Contributions by:
Dick Howard
The Bush reign ended symbolically with hurricane Kathrina. When the news media talked about “refugees” fleeing New Orleans; when the TV showed the terrible scenes of those unable to flee who were left to fend for themselves in a football stadium-or, when I was asked a few days later to appear on a talk radio…
Read Full Article...No one should have been surprised that general Petraeus and ambassador Crocker’s presentation to the House of Representatives was scheduled for September 11, exactly six years after the fall of the World Trade Center. What was perhaps surprising was that, while the public was waiting for this report, the president had managed to hold at…
Read Full Article...In the 1980s, with several friends, I helped produce a radio program called “Europe-in-Formation” in the New York left-wing public radio station WBAI. This was a time well before the ultimate internal weakness of the Soviet Union became apparent and when a true or good or purified socialism remained a hope for many leftists. Our…
Read Full Article...Dick Howard’s The Specter of Democracy is composed primarily of recent essays revised for this volume. They express ideas that he has been developing for about three decades. Cutting a broad swath, he critically explores the relations between theory, history, and politics. The essays reflect his intellectual journey—his early engagements with Marx, the Frankfurt School, and, especially,…
Read Full Article...Two months after taking office—but after two years of campaigning—it is possible to begin to outline some elements of future policy by the new government. Perhaps the first thing to say is that it will indeed be a “government” rather than what Americans typically call the “administration” in Washington. Simple administration is all that is…
Read Full Article...Although André Gorz (1923-2007) was known during the past two decades as one of the leading proponents and innovators of left-wing ecological politics, I will try to show here that the basis of all of his political thought, as it evolved with the times and the circumstances, was philosophical. There are biographical grounds for this claim. …
Read Full Article...The historical rupture marked by the Great War of 1914-1918 and its traces throughout the twentieth century have been more controversial in Germany than elsewhere. At the beginning of the century the German nation, recently unified under Bismarck, had rapidly adapted to modernity in every arena. Material progress underpinned by scientific creativity was quickly translated…
Read Full Article...In the mid-1960s, as the Cold War seemed frozen into place after the Soviet repression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, and the stalemate that defused the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the spirit of a “New Left” began to emerge in the West. Although encouraged by events in the Third World, its common denominator…
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