These remarks, unavoidably, are being written about a month before they will be read. In the interim, changes are likely to occur in the Vietnam crisis. But the fundamental facts, precipitated by years of political reaction and obtuseness, are not …
Dear Sartre: May I take public issue with you for the claims you make in What is Literature? You claim literary importance, even preeminence, for socially committed, or “responsible” writing; you claim also that anyone who happens to be unprejudiced …
The history of World Communism, conceived as a united movement with a common doctrine and strategy formulated from a single center, is at an end. One hundred years after the foundation of the First International and fifty years after Lenin …
Editors: May I say a word in reply to Arthur Waskow’s criticism of my criticism of the prevailing trends in peace research? Mr. Waskow tilts at a straw man. The instances he cites in no way rebut my basic criticism …
The Rise of the Soviet Empire by Jan Librach Praeger University Series, 380 pp., $2.50 The following statement appears on page 77 of this book: “It is possible that the Kremlin, fearing the adverse effect a Communist rule in Spain …
Blood from the Sky by Piotr Rawicz, translated by Peter Hays Harcourt, Brace & World, 315 pp., $4.95 The Journey and the Pity by Pawel Mayewski Charles Scribner’s Sons, 178 pp., $1.65 The furor aroused by the publication of Hannah …
Democracy in the International Association of Machinists by Mark Perlman Wiley, 1962, 113 pp. This little piece of work was commissioned by the Trade Union Study of the Fund for the Republic; and it is depressing to think that with …
The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany by Guenter Levy McGraw Hill, 1964, 416 pp., $7.50 Both irony and justice attend the world-wide public trial which the Papacy and the German Catholic Church are now undergoing for their conduct during the …
The Making of the English Working Class by E. P. Thompson Pantheon Books, 1964, 848 pp., $15.00 Industrial society was born in Great Britain in the years between 1780 and 1832; E. P. Thompson’s brilliant new work is the best …
In his attempt to define an organic “structure of feeling” in 19th century social thought, a structure capable of supporting the political Left and Right alike, Raymond Williams brings together much material that is of deepest interest to anyone who …
Lenin’s death in 1924 produced in the Soviet Union a flood of apologies, memoirs and eulogies, no less sincere because their author had criticized Lenin on previous occasions. Among them was Gorky, who paid tribute to Lenin in many moving …
Almost everyone knows that Sidney Webb’s Fabianism was, if nothing else, practical, constructive, and hardheaded, unlike the revolutionary extremists he held in sovereign contempt. Now there is no better opportunity to be practical, constructive, and hardheaded than as a cabinet …
On May 6 died in Paris in his 87th year Alfred Rosmer, a revolutionary of irreproachable character. He was not well known to the present generation of radicals, but to those who lived through the events of the First World …
I make no claim to being an “area specialist” on the Soviet Union, but for many years I have read the literature on Soviet society and ideology. For several years I attended courses in the Russian language, and acquired a …
