These are critical times. Not since before the New Deal have working people in this country been so vulnerable, and perhaps never before has the right been so influential and self-confident. Abroad, U.S. military and corporate power embraces the world in a stranglehold.

There are hopeful signs: the leftward shift in Latin American politics, the inspiring struggles of French students and workers, the growing, fierce resistance in China, to mention a few. But too often the major opposition to a U.S. imperium has been dictatorship or the politics of reactionary religious fundamentalism.

And here in the U.S., there have been some encouraging developments: massive marches against the Iraq war, the unprecedented immigrant rights movement, and Bush's growing unpopularity despite the timidity of the Democrats. Yet the left is too organizationally and intellectually weak to seriously challenge the Establishment.

New Politics seeks to help revitalize the left. The magazine offers ideas and strategies, not set down in advance as a "line," but generated through discussion and analysis from a radical, democratic, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist standpoint. Within these broad parameters, NP welcomes debate. NP is not attached or subordinated to any political party or institution. We stand for popular empowerment and democratic control at every level, opposition to all forms of authoritarianism, no matter how "leftist" their rhetoric -- in short, a politics from below.

During the Cold War, NP was a beacon of principled socialist clarity. It tirelessly exposed the lie that identified the socialist legacy with Communist states, and published Soviet-bloc democratic dissidents. NP championed the struggles of the 60s and 70s movements against the Vietnam War and U.S. intervention in Central America, for women's and black liberation, for union democracy and affirmative action. We have firmly defended the rights of both Palestinians and Israelis to self-determination and security.

Since the Cold War, we have spoken out against the "shock therapy" that devastated former Soviet societies and against the first Gulf War, as well as the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

NP has been inspired throughout by the vision of a "third camp"; during the Cold War it meant "Neither Washington nor Moscow"; today it means opposing Washington's imperial aggression while making no apologies for its antagonists when they are anti-democratic, be they Milosevic, Saddam Hussein or authoritarian religious fundamentalists.

Today, surveying the bleak political landscape, especially in the U.S., some argue that the left should trim its sails and be modest in its ambitions. We dare not do this. Not caution, but bold and imaginative radicalism Is needed.

The aim of NP is to do whatever a magazine can do to help transform popular struggles for peace, social justice and freedom of cultural expression into an intelligent movement for a democratic, just and peaceful world.

---

Founding Editors

Julius Jacobson (1922-2003)

Phyllis Jacobson

Editorial Board

Sam Bottone	Joanne Landy
Lynn Chancer	Betty Reid Mandell, co-editor
Mark Dow	Marvin Mandell, co-editor
Gertrude Ezorsky	Scott McLemee
Barry Finger	Jason Schulman
Thomas Harrison	Stephen R. Shalom
Michael Hirsch	Lois Weiner
Dan La Botz	Reginald Wilson
Julia Wrigley

Intern

Alex D'Agostino

Sponsors

Stanley Aronowitz	Justin Grossman
Derrick Bell	William Kornblum
Elaine Bernard	Jesse Lemisch
Jon Bloom	Nelson Lichtenstein
Stephen Eric Bronner	Ravi Malhotra
Mari Jo Buhle	David McReynolds
Paul Buhle	Deborah Meier
Lorraine Cohen	Gwendolyn Mink
Noam Chomsky	Kim Moody
Rep. Ronald V. Dellums	Kai Nielsen
Bogdan Denitch	Martin Oppenheimer
Michael Eric Dyson	Frances Fox Piven
Barbara Ehrenreich	Ronnie Steinberg
Barbara Epstein	Stephen Steinberg
Sam Farber	Amos Vogel
David Finkel	Peter Waterman
Barbara Garson	Stuart Weir
Allen Graubard	Cornel West
Richard Greeman	Howard Zinn

Home