Having found rather poor enlightenment in the hour-by hour thrillers of Khrushchev’s coup d’etat, we must admit that we prefer historical novelists to Russia experts when it comes to relating who did whom in. But we have been fascinated by …
If I had to select items of twentieth-century evidence to be found one day by future historians and archaeologists, the gas chambers of Auschwitz and the protocols of the Moscow trials would be high on my list. Twentieth-century man has …
So great a legion of ideological interests is choking the media of communication of the world today that I deem it advisable to define the terms in which I speak and for whom. In the heated, charged, and violently partisan …
My thesis is that the United States is moving simultaneously toward and away from social equality, and that the tension between the two movements is to a large degree responsible for the present social and political mood. The movement toward …
Writers on the problem of ideology frequently describe it as an expression of a group or class view which gives the individual both an awareness and rationalization of his particular social role. Developing complex ideological systems along these lines was …
Among professional political scientists the late Franz Neumann easily took a position hors cadre. In a drab trade he excelled in brilliance. Among circumspect searchers of validated facts he stood out as a man of ideas and an author of …
The posthumous collection of Franz Neumann’s essays (The Democratic and Authoritarian State, The Free Press, 1957) underlines the tragedy of his death. Some of the essays are diffuse and obscure, others unfinished; and the collection as a whole does not …
In the postwar era, philosophy in West Germany has mainly been considering the relative merits of Heidegger, Husserl and Kant. As in America, outside the polarity of existentialism and positivism, little has come along to excite either students or scholars. …
In a concluding section, the authors of Union Democracy (subtitled “The Internal Politics of the International Typographical Union”) observe, “For men of good will, there is much to learn in the history, institutions and arguments of American printers.” Such “men …
Editors: I thought the following little item might be of interest to you: The Danish Communist party, at its “extraordinary” 19th national congress, just concluded, adopted by a vote of 300-odd to 2 a resolution supporting Soviet action in Hungary. …
This issue of DISSENT is devoted to reports and interpretations—mostly reports—of the American scene. We have asked a number of writers to describe those aspects of our national life with which they are most familiar. What they wrote, we have …
So you have decided to leave the party. And you have written to tell me about it. What should I answer?
In the South these days everybody’s world seems to be falling apart. People float about in uncertainties. Old landmarks are disappearing. The new ones do not bring assurance. There are calls to action; but will the proposals make things better …
The editors of DISSENT have, for the most part, had little concern with the parochial quarrels, maneuvers and synthetic “activity” which characterize the life of the few remaining radical groups in America. Our interests have usually been elsewhere; our ideas …
It has been said that every industry breeds its own type of man. True though this is of the auto industry, it would still be a mistake to infer a “composite auto worker” or a “typical auto worker.” Anyone writing …
