Spring 2024

What makes me identify as a radical is the conviction that something new must be added to the American calculus of goods and bads, rights and wrongs. I have an uneasy sense of a whole nation skating lightly over a …

When the cease-fire after eight years of war in Algeria was at last announced on March 17th, no sirens screamed in Paris, no anxious mothers fell down on their knees to pray in the streets, no crowds foregathered to burst …

The infamous “membership clause” of the Smith Act makes it a criminal offense to be a “knowing” member of any organization which “advocates” the violent overthrow of the government. Evidence of specific actions aimed at revolution is not required for …

To judge by the American press, one would think the third general election of independent India began and ended with the story of Krishna Menon! The moment his victory became clear, the press lost further interest and to this day …

Khrushchev always reminds me of Prussia’s Sergeant-King, Frederick William, who used to exclaim “but ye ought to love me” while caning his subjects. No doubt, he would rather be loved than feared and prefers voluntary to forced assent. Unfortunately he …

It is hard to imagine that anything written these last few months could cast so harsh a light on the future of our society as Cybernation, a pamphlet written by Donald Michael and published by the Center for the Study …

Columbus Day 1961, the AFL—CIO Executive Council inadvertently brought on the birth pangs of a new American union movement. When the travail is over very few of the old-crony midwives who now run the AFL—CIO will be around, and almost …

If anyone except a trade-union president—say a bank president, an old-line political boss, an insurance-company president, or a corporation lawyer—had ordered as much cash and manpower into an election campaign as Walter Reuther mobilized for Jack Kennedy, he would have …

Scandinavia Liberals can always be made uneasy when told the “fact” that suicide rates and other indices of social disorganization are very high in the Scandinavian countries under the welfare state. This “fact,” it turns out, just isn’t one. The …

These days we don’t ask of a new president “what will he do?” but “how will he appear?” The image of the leader at home, and now the “credibility” of his intentions abroad—these are the crucial elements of contemporary politics. …

Editors: I wish to compliment you on the Summer, 1961 issue of DISSENT. It is a constructive, revealing, often startling portrait of a city written by men and women who care about both its present and future. I was especially …

THE SPANISH CIVIL. WAR, by Hugh Thomas. Harper and Brothers. 1961. 720 pp. In broad outline, the popular view of the Spanish Civil War has not been disturbed by historical research. On the establishment of the Republic in 1931 successive …