The boundless power of the party machine over public life is constantly being confirmed; in private conversation and on the printed page we return to this problem in the weary tones of recrimination and impotence. Is there any point, we …
The German election this past fall followed a pattern that had already been set four years earlier. Then, as now, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) entered a national election with some reason for hope. During the last four years it …
In the last year or so, theory has become news. The debate over the character of the changes taking place in Russian society has been carried on, not merely by a few radical intellectuals, but by government officials, newspapermen, indeed …
Each generation sees history through lenses ground by its own experience. In these days of recoil from radical involvement it is hardly surprising that reinterpretations of just those phases of Western history in which the radical impulse was strongest have …
Probably, we will never he able to determine the psychic havoc of the concentration camps and the atom bomb upon the unconscious mind of almost everyone alive in these years. for the first time in civilized history, perhaps for the …
Daniel Bell, the labor editor of Fortune and a former editor of The New Leader, modestly calls his little essay “notes on work … [tied together] by a mood, and some questions.” Indeed, had he elaborated on all the ideas …
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 …
Readers of DISSENT are, or should be, already familiar with the thesis of this important book. It is that the Communist revolution has resulted in the total control of the state (which is bigger than society) by the party bureaucracy …
Professor Baran, says the dust jacket, “is probably the only Marxian social scientist teaching at a large American University.” It ain’t necessarily so; but that the Monthly Review editors should believe it is quite revealing. The book purports to be …
The East Berlin uprising of June 17, 1953 was the first massive challenge totalitarianism met from within. It utterly destroyed the myth of the unity of state and society under Stalinism. Led by the workers, an entire society rose against …
This collection of essays and studies on the Middle East was brought together by its editor with a novel purpose in mind. The people of this area of the world are struggling to adjust to new conditions; their loyalties conflict …
All politicians these days run for office scared. It’s harder and harder to get elected. But now we have the sight of a politician “running scared” for nomination to office! And three years to go!
“Income Revolution” Editors: May I be permitted a comment on the exchange between Gabriel Kolko and Henry Pachter concerning the “Income Revolution” in America? [DISSENT, Summer 1957]. In general, I sympathize with Kolko’s views on this matter, but it seems …
Dissent An American Quarterly Magazine called DISSENT has published a special number about Africa. I dissent emphatically from almost all its judgments about the East and Central African territories, and I should be astonished if that were not the attitude …
The June decisions of the Supreme Court were major decisions; this is so even if those to whom the decisions applied directly, or who had initiated the actions that led through the federal courts, have already left the scene. The …
