I would like to suggest that what most characterizes Leon Trostky, and the revolutionary generation he symbolizes, are: 1) the dominance of ideas; 2) the need and willingness to act on them; and 3) the fanatic belief in ideological purity. …
Dear Irving: No doubt there are others, but I have seen only three “negative” U. S. reviews of my essay, The Causes of World War Three. In the Wall Street Journal, William H. Chamberlain wrote—as expected; in the N. Y. …
Men and women carry beneath the burden of their impotence a spark of life, however buried, that flares at the sight of the Stranger. And in this blind light they see his strangeness as the mark of a terrifying freedom. …
This important book provides detailed information about a form of community that few people still experience at first hand— the rural village. Those of us who live in cities are thus given an opportunity to check our conceptions of rural …
THE HIDDEN and unhidden persuaders of Madison Avenue have regularly presented the American Male with his very own products, untainted by a speck of effeminacy. He-men eat Wheaties, smoke cigarettes, bathe with soaps and douse themselves with deodorants, all of …
MY FIRST CONTACT with Dostoevsky’s novels was rather belated, I am ashamed to say. It came only when I was twenty-two. And what is more, it was in a sense imposed on me by circumstances. The conditions of my undertaking …
The ownership of the old ruling classes is not a thing of permanence; one can foresee the end of their control of both property and culture. The only difficulty is to identify concretely their successors. Who will inherit the culture …
Hannah Arendt’s Reflections Editors: In the Winter 1959 issue of DISSENT, Miss Hannah Arendt quotes in the preliminary statement to her article, “Reflections on Little Rock,” some remarks I made about Negroes being less interested in abolishing laws against miscegenation …
That we are, as a nation, engaged in a great public debate about education is quite evident. It is equally evident that this debate would be most salutary if it were being conducted with adequate knowledge on all sides, and …
I went to Cuba at a time when, by the standards of the daily press, nothing important was taking place: there was only the buildup for the crisis expected after the November 1958 election. Not until later did the correspondents …
The first industrial revolution began in England, spread to the Continental mainland, and then crossed the Atlantic to the United States. Only generations later did it affect Russia, and even then only in part, whilst the peoples of Asia were …
It has often been rumoured that Bertolt Brecht, the great German Communist poet, had been severely critical of the East German regime despite his show of Stalinist orthodoxy. The German magazine Neue Deutsche Hefte (No. 52) now publishes an article …
Slightly more than thirty years ago, in October 1928, the first Five-Year Plan was launched. For three decades the resources of a vast country, the energies of a large and talented population, and the capacity of a most elaborate and …
Despite all the claims and complaints to the contrary, it now looks as if the 1950’s will go down as one of the most barren decades in American criticism. For nearly ten years the intellectual energy and artistic commitment of …
The new political thinking of Milovan Djilas is marked by a rather surprising contradiction.
