I’ve been meaning to link to, and clarify, my recent piece at Jacobin. Posted last week, the essay is on Occupy ‘s aversion to politics and it is, I’ll concede, quite critical of the movement. To be honest, I feel… Continue Reading
Bhaskar Sunkara takes on one of his favorite targets, Ezra Klein: Klein is the archetype for modern American liberalism, so much so that he disavows being a liberal at all. He’s a centrist technocrat, obsessed over policy, ignoring politics, honestly… Continue Reading
My pre-election piece—posted on the front-page, but not yet here.
In his 2006 work On Political Equality, the great Robert Dahl tells us why: “I want to suggest instead that what actually drives the search for fairness is not pure reason but emotions and passions. Reason may serve to guide… Continue Reading
Peter Frase and Bhaskar Sunkara, two of the brightest minds the young left has to offer, call for federalizing and expanding the social welfare state in this month’s issue of In These Times: This might seem like a poor moment… Continue Reading
Over the weekend, Matt Yglesias was nice enough to respond to my post on full employment; Elias Isquith has since offered a riposte to Yglesias. Elias: “Yglesias isn’t wrong to focus so much on full employment. Any left-of-center person should… Continue Reading
Full employment: Rarely has a policy aim with such radical ramifications appeared in such a wonky, stolid package. The subject of a dispassionate Brookings white paper, yes. But a way to dramatically reorient power relations in the workplace? Couldn’t be.… Continue Reading
One of the recurring criticisms of my recent post on neoliberalism was that I didn’t offer a clear alternative. The implication being, I think, that the absence of an articulated alternative made my essay just worthless bellyaching. I couldn’t help… Continue Reading
When confronted with failure, there’s a familiar retort that emanates from both extremes of the political spectrum: their prescriptions simply “haven’t been tried.” There were some complicating factors which scuttled the whole thing, or the prescribed measures weren’t enacted in… Continue Reading
I just finished reading Richard Rorty’s Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century America, which consists of a few of the late philosopher’s lectures. It doesn’t take long to realize Rorty’s use of the term “leftist” is dissimilar from… Continue Reading