A great deal of fuss is being made over the discovery, in England, of a group of angry young men. The title, thank heavens, is not a self-designation; it is a free gift of the week-end reviewers. Even the New …
There can be no doubt that the mandarins, whose authority derived from the acquisition of knowledge, were the country’s only wielders of power, nor that as a class they were firmly opposed to technical progress and social change. Thus, if …
“What has changed in Poland since October? Gomulka has changed.” This joke, circulating in Warsaw a year and a half after the Polish “spring in October,” is characteristic of the current mood of disenchantment. Polish intellectuals who were in the …
Omnivorousness is perhaps the most striking quality of corporate civilization. Every idea, like every thing and no matter what its origins, is swallowed, absorbed and reused. This condition was brought home to me recently by an acquaintance of mine who …
French public opinion, kept in ignorance of the true state of affairs by design and deceit, does not yet understand that the Sakiet bombing marks a decisive turn in the Algerian war. We have constantly maintained that a military Dien …
Can there be a “foreign policy” for socialists? In a world not of their making or choice, have socialists anything to offer but a moral stance? Against the harsh realities of world politics, morality might seem to be the least …
Once upon a time there was a myth named le proletariat. Though obviously a male, the myth was believed to be pregnant with child— a well conformed socialistic baby true to the Scriptures. Baby being long overdue, the congregation of …
It is a bitter fact concerning our time that a scientific development so remarkable as the launching of sputnik should have evoked responses of fear and dread. Let us be candid: these were responses shared by all honest and sensitive …
Suppose one were to pose the question: why is anxiety so endemic to our current national life? The most likely response would be a supercilious shrug: naturally, anxiety must be the common state of those who have lived through upheaval, …
In his review of Milovan Djilas’ New Class, [DISSENT, Fall 1957] Norman Thomas necessarily had to stress the general and very powerful job of debunking which this book has performed. But there is one problem touched upon by Djilas which …
THE MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST, by Dwight Macdonald. Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy This book, as a book, doesn’t add much to the wealth of nations. It is foolishly inconsistent, not often thought-provoking, not informative (except perhaps to the young who …
Each generation sees history through lenses ground by its own experience. In these days of recoil from radical involvement it is hardly surprising that reinterpretations of just those phases of Western history in which the radical impulse was strongest have …
In the last year or so, theory has become news. The debate over the character of the changes taking place in Russian society has been carried on, not merely by a few radical intellectuals, but by government officials, newspapermen, indeed …
The German election this past fall followed a pattern that had already been set four years earlier. Then, as now, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) entered a national election with some reason for hope. During the last four years it …
The boundless power of the party machine over public life is constantly being confirmed; in private conversation and on the printed page we return to this problem in the weary tones of recrimination and impotence. Is there any point, we …
