Morris Raphael Cohen, an extraordinarily gifted teacher, was best known as a critic of other philosophers. People would sometimes grumble about his “negativism”: Cohen tore down systems of philosophy without offering a clear alternative. On one such occasion he is …
In trying to refute the argument of my article “The Social Implications of Freudian ‘Revisionism’” (DISSENT, Summer 1955), Erich Fromm has constructed a thesis which I did not state ( “The Human Implications of Instinctivistic ‘Radicalism’” by Erich Fromm, DISSENT, …
Modern mass consumption is a sum of solo performances; each consumer, an unpaid homeworker employed in the production of the mass man. In the days before the cultural faucets of radio and television had become standard equipment in each home, the Smiths …
The abolition of capitalism alone will not insure the future of civilization. The character of modern industrial labor—repetitive, monotonous, segmented, cut off from directed thought—considerably modifies the problem of socialism. Those who would speak seriously of a socialism which will respect the human person …
A strange silence fell over the British Labor Party immediately after its electoral defeat. Even the flurry of mutual recrimination within the party leadership hardly lasted more than a few days. The annual party conference held in October of last …
“Couch Liberalism” Editors: To list all my disagreements with Harold Rosenberg’s raid on what he chooses to call “Couch Liberalism” would require more space than you can allot me and more time than I can spare at the moment. Suffice …
On the morning of his scheduled hearing before the Security and Subversive Control Board of the government department in which he worked, Henry J. awoke with a start. His mouth felt dry. He picked up the letter from the Chief …
The last three months of 1955 were marked by one dominant event: the collapse of the “Geneva spirit,” at least until expediency requires its resurrection, and a return to the cold war with the position of the West considerably weakened. …
I would not think it necessary to impose upon the patience of the readers of DISSENT by a counter-rebuttal of Herbert Marcuse’s reply to me, were it only in order to answer his argument, or his added interpretation of The …
For a while it seemed as if there were no more challenging problem in our domestic life than McCarthyism. To be sure, the man and the ism were shorthand for a cluster of unpleasant—not to say symptomatic—developments. How did the …
Political myths bury their undertakers. At the turn of this century, archaic modes of political thought had supposedly been laid to rest forever. The men of the Progressive movement thought of themselves as children of the Enlightenment, armed with instrumentalism …
I Murray Kempton’s book (PART OF OUR TIME, by Murray Kempton. Simon & Schuster. 334 pp. $4.) of portraits from the radical thirties has been reviewed with praise by such writers as Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Reinhold Niebuhr and Daniel Bell. …
“The guaranteed annual wage is not a stepping stone to full security, but a milepost in a social struggle that never ends because the ramifications of America’s economy are such that with each new round of the class struggle something is almost always gained but nothing is ever solved.”
One of the most singular advantages we derive from machinery is in the check which it affords against the inattention, idleness, or the knavery of human agents. CHARLES BABBAGE, The Economy of Machinery, 1832. The unequivocal statement can be made …
I What is remarkable about the manufacture of myths in the twentieth century is that it takes place under the noses of living witnesses of the actual events and, in fact, cannot dispense with their collaboration. Everyone is familiar with …
