Author: James Livingston

We’re now caught between despair and hope, resignation and purpose, facts and values, between the worst and the best of times, between our historical circumstance–what simply is–and our ethical principles–what ought to be.  But what if these are also times when the either/or choice between “is” and “ought” stops making sense?  When doing the right thing by our fellow citizens is also the necessary thing, what we must do if we’re to dig ourselves out of the hole we’re in? It doesn’t happen very often, which is why we call the consequence a revolutionary crisis or situation.  We’re in one right now because just about everybody knows that capitalism has failed, and that socialism is a utopian (or dystopian) alternative–an “ideal society” that has never stood the practical test of real time. But what if socialism is, practically speaking, the only way to salvage civilization from the ruins of capitalism?  What then?  At that moment, we can see how the ethical principle of socialism resides in and flows from the historical circumstance we now experience as the eclipse of capitalism–that is, how the slogan “From each according to her abilities, to each according to his need,” now makes perfect sense in social, economic, intellectual, moral, and, yes, political-programmatic terms. We can’t address the C-19 pandemic unless we deliver proper health care to everyone who needs it regardless of their...

50 years ago today, I fell 24 feet to my death.  On that June 1st, I died to my old self, a lazy, drunken lout, an ex-jock frat boy who had recently been expelled from Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on the grounds that I never attended class, was instead always drinking or sleeping or starting fights in bars–and was, therefore, “just not cut out for higher education,” as the Dean of Students put it during my exit interview. He solemnly echoed my high school counselor, who had explained to me in my senior year that I wasn’t “college material,” and had accordingly urged me to get with the building trades. They were both right, and I say this as a tenured Professor of History who has spent the last 40 years teaching at public universities as well as small colleges and prisons, in four different states.  I’m near retirement at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, having published six books–two more are in progress–written dozens of articles, lectured to thousands of undergraduates, attended many meetings, and, not least, started this little online magazine, POLITICS/LETTERS. Still, the dean and the counselor were right, I wasn’t cut out for higher education.  So how did I get there, and last this long? Let’s start over, on June 1, 1970, on the fifth floor, the top floor, of an office building under...