Dissent | A magazine of politics and culture
WEBThe Labor Intellectuals. Nelson Lichtenstein Spring 2024. The new militancy coursing through the labor movement has revealed the growth of a more expansive and democratic union culture. An independent quarterly magazine, publishing some of America’s most exciting long-form political and cultural criticism since 1954.
Why Free College Is Necessary - Dissent Magazine
WEBWhy Free College Is Necessary. Higher education can’t solve inequality, but the debate about free college tuition does something extremely valuable. It reintroduces the concept of public good to education discourse. Student debt activists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, March 2014 (Light Brigading / Flickr)
How Did Gandhi Win? Lessons from the Salt March
WEBOct 10, 2014 · Lessons from the Salt March. Gandhi’s demands were ridiculed and his settlement with the British disappointed many. But the Salt March was a key symbolic win that spurred India’s independence movement toward victory. Mark Engler and Paul Engler October 10, 2014. Cross-posted from Waging Nonviolence. History remembers …
The Rise and Fall of Multilateralism - Dissent Magazine
WEBThe Rise and Fall of Multilateralism. A quarter-century ago, the multilateral system of global economic governance had reached its pinnacle. Today, the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank are experiencing a deep crisis of legitimacy. A technician tests a headset before the World Trade Organization’s first Ministerial Conference in Singapore in 1996.
Feminist Organizing After the Women’s March: Lessons from the …
WEBLaura Tanenbaum and Mark Engler January 25, 2017. At the Women's Strike for Equality, August 26, 1970 (She's Beautiful When She's Angry / handout) An earlier version of this article appeared at Waging Nonviolence. Fifty years ago, feminist organizing in the United States entered a vibrant new phase of activity.
The Politics of Resistance - Dissent Magazine
WEBMar 1, 2017 · Resistance took the form of civil disobedience by groups of people led by the “lesser magistrates,” or local leaders, against the crown. It was a communal or collective act. Its practicality was based on two features of medieval life. It required the existence of a widely recognized body of laws and rights—whether divine, natural, or ...
What It Means to Be Liberal - Dissent Magazine
WEBMichael Walzer ▪ Spring 2020 The construction of the Statue of Liberty in Paris (Branger/Roger Viollet via Getty Images) . Is liberalism an “ism” like all the other “isms”? I think it once was. In the nineteenth century and for some years in the twentieth, liberalism was an encompassing ideology: free markets, free trade, free speech, open borders, a …
Can Labor Still Use the Wagner Act? - Dissent Magazine
WEBAmid the political turmoil of this tumultuous year, a significant historical anniversary passed all but unnoticed. Eighty years ago, on April 12, 1937, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)—the Wagner Act—which had been signed into law in 1935. Before the court delivered its decision ...
Abolition as Method - Dissent Magazine
WEBGilmore’s Abolition Geography, a collection of essays authored over the past three decades, offers an immense depth of resources for understanding the force, threat, and causes of freshly inflamed concern over crime. Since the start of the long decline of U.S. capitalism in the late 1960s, Gilmore argues, fear of crime has allowed right-wing ...
Socialism from Above: Assessing the Cuban Experience
WEBCuban socialism has been a “socialism from above.”. Its features include supremacy of central power, the priority of the “official” truth, and limited possibilities for self-organization—qualities that have varied in importance in the post-revolutionary period, but that are demonstrably connected with one another.