You say,” says the Intellectual to his opponent, the Revolutionary, “that at a certain historical moment the specific interest of the working class becomes completely identified with the interests of all of mankind and not only preserves human values but …
“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 …
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 …
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 …
One advantage of living in a nation like Britain is that it occasionally produces a point of view that has not occurred to Americans. The current discussion in America on mass culture has been concerned mainly with its effect on …
Now can life become essential? How can value become reality and meaning be made effective? Around these questions the lifework of George Lukacs is centered. The paradox of his development is that he found the lost “homeland” in Stalinism and …
Within recent months the Leopold-Loeb murder case has served as the theme of a movie by Alfred Hitchcock, novels by Meyer Levin, James Yaffe and MaryCarter Roberts, a paperback case history, and a Broadway dramatization of Mr. Levin’s most successful …
The time has come to relax. Sex is here to stay. The age of pioneers is past. The frontier is homesteaded by the suitcase farmers; main street is lined with porcelain fronted stores. Now safely in the hands of the …
In the Autumn 1957 DISSENT, Henri Rabasseire continued his attack on the Protestant work ethic which he had started with his fine piece “The Right to be Lazy” in Winter 1956. I am in full agreement with him that it …
Joseph Buttinger, ex-European, author of In the Twilight of Socialism, wrote The Smaller Dragon, A Political History of Vietnam, in part because he had experienced “something of the quality of a conversion” during his first brief visit to Viet Nam …
WHITE MAN, LISTEN!, by Richard Wright No one knows better than Richard Wright that the white man has not listened for a century, has neither plans nor intention to start listening now and probably couldn’t listen if he wanted to. …
ON THE LINE, by Harvey Swados. Fiction about factory workers has been a rarity during the past two decades. Most novels at all concerned with work take as their setting and inspiration the air-conditioned offices on Madison Avenue, not the …
In the election for Mayor of Naha City, capital of Okinawa, held on January 12, there were two candidates, both of whom designated themselves as Socialists. The major issue of the election, according to a New York Times report, was …
The publication of Djilas’s book, on August 11, 1957, was greeted by the international press with comments generally favorable to his views. None of these comments was, of course, printed in the Yugoslav press; but there is in that country …
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 …
