As this issue is being completed, it appears that the Kennedy Administration has finally decided to resume nuclear testing in the atmosphere. This decision, leaked to the press after the Kennedy-MacMillan meeting in Bermuda, is to be carried out in …
WHEN THE SOVIET UNION resumed its testing of nuclear weapons, it was a catastrophe for mankind. When the United States announced several days later that it would start underground testing—it is not yet clear, at the time of writing, whether …
If the future of the Communist Party seems dim, there have been some developments in the United States these past few years that should encourage those who believe the Soviet Union represents a force for historic progress. Among the disorganized …
Growing up in New York during the thirties meant, for me, the Jewish slums of the East Bronx, endless talk about Hitler, money worries of my parents migrating to my own psyche, public schools that really were schools and devoted …
RESISTANCE, REBELLION, AND DEATH, by Albert Camus. Knopf. By comparison with the work of men like Koestler, Silone and Orwell, Albert Camus’ writing has always seemed to me somewhat grandiose and porous. He lacked Koestler’s capacity for sustained argument, Silone’s …
Anything as bad a TV must be susceptible to some improvement, but the one sure way of not getting it is to make the programs more “cultural.” The TV chains and the FCC are momentarily nervous, and so they chatter …
Editors: Irving Howe claims that if Christ gave his Sermon on the Mount next week, among other routine reactions would be that “Dwight Macdonald would write that while ‘Mr. Christ makes some telling points’ they suffer from syntactical confusion and …
There are grey moments when I charge myself with some small responsibility for the endless chatter about “conformity” that has swept the country. Six years ago, when McCarthyism was at its worst and the response of many intellectuals somewhat less …
This issue of DISSENT discusses the present condition of the American unions. There are general articles on new problems facing the labor movement and studies of individual unions focused on particular problems: democracy in the steel union, racketeering in longshore, …
Dear Irving: No doubt there are others, but I have seen only three “negative” U. S. reviews of my essay, The Causes of World War Three. In the Wall Street Journal, William H. Chamberlain wrote—as expected; in the N. Y. …
Let me begin by placing on the record my opinion that Mills has written a sound, brilliant and most timely political tract. In using the latter term I do not mean to put it into a minor category but to …
The general consensus that there has been a significant change in political mood, a shift toward liberalism, seems correct. It is, of course, extremely welcome, offering new possibilities for people of our persuasion; though we should take care to make …
As de Gaulle Comes to Power… For months, it is now clear, there had been a conspiracy to overthrow the French republic. Organized by extreme rightists and semi-fascists in France and Algeria, this conspiracy soon entangled a good many army …
Les Juifs Ne Savent Pas S’Orga’niser En Collectivitd. (The Jews Do Not Know How to Organize Themselves Collectively.) So ran the headline over an interview by Nikita Khrushchev to Le Figaro, a Parisian newspaper, on April 9, 1958. Staring at …
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 …
