Is There Such a Thing as the American Ghetto?
Today, the term “ghetto” comes across as at best anachronistic, at worst offensive. Does it still have any value?
Winter 2026
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Winter 2017
To access Dissent’s full Winter issue, please click here. This page is a placeholder.
It Takes a Lot of Money to Look This Cheap
From Dolly Parton to J.D. Vance, rags-to-riches stories obscure as much as they inspire, reinforcing the notion that poverty can be solved by dreams and gumption.
The Invisible Hand
Somewhere between the apostles and Joel Osteen, mainstream Christianity turned from a wellspring of egalitarian promise into yet another exponent of the market gospel. Two new books chart where things went wrong.
Who Killed Obamacare?
Why did the ACA—the first substantial expansion of the U.S. welfare state in nearly half a century—fail to win over the constituency it deserved?
When Labor Fought for Civil Rights
Two new histories show how the CIO of the 1930s and ’40s led the charge for racial equality not just on the shop floor but at the national level, precipitating the Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights.
Indecent Exposures
Oliver Stone’s Hollywood retelling of the Snowden saga ends up depicting surveillance as little more than an inconvenience that might threaten our sex lives.
A Strike Against the New Jim Crow
For black lives to truly matter, we need labor rights for all workers—including prison laborers and those in the drug and sex trades.
Learning from the Rank and File: An Interview with Barbara Madeloni
A conversation with Barbara Madeloni, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association and a leader in the successful No on Two campaign against charter school expansion, about the lessons from that fight for organized labor in the Trump era.
Learning to Listen
Internationalism, first and foremost, requires a commitment from leftists to listen to our comrades abroad.
Between the Lines
A new collection of Elena Ferrante’s correspondence and interviews illuminates how Ferrante pulled away from a male-dominated tradition to define her own genre of popular feminist literature.
Booked: Capitalizing on Rural Resentment, with Katherine J. Cramer
Katherine J. Cramer talks about her new book, The Politics of Resentment, and how the right exploits rural-urban divides to promote a populist image.
An Economist’s Case for Open Borders
Amid today’s xenophobic tide, economist Branko Milanovic has made a controversial case for opening the borders—but without offering migrants full rights as citizens. Would such an arrangement reduce inequality, or only exacerbate the problems that have brought us to this point?
Bargaining with Silicon Valley
Gig economy bosses—including the CEOs of both Uber and Lyft—are using a narrative of technological inevitability to undermine labor law and the social safety net.
A Left Vision for Trade
Globalization is not going away, with or without landmark trade deals like the TPP and NAFTA. So how can we make it fairer?
