Editor's Page

...We publish it here in English...

...But it is also experimenting with political debate and some degree of academic freedom...

...They suggest that the opposition must be substantive, principled, and angry...

...M.W...

...Appropriately for these pages, they dissent from this conventional wisdom...

...Gary Gerstle, reviewing a book by Ira Katznelson, writes about the ongoing disparities in black/white economic achievement "rooted in centuries of discrimination" and speculates on what kind of politics would be necessary to overcome them...

...Stuart Tannock asks whether American universities serve the general welfare, and answers not, by a long shot, as much as they should...

...Social democrats have to be smart to survive on the periphery, but if they are smart, and maybe lucky, too, there is much that they can achieve for their people...

...He had sympathetic listeners, but his talk, alone among the conference papers, was banned by the censors: it could not be published in Chinese translation...

...n A remarkable team of four professors—two political scientists, an anthropologist, and a sociologist—report here on an academic study that has farreaching extra-academic implications...

...Dissent editor Marshall Berman spoke last summer at a conference in China, about how Karl Marx can help us understand the contemporary Chinese economy...

...n Please take a look at the new Dissent Web site: www.dissentmagazine.org , where we have begun, only a little late, our move into the new century...

...Stephen F. Diamond describes the situation at Delphi, where there has been a coordinated, and apparently successful, attack on the security and well-being of workers in the auto-parts industry...

...Daniel A. Bell reports on what it is like to teach political theory at a major Chinese university to students who are hungry for both knowledge and argument...

...n China today is experimenting with the worst of two worlds: laissez-faire capitalism and communist dictatorship...

...They rarely make the daily headlines, but these political friends deserve support...

...Andrew Koppelman provides a trenchant critique of the Bush administration's campaign against pornography and in favor of torture...

...n All these pieces speak to a central issue of American politics as we prepare for congressional elections this fall (and, already, presidential elections in 2008): what kind of opposition should Democrats and the liberal-left generally mount to the Republican right...

...They have examined the prospects for social democracy in the global periphery—in what we used to call the third world—where undeveloped economies, corrupt governments, global competitive pressures, and the power of multinational corporations seemed to spell doom for our kind of politics...