LETTERS  

Editors: There are now two political prisoners behind bars in New Hampshire. On June 28, Hugo De Gregory was jailed for refusing to answer questions in New Hampshire’s “subversive investigation.” His imprisonment climaxes six years of persecution by N. H. …



England: A View From The Left  

DEAR FRIENDS, You asked for a letter on the current situation inside the Labor party—from the point of view of the left. It’s late in the evening and I’ll simply write this out until I’ve finished: spontaneity may bring its …





England: The Triumph Of Primitivism  

If one believes, as I do, that it makes a difference whether the Tories or the Laborites govern Britain, the outcome of the Labor Party’s 1960 Conference at Scarborough has implications of historical tragedy. Indeed, I feel that Gaitskell’s defeat …



England: Socialism And Apathy  

The British Labor movement has always been favored, or goaded, by a left wing which felt that Labor lacked full socialist consciousness; in the last decade or two this left wing found popular expression through the oratory of Nye Bevan …



Return To India—1960  

It isn’t easy to return to India after a twenty-year absence. So much has happened and so much changed. There is a whole new generation that has known freedom since 1947. What will it be like? Will one find the …



The Addict And The Law  

More and more the drug addict is becoming both an avant-garde hero and modern scapegoat. The writing of Jack Gelber, William Burroughs, Alexander Trocchi and others has stimulated interest in the lives of “junkies.” Hipsters, according to Norman Mailer, may …







Language And Technological Society  

Communication in and about daily performances, relationships, arrangements is ordinarily “non-controversial”: it takes things for granted. The world is established, and one has to put up with it; the common projects and aspirations do not essentially question it and do …



Ideology And The Beau Gesten  

I agree with much of what Dennis Wrong says in his “Reflections on the End of Ideology,” in the Summer 1960 issue of DISSENT. Mr. Wrong writes that the “end of ideology” is a fear of the “destructive mass emotions …





An Exemplary Life  

At about 7:80 on the evening of June 27, 1960, in a tiny book-crammed lodging of a workers’ suburb of Paris, Pierre Monatte died. He was seventy-nine years old. Monatte entered the union movement in 1902, having been attracted to …