America as a “Mass Society”  

The one issue that seems most important this year to politicians and public alike is the President’s Health. If the apparent lack of substantive issues means that the major difference between the parties lies in the names of the candidates …



The Haunted Hall: I.W.W. of Fifty  

You don’t remember the Wobblies. You were too young. Or else not even born yet. There has never beeii anything like them, before or since. They called themselves materialisteconomists but what they really were was a religion. They were workstiffs and bindlebums …



A Letter to Picasso  

This open letter to Picasso originally appeared in the June, 1956 issue of Preuves and is published with permission of both its author and the editors. This letter to you, Picasso, is not a personal letter. You are a genius, …















The Repudiation of Stalinism  

“Nero, too, was a product of his epoch. Yet after he perished his statues were smashed and his name was scraped off everything. The vengeance of history is more terrible than the vengeance of the most powerful General Secretary. I …









Some Aspects of Mass Culture  

Casting an indulgent eye on the merry-making of Flemish peasants, Breughel found it brutish, vulgar, lusty, gluttonous, bibulous and, possibly, dulling. Yet, nothing in his canvases suggests the suspicion that the feudal lords might have devised the popular culture of …



Africa Finds its Voice  

No sooner had the upheavals in Asia that followed upon the Second World War begun to subside a little than new and still more elemental social forces made themselves felt in the world. Africa, oldest of the continents in terms …