The cold war has been a demoralizing force in American life, forcing us to concentrate on such questions as security and prestige. It inspired the hysteria of the McCarthy period and the anxiety that has marked our relations with the …
On March 22 The New York Times declared editorially that at the Guam meeting of U. S. and South Vietnamese leaders, the emphasis was not on military problems but on “that other side of the war—the progress toward economic and …
The almost esoteric controversy and clamor that have surrounded the Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM) show in clear perspective some basic facts about America in the time of the Johnson Administration: what’s happening to the poverty program, convolutions of …
I have just finished reading Paul Feldman’s extraordinary article on “black power” in the January—February 1967 DISSENT. It is certainly the best discussion on the subject I have seen, and probably the best article on the civil rights movement I’ve …
I Mutual trust is indispensable to any democratic polity. Without it, without a sense that the political men we deal with can be assumed to be self-actuated, autonomous actors engaged in pursuing their material or ideal interests in an open …
The censor’s work is never secure, for history deals harshly with yesterday’s moral judgments. The road from the 1909 Chicago censor’s refusal to license two feckless horse operas (“Tile James Boys” and “Night Riders”) to this year’s unstinting praise for …
Barrington Moore’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy is one of the finest books ever written by an American social scientist. With relentless intellectual honesty and range, Moore manages to shed new light on some of the central questions of …
The first question I want to raise is that of the priority to be given to industry and agriculture in the underdeveloped countries’ present situation. Intellectuals in underdeveloped countries largely pin their hopes on industrialization; and I want to emphasize …
There is a positivist school of political science that devotes itself to the analysis of power. It is value-free about things like justice or commonwealth; and it pays as little mind as possible to causes like class interests or historical …
The “end of the ideologies,” diagnosed by Raymond Aron, among others, refers generally to the developed societies of America and Western Europe. It connects prosperity, economic growth, and social integration on the one hand with the progressive decline of political …
Richard Flacks’s article is the most serious discussion of “participatory democracy” that has yet come out of the New Left, and with most of it I am not in fundamental disagreement. I have some questions, or different emphases. Flacks defines …
In his 1966 State of the Union message, Lyndon B. Johnson said that if the war in Vietnam were to go on, it should not be financed at the expense of the worst-off in the society but rather by the …
For long stretches of history, no one but the poor has been interested in poverty; but at intervals—and we are in one such period now—it has become respectable to see it as a problem. Sociologists, economists, social workers, and politicians of …
Let us recall the early days of our struggle when, in 1954, the Supreme Court made its historic decision. A great psychological ferment began to take place, which, as you know, was followed by a period of intense direct action. …
I write these lines as a hasty last-minute response to the news that the CIA has been secretly subsidizing certain activities abroad of the National Student Association (NSA) and other student groups. By the time this issue of DISSENT reaches …
