Editor's Page
Cohen, Mitchell
Forty years after the founding of Dissent, and four years after the fall of communism, the words democrat and republican should be forsaken. Well, yes, these words did once denote worthy ideas....
...Yet its concerns, those of working people, are and will remain central to Dissent...
...Forty years ago, Dissent's founders announced that they would debate themselves as well as their foes...
...Still, such was East Germany's selfdesignation, and if its rulers, truthful folks that they were, insisted that theirs was a really existing democratic republic, we'd best yield them these terms and dissociate quickly...
...Synthesizing liberal and socialist politics may not suit contemporary stereotypes of what "being on the left" means, but "liberal socialism" has had a long vibrant presence in the history of the left...
...We'll pose this question cognizant of the difficulties at hand...
...When Dissent was founded, nobody spoke of "multiculturalism," and feminist and environmentalist concerns were hardly at the top of America's agenda...
...M.C...
...The customary demand of the democratic left was to go "beyond the welfare state," but nowadays it is difficult enough to sustain the welfare state...
...Brian Morton, who has been co-editor of Dissent's book section since 1988, is the author of the novel The Dylanist.—Ens...
...Joanne Barkan and Brian Morton will be the new executive editors...
...now they are essential...
...Dissent, for instance, has for some years pubWINTER • 1994 • 3 Editor's Page lished articles on "market socialism" even though most of the left and the right, unable to imagine markets serving people rather than vice versa, consider this an oxymoron...
...Moreover, after being battered by Reagan and Bush and pigeonholed as just one more "interest group" —and having been sluggish and unimaginative in its responses to dramatic changes in the world economy—the labor movement is in a sorry state...
...What realistic program will advance democratic egalitarianism and social fairness in these circumstances...
...demos (people) and kratos (rule)—rule of the people was deemed the legitimating principle of political life by Athenians...
...Unless the democratic left fashions intelligent responses to issues like these, the terms by which it defines itself—liberal socialist, democratic socialist, social democrat, radical democrat, left liberal—won't much matter...
...CHANGES With this issue, Emanuel Geltman retires from his position as executive editor...
...Dissent readers—especially long-time readers— may respond to these words with a chuckle of frustrated recognition...
...And more: following four decades of "People's Democracies" in Eastern Europe, who would want to be identified with "people...
...Dissent, in its fifth decade, aims to be a laboratory for these responses...
...Republic came from Latin: res (thing) and publica (people)—the body politic was the people's affair, to borrow Cicero's celebrated formulation...
...Tarnish was inescapable, however much the democratic left championed freedom against Stalinism...
...The combination, during the last two decades, of economic globalization and technological revolutions, has reduced the ability of governments to direct their own economies and allowed capital to become extraordinarily mobile...
...In fact, if you turn back to Webster's Dictionary of 1845 there is no listing yet for "socialism," but "to socialize" is given a rugged individualist definition: "to reduce to a social state...
...This ought to tell us that the matter is, finally, not one of terminology, however much some academic radicals, few of whom have had empty bellies, imagine that everything reduces to "discourse...
...The protagonist of Joseph Conrad's story "An Anarchist," victimized by a pair of unpleasant radicals, declares: "Comrade...
...Values may be sturdy, but history, as we've seen since 1989, is quite fluid...
...Ah, what a good word...
...In this Dissent, renowned liberal philosopher Joseph Raz presents a penetrating analysis of multiculturalism, and we will soon initiate two important series in our pages on "Green Politics" and "Feminist Debates...
...4 • DISSENT...
...how can one strike against capital flight via computer...
...They also share blame for the fact that nowadays, when a mythological "free market" is lauded by many as the solution to all problems—with a confidence reminiscent of communists extolling "The Plan" —a chorus, including some who once derided any identification of the left with communism, cries out: "After 1989, left and right don't mean anything anymore...
...Socialism was the "S" word long before liberalism was the "L" word...
...One of the founders of Dissent, Manny has done as much as anyone to make the magazine what it is: writing...
...After all, when it comes to language, the democratic left has been at some disadvantage in this country...
...Monsieur...
...Leninists and Stalinists may be similarly accredited...
...He was a forerunner of Dissent's politics, for although not all of our editors or contributors define themselves as socialists, we have, together, stood for democracy in all aspects of American life—the idea that democratic citizenship must be social and economic as well as political...
...Democracy came from ancient Greek...
...Our next forty begins when the democratic left, such as it is, faces tough questions...
...And they, such men as these two, had made it accursed...
...It is notable that right-wing voices rarely join the refrain...
...Moreover, if we turn to the issue atop America's domestic agenda, health care reform (see Rashi Fein's article in this issue), we see how the leftwing values that animated Dissent's founders are as vital as ever: should sick people be treated according to their illnesses or according to the wages they obtain on the labor market...
...and providing an education for Dissent's younger editors with his knowledge of history, politics, and literature...
...But then neither Athenians nor Romans—nor Thomas Jefferson, that democrat who founded America's first Republican party—experienced East Germany, the "German Democratic Republic...
...As David Brody argues in this issue, labor needs to conceive and articulate its mission as a broad struggle for social justice...
...They don't need to...
...I borrow this formulation from a turn-of-thecentury British political theorist, L.T...
...Hobhouse, who came to classify himself as a "liberal socialist...
...So it is fitting that in our fortieth anniversary issue we present, for the first time in English, an excerpt from Liberal Socialism by Carlo Rosselli, a remarkable thinker who argued in the late 1920s (several years before he was murdered by fascists) that being on the left means embracing social solidarity, egalitarian humanism, and liberal democracy at once...
...finding new writers and keeping in touch with old ones...
...Labor is disadvantaged greatly...
...editing...
...On the other hand, the vocabulary of the left was, in this century, abducted by reprehensible regimes and their devotees worldwide...
...Of course the problem is not solely cultural— "democratic utopianism . . . runs like a bright thread" through American history, as Irving Howe wrote in these pages last spring...
...our ideas must be a function of the world in which we live...
...At the same time, Dissent will uphold its longtime priorities, asking over and again: how can we fashion a society committed to both liberty and equality...
...Had they been able to imagine that Prusso-Stalinist police state, surely they would have insisted: that's not what a democratic republic means...
...committed to left-wing values, they nonetheless insisted on interrogating their own socialist traditions...
...He will, of course, continue to be an active member of the editorial board...
...What can social and economic citizenship mean when two apparently contrary processes are at work—the global economy becomes increasingly integrated while national and cultural identities are forcefully reasserted...
...Joanne Barkan, a longtime activist in the Democratic Socialists of America and a Dissent editorial board member since 1986, is the author of Visions of Emancipation: The Italian Workers Movement Since 1945, as well as many books for children...
...In this spirit we open this issue with a symposium that casts a critical eye on what Dissent stood for when it was born, and what it should stand for in the future— a first skirmish for our next forty years...
Vol. 41 • January 1994 • No. 1
