Essays

Utopia is usually considered a dirty word. The concept has been too often been employed to justify the worst totalitarian terror and justify passivity in the face of actual political issues. Rarely is utopia understood as a regulative ideal that resists translation into practice yet remains necessary to guide any genuine attempt at liberation. It…

There is little resemblance between the New York I grew up in, and the New York of 2013. My South Bronx neighborhood has over the decades gone through cataclysmic changes from a solid working-class area teeming with small stores and a vital street life, to a burned-out wasteland of empty lots filled with rubble and…

With the brutal massacre of children and administrators at the Sandy Hook Elementary school in Connecticut on December 12, 2012, following assassination of innocents in an Oregon mall earlier in the week, 2012 may be remembered in part as the year when mass shootings spiraled out of control and shocked the conscience of the nation.…

Part I: Prelude In Early October 2012 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel would hold national elections for a new Knesset early in 2013.  The vote would come some 10 months before it was required by law.  Netanyahu explained the move by claiming that, as it stood, his coalition government could not agree on…

I. The Changed World of 2011-12 We live in a far different world than just a few short years ago. Not only have we suffered the greatest economic downturn since the 1930s, but we have also witnessed the emergence of new forms of mass struggle.  Foremost among these have been the 2011-12 Arab revolutions, still…

I. The Libertarian/Right Wing Attempted Appropriation of Smith Down in South Carolina, at the College of Charleston, Adam Smith Week is held every spring. We read on their website that it is “sponsored by the Initiative for Public Choice and Market Process (IPCMP) that was founded in 2008 with a generous gift from the BB&T…

When I finally met Stefan Heym in person at the public reading of his last published novel, I encountered a man in his late eighties, at once frail and energetic.  He introduced himself to his audience at the main theater in Potsdam, Germany, on that beautiful and sunny afternoon in May of 2000, by thanking…