Was the Long March a Dead End? An Exchange on Radicals and the University dissentmagazine.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dissentmagazine.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Setting
Sunday, January 23, 1921. It was a good day to watch a fight. An audience of thirty-five hundred packed the Lexington Theater in midtown Manhattan. What was the fare for the afternoon? A boxing match? A wrestling bout? A martial arts exhibition? No, this was something else. This was an intellectual battle, a three-round debate between two economics professors on the resolution “That capitalism has more to offer to the workers of the United States than has socialism.”
Arguing the affirmative was an establishment figure, Edwin R.A. Seligman, a scion of a wealthy New York banking family and chairman of Columbia’s economics department.