Author: Michael Hirsch

MICHAEL HIRSCH is a New York-based labor and political writer and a New Politics editorial board member.

review

Returning Political Theory to Politics

The odd disconnect between theorists of ‘difference’ and struggles for social solidarity

IT’S TRAINED ELEPHANTS linked tail to snout contending with accursed builders of The Tower of Babel. That’s pretty much how defenders of discourse on class and identity caricature their opposite theoretical numbers. Not so Joseph Schwartz, who shows why such binary thinking is dangerous. Schwartz instead places economic inequality and politics back into discussions of identity and difference. It’s about time.

Albert Shanker's Legacy: Comment on Norm Scott and Vera Pavone's Review in #45

LEON TROTSKY’S TRANSITIONAL PROGRAM begins with words that have made the left nuts ever since. “The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat,” the old exiled Bolshevik and Red Army founder wrote.That analysis was arguable in 1938, when it was written, less so in the 1960s, when the United Federation of Teachers was formed. Would that it were remotely plausible today.

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