The Capitalist Manifesto

During the second half of the 60s, I discovered and began reading Dr. Marx's extensive in-depth analysis of capitalist economy, as well as his critique of capitalist political economy. As such, I'm compelled to thank Newsweek for devoting valuable space to the June 22 essays because, once again, it's time to evaluate our capitalist economy. It's clearer today that capitalism can't, and won't, deliver what human beings must have to pursue life, liberty and happiness regardless of how many times it's reformed. Predictably and unfortunately, Dr. Zakaria repeats the same mistake as anti-Marxist critics before him when he writes, "What we are experiencing is not a crisis of capitalism. It is a crisis of...democracy...". Crisis or not, Dr. Zakaria, like most who have a stake in capitalism, is in denial. Dr. Marx's collected works demonstrate a democracy can be, and in American's case is, dominated by a capitalist political economy. To ignore the historical string of capitalist economic tragedies and write that our current crisis lies not with capitalism but with democracy is to fall into the trap described by Dr. Marx, "History always repeats itself twice: first time as tragedy, second time as farce." Our capitalist economy has run out of time, as did the slave economy before it. It's time we developed an economy which will allow us to live the dreams of our Founding Fathers.

This comment isn't about the articles themselves, which I have been appreciating. It's about your new graphics and typography. I am very nearsighted and generally have no problem reading just about anything in a magazine or book. However, your use of pastel words on pastel backgrounds is causing me great strain to read. For example, the June 29th issue has a graph and a box on page 4. The print is white on various shades of yellow. It is very difficult to read because of the lack of contrast. The same is true of the white print on green in the Conventional Wisdom piece on page 16 and the grayish and yellow print in Perspectives on page 21. It is very stylish of you to use color to draw attention to your content, but you should use colors that make the words stand out on the page, not blend into the background. I want to continue reading Newsweek after having done so for over 30 years. Don't make it difficult now for mechanical reasons. (I also note that the print I am typing in this box shows up gray. Why not just make it black so I can see what I'm writing?)

My comment isn't about the content of this page. It's about the typefaces