader died on September 24 at the age of 73. Beyond our association as editors of Dissent, there is the pain of losing a close personal friend with whom I shared good times and bad. How he …
We have been fortunate that Abraham Brumberg has been a frequent contributor to our pages. Our readers know him as an exceptionally well-informed and lucid analyst of Soviet affairs. In this volume he brings off an incredibly useful collection of …
Following the collapse of the one-party dictatorships in Eastern Europe, much of the discussion about socialism and capitalism has had a surreal quality. There have been in most such discussions the unstated but related assumptions that all market systems must …
The decision to dismantle the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, offers us the opportunity to reflect on walls in the past and their surprising renaissance in contemporary California. The most famous of all is probably the Great Wall of …
Can perestroika—the reconstruction of the Soviet economy—work? The shape of the world economy, in particular the relations of the advanced industrial societies to the markets of tomorrow, depends upon the answer to that question. I distinguish here between Eastern Europe—Poland, …
Poland today is the classic home of “anti-Semitism without Jews.” More than twenty years after the frenzied anti-Semitic campaign of 1968, which brought about the exodus of nearly all remaining Polish Jews, hardly a week goes by without some anti-Semitic …
As the waves of popular revolution swept across Eastern Europe in 1989, great hopes were aroused for the future of the East European nations. The prevailing view in the West was that, once liberated from the oppressive communist yoke, these …
Was the Soviet Union’s a planned economy? The simple, answer is no. Is a planned economy possible? That is a more difficult question to answer. Marx never had a theory of a planned economy, for he thought—from The Communist Manifesto …
In the general euphoria about the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, it is often assumed that capitalism has been vindicated. To be sure, the failure of the Soviet model has shown the futility of attempting to organize an …
