Since the publication of E. Franklin Frazier’s brilliant book Black Bourgeoisie in 1957, this class of blacks has acquired a new prominence in both American and Afro-American life. The size of the black bourgeoisie surpasses anything Frazier could have imagined; …
Habent sua fata libelli—”books have their own fates.” It will be interesting to know what the fate of Milan Kundera’s first novel, The Joke, will be in the United States, now that it has at last been published in English …
As we go into the 1982 elections, we face two related but separate sets of questions: (1) Will Democrats make significant gains in House elections and either weaken the GOP majority in the Senate or eliminate that majority altogether? And, …
Aron Aronson, 84 years old, was dozing in his armchair, dreaming of a slice of herring. He was aware that the herring wasn’t real but it was better than dreaming of standing in line or of being hit on the …
The American welfare state is in a profound crisis, and not just because the affably mean, pragmatic ideologue who is president of the United States is destroying some of the most important gains ever made by the people of the …
Traditionally, it has been the role of the left to question whether an adequate welfare program could ever be developed and maintained within the American economic system. Now, suddenly, we find politicians in both parties arguing that the development of …
Mr. Reagan, like his hero Cal Coolidge, turns out to be an accomplished union buster. (Was ever a union more skillfully finessed than the Professional Air Traffic Controllers? The adroitness of it all may be comparable to that of Silent …
The term “cold war” has long referred to American-Soviet relations since the Second World War, but beyond that there has been little consistency in its usage, even on how to set it in type. When capitalized, “the Cold War” usually …
: usually for comments, more or less weighty, on topics of the day. But this time we want to break with our tradition and say a word or two about ourselves. Dissent is now into its 29th year–a fact that …
must write a piece on feminism, family, and community. I write as someone who has been involved in the politics of the feminist movement since the early 1960s, someone who characterizes her own work as made possible in part by …
In 1959, Congress passed the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), also known as the Landrum-Griffin Act, after extensive hearings into the corruption, dictatorship, and racketeering that existed in some major unions. The congressional goal, according to Senator McClellan, chairman …
Americans think about ethical questions in two quite different ways: sometimes we are moralistic, while at other times we are libertarian and relativistic. Usually liberals and socialists tend to conceive of the moralistic, “old-fashioned” view of ethical questions as a …
As activists in the American peace movement dedicated to the abolition of all nuclear weapons, we protest the actions of the Soviet government in detaining independent Soviet peace activists and seeking to prohibit their activities. Such actions—taken even as the …
“Admiring the view?” Jehovah asks. Or, rather, his witness: the Jehovah’s Witness. I heard someone arrive, footsteps on the snow, in the copse on the edge of the Little Camp, between the quarantine huts and the infirmary, the Revier. I …
The day I knew, I mean really knew that I’d left Los Angeles was the day I heard a Syracuse weatherman giving the national weather extremes. “It’s a beautiful 82 degrees in Waco, Texas,” he said with the bouncy enthusiasm …
