A Letter From Paris  

You ask me about Messali Hadj and the MNA. This is an extremely complicated story and I hesitate to take any categoric position. It would seem that the French government recently thought of using the MNA and Messali as a …



France: A Nation in Agony  

The French Left has finally returned to political action. On October 27, 1960, summoned by the National Union of French Students and joined by the independent unions—Force Ouvriere, the French Confederation of Christian Workers and the autonomous teachers unions 20,000 …





LETTERS  

Editors: There are now two political prisoners behind bars in New Hampshire. On June 28, Hugo De Gregory was jailed for refusing to answer questions in New Hampshire’s “subversive investigation.” His imprisonment climaxes six years of persecution by N. H. …



California’s Death Penalty  

THE RECENT FAILURE to abolish the death penalty in California by initiative petition reveals something about liberal politics today. In February 1960, there seemed to be an excellent chance of repealing the state’s capital punishment law. Governor Edmund Brown had …



A Compassionate View  

THE BEAT OF LIFE, by Barbara Probst Solomon. Lippincott & Co. With sympathy and honesty, Barbara Probst Solomon has written a book about her own generation. In The Beat of Life the “beat” and the “silent” young are not being …



Thwarting The Young  

GROWING Ur ABSURD, by Paul Goodman. Random House. In the notices it has received thus far, Paul Goodman’s remarkable book, Growing Up Absurd, has not been done the decency of a summary. My main intention in this review is to …





An Exemplary Life  

At about 7:80 on the evening of June 27, 1960, in a tiny book-crammed lodging of a workers’ suburb of Paris, Pierre Monatte died. He was seventy-nine years old. Monatte entered the union movement in 1902, having been attracted to …





Ideology And The Beau Gesten  

I agree with much of what Dennis Wrong says in his “Reflections on the End of Ideology,” in the Summer 1960 issue of DISSENT. Mr. Wrong writes that the “end of ideology” is a fear of the “destructive mass emotions …



Language And Technological Society  

Communication in and about daily performances, relationships, arrangements is ordinarily “non-controversial”: it takes things for granted. The world is established, and one has to put up with it; the common projects and aspirations do not essentially question it and do …