The Ideas Letter

Leonid Ragozin has long been an unsentimental observer of the Russian political scene. A journalist in exile, Ragozin has an unusual talent for zeroing in on social contradictions and double standards. His second piece for The Ideas Letter, a critical dissection of the Russian intelligentsia, looks at many of that class’s own contradictions—even its rank hypocrisy.  

Our second commissioned essay, from the writer Sarah Stein Lubrano, questions some of the assumptions that underlie today’s supposed crisis of loneliness. Stein Lubrano parses the concept of “social atrophy” to make sense of the structural problem of isolation—and argue that social engagement remains vital for the health of an individual, and a democracy.  

Our curated content commences with an essay from the fine Brazilian publication Revista Rosa. The late Ruy Fausto unpacks concepts we thought we knew—illiberalism, neoliberalism, fascism—and re-sorts them conceptually in a way that pays intellectual dividends.  

Then Zaheer Baber, in Capital & Class, looks at the so-called neoliberal university and finds many of its origins presciently conceived decades ago in the sociological imagination of the maverick C. Wright Mills. 

Sumantra Maisa follows with a question: Why is today’s new Right largely absent of any cultural commitments or aesthetic sense? Why do conservatives of lore have such better taste? 

Finishing with a podcast, we feature Alana Lentin and her reflections about new racial regimes in contemporary society, and the power they maintain in contrast with racial regimes of the past.  

Our musical selections for Issue 45 are twofold. First, that great short-lived quartet of former bandmates of Ornette Coleman, Old and New Dreams, laid down on their first date a track in equal measure haunting and beautiful.