Should a Socialist society be a single, or a multi-cultural, society? Is there an entity called Socialist culture which is the proper culture of a Socialist society, or, on the other hand, is it a mark of a Socialist society …
If the future of the Communist Party seems dim, there have been some developments in the United States these past few years that should encourage those who believe the Soviet Union represents a force for historic progress. Among the disorganized …
In the 1920s and 30s it cost something to maintain one’s posture as a believer in civil rights. Radicals were personally involved in and were dunned incessantly in campaigns for strikes in the South, sharecroppers’ relief, and the defense of …
Are workers becoming “middle class”? Is Fortune correct in describing workers as a “salariat” rather than a “proletariat”? A belief is spreading among social scientists and unionists that in their middle age unions are becoming middle class. But an evaluation …
THE FUTILITARIAN SOCIETY, by Wiliam J. Newman. George Braziller. 1961. William J. Newman’s theme can be expressed in a loose syllogism: America’s problems call for change and innovation. But conservatives are “stasis seekers.” Therefore conservative ideas are a “menace” to …
THE AMERICANS: Photographs by Robert Frank, introduction by Jack Kerouac. Grove Press. 1959. Shortly before Joe Hill was executed by the state of Utah, he requested that his ashes be scattered in every state of the union, except Utah. That …
Reading your special issue, Cuba: The Invasion and Its Consequences, was indeed a painful experience. In the aftermath of the Cuban “fiasco” surely more could be expected from a magazine that claims to be democratic socialist and radical than this …
The FLN Editors: In the Spring/1961 issue of Dissent your Paris correspondent, Paul Parisot, states that “The FLN is tied to the International Communist bloc and includes an internal tendency whose orientation, thought and fundamental political conceptions have nothing in …
WHEN THE SOVIET UNION resumed its testing of nuclear weapons, it was a catastrophe for mankind. When the United States announced several days later that it would start underground testing—it is not yet clear, at the time of writing, whether …
The absence of esthetic gratification—an outstanding characteristic of the architecture of our cities—has definite effects on the community as well as on individuals. The main effects become apparent through a multitude of symptoms, ambiguous enough to be seldom traced and …
I had no desire to get to Jerusalem, no expectation of living in Athens, little interest in Rome. I was eighteen. What did I know then about Paris? My whole aim was to live in New York—where I have lived …
The most striking fact about New York in the last decade is the realty boom. Wherever one goes—in the heart of old Manhattan or the farther outskirts of the Bronx and Staten Island—construction is seen. Craters yawn in what were …
This is the paradox of Greenwich Village: an historic artists’ quarter panders its worst trivia with the civic pride of Zenith’s Chamber of Commerce. Nowhere else in New York is the city’s ghetto-complex so challenged as by the interracial atmosphere …
Wherever enough middle class college graduates can be found to fill a New York meeting hall, there have sprung up Democratic political clubs bearing the label “reform.” Many of these clubs were originally founded as local campaign headquarters for Adlai …
In some ways Harlem is different. It is not the solidest or the best organized Negro community (Negro political representation came to Chicago a full decade before New York). It is not the most depressed, even in the New York …
