Dissent Magazine

Perhaps the most important voice of social democratic thought in the United States, Dissent was the brainchild of Irving Howe, Stanley Plastrik, and Manny Geltman. First published in 1954, Dissent sought to provide an option between conventional liberal journals and the more doctrinaire, and outdated, organs of the old intellectual Left. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Dissent combined a steadfast anti-communist foreign policy with a commitment to domestic social and economic justice. Dissent was a passionate voice of opposition to the increased conservatism in American government in the latter 20th century, especially during the years of the Ronald Reagan presidency.

Howe was the primary force behind Dissent from its birth until his death in 1993. Howe wanted Dissent to provide a voice for genuine third-path democratic socialism. Virtually alone among the organs of ex-independent leftists, like The Partisan Review, Encounter, and Commentary, Dissent continued to concentrate on issues of labor and work. Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, Dissent published articles on work and unions by such writers as Paul Jacobs, Frank Marquart, Harvey Swados, and Brendan Sexton. In the 1980s and 1990s Dissent continued to cover organized labor's declining fortunes. Dissent responded to and supported the mainstream civil rights movement from its beginnings.

Dissent was generally supportive of the student activism of the 1960s, but the attempts of Howe and others in the Dissent circle to engage many New Leftists often proved disastrous. Howe was leery of what he thought was a tolerance for authoritarianism among groups like the Students for a Democratic Society and his, at times, biting criticism hurt efforts to fuse a positive working relationship with the increasingly radical New Left as the decade wore on.

Howe and Dissent were criticized at times for not advocating unilateral withdrawal from Vietnam during the 1960s, but Dissent was still fiercely critical of American policy in Southeast Asia during the 1960s and early 1970s. Dissent remained sharply critical of American foreign policy in general throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The journal eventually moved from [Page 470]a more pointed democratic socialist perspective to a position of representing the left-liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Dissent was modestly optimistic following the election of Bill Clinton to the presidency in 1992. Academics and former New Leftists like Michael Kazin and Todd Gitlin became contributors.

Key to Howe's vision of Dissent was the preservation of intellectual and political freedom. Dissent has remained to the left of the Democratic Party, but has never strayed from its anti-communist and anti-totalitarian roots.