Dissent (magazine)

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Cover of the Fall 2005 issue of the Dissent magazine.
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Cover of the Fall 2005 issue of the Dissent magazine.

Dissent is a quarterly political magazine based in New York City. Dissent was founded in 1954 by literary critic Irving Howe and sociologist Lewis A. Coser. Howe and Coser recognized the weakness of the left in the United States and hoped Dissent would be the voice of a new American radicalism.

Although Dissent describes itself as a socialist journal its relationship with the broader left has often been difficult. The magazine's founders developed their politics in the intellectual milieu of the anti-Stalinist left of the 1940s. They were rigorously anti-Communist while remaining loyal to the traditions of democratic socialism. Unlike Monthly Review and other radical publications, Dissent was fiercely critical of the Communist experiments in Cuba, Vietnam and elsewhere. Its skeptical attitudes toward Third World revolutions and its failure to engage and understand the culture of the New Left isolated Dissent from the radical movements that developed in the 1960s. After this tumultuous period Dissent reconsidered some of its attitudes toward the New Left and several veterans of student movement became regular writers.

Although Dissent still identifies itself as a social democratic magazine, its editors and contributors represent a wide variety of political outlooks. The hawkish liberalism of Paul Berman is printed alongside the exuberant Marxism of Marshall Berman. The magazine was divided over the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Michael Walzer opposed the invasion while criticizing the rhetoric and analysis of the anti-war movement. His co-editor Mitchell Cohen supported the intervention while remaining critical of the Bush administration.

Some of Dissent's more important or famous articles include

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