The Sykaos Papers by E. P. Thompson Pantheon Books, 1988, 490 pp., $19.95 An alien, Oi Paz, from the ultrarational, computer-directed society of the planet Oitar, crash-lands on Earth. Here he becomes a pawn in a cold war power struggle, …
Political and Social Writings by Cornelius Castoriadis, translated and edited by David Ames Curtis, 2 vols. University of Minnesota, 1988, 347 pp., and 362 pp., $14.95 each To open the pages of these two volumes is to breathe the stale …
Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective by Richard M. Fried Oxford University Press, 1990, 229 pp., $22.95 Senator Joseph R. McCarthy described McCarthyism as “Americanism with the gloves off,” but few students of this century’s second red scare …
The catastrophe of historical communism is, literally, before our eyes: the catastrophe of communism as a world movement, born from the Russian revolution, promising emancipation of the poor, the oppressed, the “wretched of the earth.” Its dissolution gathers speed, outdistancing …
Not since they encountered it in nursery rhymes have references to the market so intruded into the consciousness of Americans as in recent months. There is now a virtual consensus that the market is the natural state of economic affairs, …
In our thinking about the economic changes underway in Poland, we seem overly impressed by the wealth of the United States and Western Europe, where market forces rule (though not exclusively). We tend to forget that there are other countries …
In November 1963 forty members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) gathered in the small Mississippi town of Greenville for three days of meetings. The result was a decision that would bring over one thousand volunteers—most of them white— …
Whose Keeper? Social Science and Moral Obligation by Alan Wolfe University of California Press, 1989, 371 pp., $25.00 Adam Smith became professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow in 1752. To hold such a professorship in that time …
Nothing in our past thinking, or in anyone else’s, prepared us for the remarkable turn of events in the Soviet Union. So much the worse for theory, so much the better for life! The word “historic” has been reduced to …
We are pleased to print below a chapter from Time of Change, by Roy Medvedev and Giulietto Chiesa (translated from the Italian by Michael Moore), a richly detailed account of the Gorbachev years in the Soviet Union. Medvedev is, of …
The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism by Cornel West University of Wisconsin Press, 1989, 279 pp., Cornel West is a smart fellow who has written a difficult but challenging book. It is impossible to read The American …
Now that the exhilaration of glasnost is wearing off and the problems of perestroika grow acute, there is a striking change of response to Gorbachev. Wise men shake their heads. They mutter, with crocodile regret or burbling delight, that he …
Guillermo Ungo is general secretary of the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) of El Salvador, a social democratic group. The interview below was conducted by Patrick Lacefield, national organizational director of Democratic Socialists of America. —EDS. PL: Can you evaluate the …
During the season of its first flowering, at the outset of this decade, Halina Bortnowska, one of the foremost theorists of Polish Solidarity, characterized the movement as an expression of the country’s “subjectivity,” by which, she went on to explain, …
Roger and Me, a radical documentary — marketed as a comedy —about the devastation of auto workers in Flint, Michigan, has, to everyone’s amazement, become a sleeper. At this moment it’s making pretty big bucks. Why? Go ask. Documentaries, let …
