Marshall Berman, 1940–2013
On September 11, 2013, longtime contributor and board member Marshall Berman passed away in New York.
Winter 2025
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McRecovery: The Troubling New Jobs Report
The August jobs report was unremarkable, both for the middling numbers (169,000 new jobs in August and downward revisions to the June and July reports) and for the continuation of a couple of troubling trends. Unemployment ticked down a notch (to …
From Civilizing Missions to Collateral Damage: Syria and the Rules of War
There is a general reluctance to judge the effects of U.S. war-making by the same humanitarian criteria we apply to our enemies. Reflection on the history of international law, and on an incident from 1920s Syria, might shed light on the deep roots of this intuition that the way we fight can’t be held to the same standards as the way they do.
[EVENT] Dissent 60th Anniversary Celebration
Join Dissent in celebrating sixty years of critical thought and politics, in honoring Michael Walzer’s six decades as writer and editor, and in building the foundation for a renewed democratic left in the twenty-first century.
Belabored Podcast #21: Retaliation
This week’s Belabored podcast opens with a round-up of recent news: strikes by fast food workers and port truckers, anti-retaliation rallies against Walmart, and progress on silica dust safety rules. Then Sarah and Josh are joined by Daily Kos Labor Editor Laura Clawson for a wide-ranging interview: What’s ahead at next week’s AFL-CIO convention? Can living wage laws triumph? How has the relationship between bloggers and unions changed?
The Environmental Consequences of Privatizing Mexico’s Oil
The Mexican government’s decision to expropriate the country’s oil in 1938 was sparked by uprisings tied to the labor and environmental abuses of foreign companies. If the state-run energy company is privatized, reform will have to include stepped-up environmental monitoring and control.
Getting Serious About Syria
Like most Americans, I’m wary about President Obama’s proposal to bomb Syria as punishment for Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons to massacre civilians in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus. I’m glad, and relieved, that Obama decided to ask Congress …
Labor Day Blues
When did Labor Day speeches start sounding like eulogies—tinged with regret, dwelling on losses, and offering mostly memories to those left behind? The answer can be found in the arc of postwar economic history, which breaks starkly and decisively in …
The Crossroads on Syria
Yesterday, in an interview aired by PBS, President Obama said that the United States must now attack Syria. The reason was the imminent danger that, if we do not, the Assad government will use chemical weapons against Americans on the U.S. mainland. This fantastic and hollow pretext comes so close to a statement made by Tony Blair in the run-up to the Iraq war that the two assertions invite a comparison.
Why They Marched: Fifty Years of Fighting for Jobs and Freedom
Few political mobilizations inspired Dissent editors and writers as much as the 1963 March on Washington. On the March’s fiftieth anniversary, check out archival gems by Tom Kahn, Bayard Rustin, Irving Howe, A. Philip Randolph, and others.
The Lady Behind the Fall: Gu Kailai’s Second Trial
The trial of Bo Xilai, the highest Chinese official to fall to scandal in the last thirty years, opened last Thursday, one year and thirteen days after the trial of his wife, Gu Kailai. She was charged with murder, and …
Belabored Podcast #20: Who’s Killing Philly Schools?
This week, Sarah and Josh discuss recent labor developments, including a big raise for Walmart warehouse workers, and a judge’s reversal in the fight over New York hospital closures. Then they’re joined by City Paper reporter Daniel Denvir, who breaks down the latest in the under-covered crisis in Philadelphia’s public schools.
Unfinished Work: Walter Reuther and the March on Washington
The 1963 March on Washington featured just one prominent white speaker. “We will not solve education or housing or public accommodations, as long as millions of Negroes are treated as second-class economic citizens and denied jobs,” declared Walter Reuther, the …
The Left in an Age of Fracture
Dissent editor Michael Kazin recently participated in a symposium on the future of the left for the Polish website Kultura Liberalna. The following is his contribution; for the others, including Zygmunt Bauman and Marcel Gauchet, visit Kultura Liberalna. We are …
Egypt in Crisis: Ten Observations
The violence following the removal of Mohamed Morsi continues to spiral out of control, and is in many respects too senseless to be analyzed. Difficult as it is to understand current Egyptian politics and predict where the country might go next, the following observations are intended to shed some light on that very complex and confused landscape.
