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Family Policies in Post-Communist Nations
| by Betty Reid Mandell | Summer 2008 |
THE COUNTRIES THAT CLAIMED TO BE Communist also claimed to meet the needs of their families. What happened to those claims when the countries became capitalist? The fall 2007 issue of Social Politics seeks to answer that question. It analyzes family policies of Russia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Moldova, and Armenia.
Symposium on Gays and the Left (Part I)
Summer 2008Thomas Harrison and Joanne Landy
Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neo-Con
| by Vera Pavone and Norman Scott | Summer 2008 |
WITH PUBLIC EDUCATION, teacher unions and classroom teachers under one of the most severe attacks in history by corporate funded think tanks, education profiteers, self-proclaimed pundits, and politicians from both parties, along comes a hagiography of Albert Shanker by Richard Kahlenberg, to add to the drumbeat.
Requiem for a Nation
| by Reginald Wilson | Summer 2008 |
RANDALL ROBINSON HAS WRITTEN a searing, unforgiving expose of the forcible abduction, in February, 2004, of the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the consequent deepening wretchedness of its citizens. But he does more than that. In just 270 pages of text, he depicts Haiti from the triumph of the slave revolution in 1804 to the installation of Rene Garcia Preval as president in May, 2006, while thousands of the dissident black population shouted their displeasure and could be heard outside the gates of the presidential palace during the inauguration.
Queer Reflections
| by David McReynolds | Summer 2008 |
LET ME USE MY SPACE in part simply as memory, reflections by a homosexual whose sexual orientation, at 78, is academic.
Left-wing Homosexuality: Emancipation, Sexual Liberation, and Identity Politics
| by Jeffrey Escoffier | Summer 2008 |
Socialism without fucking is dull and lifeless.
-- The heroine, WR: The Mysteries of the Organism,
a 1971 film directed by Dusan Makavejev.
Gay Leftie Seeks Straight Friends
| by Martin Duberman | Summer 2008 |
THE PRESENCE ON MANY CAMPUSES of a significant number of liberals ("Of course gay people are entitled to the full rights of citizenship") proved critical in allowing lesbian and gay studies to gain a toehold. But as I kept discovering, unpleasantly, a willingness to grant us basic rights wasn't remotely the equivalent of actually wanting to know about our lives -- let alone of believing that our distinctive perspectives might have anything of importance to say to them.
Can the Left Ignore Gay Liberation?
| by John D'Emilio | Summer 2008 |
THE JESUITS TRAINED ME WELL. My high school speech and debate coach taught me how to speak in complete paragraphs and to construct what he described as a "seamless" argument. Many years later, a close friend and fellow historian used the same word in reference to my historical writing. He described one of my books as a "seamless" narrative. Well, that skill, if I have it, has eluded me as I've tried to compose my contribution to this discussion. So, instead, I offer a series of disconnected, but I hope relevant, observations.
Keeping the Communist Party Straight, 1940s-1980s
| by Bettina Aptheker | Summer 2008 |
GROWING UP IN A COMMUNIST FAMILY and in Communist circles in New York City in the late 1940s and 1950s sexuality of any kind was never discussed, ever, in any context, for any reason. I am not laying claim to any kind of universal experience in saying this; I am only commenting on the absence of discussion in my own experience.
Socialism and Sex
| by H. L. Small | Summer 2008 |
THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM in the United States has been hampered by the lack of imagination of the leaders of socialist thought. The appeal of the socialist has always been to the future, with a paradisiacal vision of economic plentitude and true democratic freedom. That is -- the level of appeal has been a mixture of economic and social goods and leisure in a milieu of democratic-liberal sentiment. This has been good but not good enough.