If one believes, as I do, that it makes a difference whether the Tories or the Laborites govern Britain, the outcome of the Labor Party’s 1960 Conference at Scarborough has implications of historical tragedy. Indeed, I feel that Gaitskell’s defeat …
DEAR FRIENDS, You asked for a letter on the current situation inside the Labor party—from the point of view of the left. It’s late in the evening and I’ll simply write this out until I’ve finished: spontaneity may bring its …
“New Frontiers” and “Leadership” will now replace the golf links and committee rule. Taking, for the while, at face value the claims of the new administration, I wish to present my own bill as a simple voter, who is especially …
On one point everyone seems agreed: had Eisenhower run again he would have won again. It seems likely that even Nixon would have won, had Eisenhower entered the campaign a week or so earlier than he did. The President, our …
Among the staple TV Westerns is one called Colt .45. Its hero, as in most of these shows, is a cowboy-cop. The paces he was put through in an episode of a few months back—something titled “Gallows at Granite Gap”—exemplify …
If N beats K Or K beats N The electorate is bound to win The blessings of a four-year grin, A tusky joy—from film and page Teeth meet the issues of the age. Hail, autumn sun, by whose bleaching grows …
Let it be admitted at the outset: If there is a theory of monopoly—in the sense of a unifying explanation with some factual basis of the gradual transformation of competitive into monopolistic market organizations—I do not know of it. There …
The virtually total inability of ordinary citizens to affect decision making, leaves resistance as the only possible response to the misuse of governmental power and to decisions wrongly made.
Editors: In the Summer 1960 issue, on p. 813, you introduce a writer as a “professional student of American military affairs.” I wonder about this “student’s” qualifications. Everyone should know that defensive weapons cannot be distinguished from offensive weapons. To …
SOCIAL MOBILITY IN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY, by Seymour Lipset and Reinhard Bendix. University of California Press. 1959. Thanks mainly to the foundations, the empirical study of social stratification and mobility has expanded enormously in the past decade. Research teams have been …
BEYOND THE WELFARE STATE, by Gunnar Myrdal. Yale University Press: 1960. One of the more curious things about the teaching of economics these days is the sharp and often vitriolic attack on planning. All too often the idea that careful …
THE STAGES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH, by W. W. Rostow. A Non-Communist Manifesto, Cambridge University Press. A pretentious title leads to a pretentious foreword, which leads to a very unpretentious introduction in which the author disclaims what he is doing. Having …
Every Army psychiatrist is familiar with the strange phenomenon of re-enlistment. On Monday the rifleman hates the Army with a bitterness bordering on homicide. On Tuesday he signs up for a new hitch. Clearly the impending transition to civilian life …
Like other dissenters, I can go along with a number of the specific proposals of the major party platforms (particularly the Democratic document) for meeting the domestic needs of the Sixties. But socialists and radicals, it seems to me, must …
