Socialism Archives - Public Seminar

Interviews

How American Jewish Marxists Forged a Macho Style for Public Intellectuals

A conversation with Ronnie Grinberg about her book Write Like a Man

October 8, 2024 • by Mitchell Abidor and Ronnie Grinberg

In this biographical study of the New York Jewish intellectuals behind journals like Partisan Review, Dissent, and Commentary, Grinberg focuses on prominent post war writers and editors like Irving Howe, Norman Podhoretz, Lionel Trilling, and Irving Kristol, many of them native New Yorkers and graduates of City College....

How American Jewish Marxists Forged a Macho Style for Public Intellectuals

Capitalism

Social Capitalism

Synthesizing Marx, Keynes, and Schumpeter

September 17, 2024 • by Anna Pick and Mark Setterfield

Feathers were ruffled at Davos this year when, during a panel on “How to Trust Economics,” a speaker went rogue, accusing economists of being a “tribal clique” who only quote each other and have “blind faith” in models, however disconnected from real events they may be. The critique came not ...

Socialism

The Socialist Revival

Can the Democratic Socialists of America claim to be a vanguard? Not yet

January 26, 2022 • by Max B. Sawicky

Could socialism be in the cards for the United States? Recall Senator John Edwards’s joke from 2008, “Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.” Socialism has become more familiar to Americans, thanks to the politician who has done more than anyone to render obsolete its traditional meaning. That would ...

Capitalism

Data Cooperatives for Pandemic Times

To avoid ‘co-op whitewashing,’ experiments with data co-ops should be co-developed with communities connected to the long history and analysis of the various forms of cooperatives.

April 19, 2021 • by Trebor Scholz and Igor Calzada

To avoid 'co-op whitewashing,' data cooperatives must be shaped by those who need them most, rooted in cooperative principles and localized data....

Feature

Ideology is Dead! Long Live Ideology!

On the Ideological Character of Liberalism & Socialism

May 14, 2019 • by Bryant William Sculos

Something in the Night is Dangerous According to Jeffrey Goldfarb, founder and publisher of Public Seminar (PS), I am dangerous. I threaten to undermine democracy. While Goldfarb’s comments may not have been specifically targeted at me, they are targeted at the kind of socialist critical theory and practice for which I often argue (for just ...

Feature

Why I Want Nothing to do with the Green New Deal

Conservatism, Environmentalism and Socialism

March 28, 2019 • by Jake Davis

I was frequently humbled living in the small, oil-rich kingdom. Humbled by the clash between two of nature’s most inhospitable terrains: a great sandy desert meeting a great salty ocean. At the boundary where these two titans collide sits a different kind of marvel: a Starbucks. I would frequent the ...

Why I Want Nothing to do with the Green New Deal

Blue Monday

Socialism and American Politics

A Brief Recollection (2009)

March 4, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Note: I recently found the piece below on an old hard drive. It was written on March 2, 2009, exactly ten years ago this weekend. It was written for the brand-new blog that Dissent Magazine was then starting. It was never published. I’m publishing it now for three reasons: (1) ...

Blue Monday

Kamala Harris Is Not a Red-Baiter, She’s Just Not a Socialist (Like Most Americans)

Defeating Trump Politically, Part 4

February 26, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

In recent columns I have celebrated the energy and ideas brought into the Democratic party by newly-elected young leftists, defended them from criticism, condemned the red-baiting of the left, and explained how and why “socialism” has played an important role in the history of American democracy, and ought not to ...

Kamala Harris Is Not a Red-Baiter, She’s Just Not a Socialist (Like Most Americans)

Feature

Upstaging the Trump Reality Show

How Montana’s socialist ‘Plaid Shirt Guy’ hacked a Trump rally

November 4, 2018 • by Peter Dreier

It isn’t easy to upstage Donald Trump, but Tyler Linfesty -- a 17-year old high school student from Billings, Montana -- managed to divert attention away from the president at a recent Trump rally in his hometown. Linfesty became an immediate internet sensation on September 6 as he stood on the ...

Feature

200 Years of Karl Marx

Some lessons on the politics of commemoration

July 24, 2018 • by Kathy M. Newman

This year marked the 200th anniversary of the birthday Karl Marx, a fierce critic of capitalism. In an effort to think through the legacy of—and the possible futures of—Marx’s influence, the Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University hosted Marx@200, a program of more than two dozen lectures, performances, panels, and ...

Feature

Solidarity is Not a Liberal Value

Feminism and collective struggle

February 12, 2018 • by Bryant William Sculos

On January 20, 2018, at the end of the Pioneer Valley’s Women’s March in Northampton, Massachusetts hundreds stood gathered in front of the imposing, castle-like City Hall. We were children, women, and men, trans and non-gender conforming people. We were black, white, and brown, gay and straight. We were rich and poor ...

Feature

Memory, Fidelity, Appropriation

A Response to Jonathan Bach’s What Remains

October 24, 2017 • by Benjamin Nienass

And yet, the fact that all major parties refused to view the AfD as a legitimate contender -- let alone a potential coalition partner -- indicates that German public memory still somehow “works.” However, the attempts to make sense of the election through the prism of memory serve as a ...