Contributions by:
Stephen Eric Bronner
The Arab Spring, it seems, has turned into a winter of discontent. In virtually all nations that witnessed a democratic awakening – Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Mali, Syria, Tunisia – either state violence or conflict among competing religious/secular, ethnic, or tribal constituencies dominates the political landscape. Many in the West consider such turbulence an Oriental or…
Read Full Article...Human rights and political realism offer two very different ways of approaching international affairs.[1] Here is not the place for an extended philosophical disquisition on the relationship between them, let alone their connection with the history of American foreign policy. Human rights and political realism have their unique traditions that are usually seen as starkly opposed…
Read Full Article...Surrealism had the longest tenure of any avant-garde movement, and its members were arguably the most “political.”1 It emerged on the heels of World War I, when André Breton founded his first journal, Literature, and brought together a number of figures who had mostly come to know each other during the war years. They included…
Read Full Article...Few questions of theory are as salient today as that of the relation between capitalism and social rights. Amid the rise of capitalism, during what became known as “the age of democratic revolution,” progressives placed primary upon constricting the arbitrary exercise of authority by defenders of “throne and altar” and the traditions associated with the…
Read Full Article...Counter-revolution has gripped the American imagination. Neo-Conservatism was the dominant ideological expression of the new millennium and the Tea Party is today on the march. They have roots in the beginnings of American history and, like their predecessors everywhere, they are the reaction against the prospect of radical — if not always — revolutionary change.…
Read Full Article...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…
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