Participation and Democratic Theory, by Carole Pateman. New York: Cambridge University Press. 122 pp. This book may initiate an effort to formulate and gather the evidence in support of “participatory democracy” as its advocates confront contemporary democratic theorists. Miss Pateman presents …
Writing these pages in Europe allows me to look at the problem of American poverty in a way I might not have chosen had I written in America. Visiting the slums of Naples and North Africa or traveling through the Sicilian …
The Passing of the Modern Age, by John Lukacs. New York: Harper & Row. 222 pp. The obsolescence of Western civilization is now widely alleged, and the publication of John Lukacs’s book gives occasion for some reflection on this subject. By …
Social Crisis, Crisis of Civilization, or Both? We must get it out of our heads that this is a doomed time, that we are waiting for the end, and the rest of it, mere junk from fashionable magazines. —Saul Bellow, …
A Portrait of the American Irish The most obvious thing one can say about the American Irish is that every accusation that is made against more recent immigrant groups to the large cities was made against the Irish first. They were …
We didn’t need the Pentagon Papers to find out that the war was wrong. It was wrong when the French fought to retain their control of Indochina, and when President Truman gave them military aid for their colonial war. It was …
On the Inner Crisis of Communist Society They’re rioting in Africa, they’re starving in Spain—as the Kingston Trio used to sing—but in Russia they’re “building socialism.” There may be occasional tremors on the fringes of Comrade Brezhnev’s “socialist commonwealth,” requiring the …
Whether on stage or “live,” whatever the exact degree of contrivance, documentaries stake everything on their appeal to reality. The documentary sets out in search of the real world—to show us real lives, to give those lives a sudden and final …
Contrary to what the news media, academics, and the “cosmopolitan” Left imply, the average American youngster is not doing his thing on a university campus. By 1985, it is estimated, only 14 percent of America’s population will be graduates of …
On The Confession Editor: It seems to me that Erazim Kohak’s article on The Confession [April Dissent] missed the point of the film and does a grave disservice to the search for truth. He does state the real point of the …
The first sparks had already been struck when I arrived five minutes late for the initial session of a T group, omposed of faculty and staff at a university in Boston. Each member was telling something about himself. As I entered, …
Though the events of recent years have bruised its image, the idea of political coalitionism is still very much with us. Among some of the young and disaffected, coalition politics may not be this season’s vegetable but it remains this season’s …
Union Prospects for the Seventies If we read our stars right, the seventies ought to see, not the dawning of the age of Aquarius, but a new era for the working man. Of course, some catastrophe or technological breakthrough may make …
There has been much discussion of the youth “counter culture” insofar as it affects prospects of social change in America. The counter culture’s adulators have gone so far as to suggest that the appearance of this new “consciousness” renders a major …
Between Capitalism and Socialism: Essays in Political Economics, by Robert Heilbroner. New York: Random House. 294 pp. There is tension, even suspense, in Robert Heilbroner’s new collection of articles. The tension comes from Heilbroner’s agonizing over the classic issue, the …
