A political party, wrote Edmund Burke at the dawn of the nation-state, “is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.” This description no …
The editors of DISSENT have, for the most part, had little concern with the parochial quarrels, maneuvers and synthetic “activity” which characterize the life of the few remaining radical groups in America. Our interests have usually been elsewhere; our ideas …
One of the more insidious dangers in political analysis is to name things too soon. Faced with events or situations that are essentially without precedent, we are tempted to pin down their novelty with a phrase. Everyone can provide his …
The crisis of the Communist world has not come to an end; it has only begun. That the Russians, by spilling enough blood, could reestablish military control over Budapest, was never in doubt. But their reduction of Hungary to the …
It is all beginning again. Ike is beaming and putting; Adlai dodging and quipping; Estes preparing to shake several million hands; and Dick, that Devil’s darling of the liberals, has turned tame, his gift for nastiness suppressed in preparation for …
IT WAS ONLY after the second world war that one became aware of a new political type—the public figure who spoke favorably of Russia not because he had illusions about the nature of Stalinism but beause he did not. One …
Which shall one stress—the extent to which important changes have occurred or the extent to which Russian society under Khrushchev remains continuous with that under Stalin? It depends on the frame of discourse. In trying to foresee the consequences of …
What has been most depressing, and at times downright infuriating, about the recent discussions of the problem of integration is that the terms of discourse tend increasingly to be those of the Southern enemies of equality for the Negroes. And …
(The following article is part of a much longer chapter from a forthcoming book on “The Political Novel,” to be published by Horizon Press in 1956. It does not propose a full analysis of Silone’s writings, but tries to present him in a certain …
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 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. …
VISITS TO OTHER WORLDS have often been thought of as difficult, even traumatic experiences. Through the fantasy of spatial travel, the visitor would try to confront elements within his thought or feeling he had previously hesitated to acknowledge. But, apparently, …
one frequently hears these days that socialists cling to a stereotyped picture of American life. Failing to see the subtle and even gross changes that have taken place during the past few decades, they focus on an abstraction called “capitalism” …
David C. Williams Director of Research & Education, Americans for Democratic Action We read with interest Mr. Irving Howe’s article, “ADA: Vision and Myopia” in your spring issue. We believe that the standard for judgment of ADA which he sets …
By one of those neat coincidences that sometimes illuminate political life, former Senator Harry Cain launched a powerful criticism of the government’s “security” program at the very moment the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) was opening its recent convention in …
