The American residing in Europe seems always to be confronted with the perennial attempt to sum up America in a word. The word used to be gangsters or skyscrapers; today it is often McCarthyism. This insistence on reducing the irreducible …
Unless man is to drop to all fours, backbones roundabout need a bit of stiffening. In some measure, perhaps, this generally seedy book (FALSE WITNESS, by Harvey Matusow. New York: Cameron & Kahn. 255 pp. Cloth $3. Paper $1.25) written …
THE GREAT CRASH, 1929, by John Kenneth Galbraith. Houghton, Mifflin Co., Boston. 1955. 212 pages. $3.00. When John Kenneth Galbraith, the noted Harvard economist, testified recently before the friendly Fulbright committee on the condition of the stock market, prices took …
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, …
I During the last few years I have often thought that American intellectuals are now rather deeply involved in what Freud once called “the miscarriage of American civilization.” I do not know exactly what he meant by the phrase, although …
The liberals, as they warm up for 1956, begin again their perennial pursuit of issues. Not much remains to them. They have muted their criticism in most areas, renounced it completely in others. Now, however, a convenient amnesia has set …
The rise of conservatism among American intellectuals has provoked ironic comment here and there but few attempts to explore its sources in the condition of society or to articulate its living function or to surmise its fate. Despite the recent …
CONFLICT, by Georg Simmel. Free Press. $3.50. The name of Georg SimmeI is barely known in America, and that only among professional sociologists. This is a pity, since Simmel is one of the handful of eminent European sociological theorists whose …
The high hopes many people held for the British Labor Party after 1945 have, to some extent, been replaced by disillusionment. But the present difficulties of the Party are not to be explained by electoral defeat or the sound and …
In his article “Sects and Sectarians” which appeared in the Autumn 1954 issue of DISSENT, Lewis Coser calls for the dissolution of all existing socialist organizations in America. The following is an answer as much to DISSENT’S claim to represent …
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” …
In the hope of exorcising the fears of their liberal readers (perhaps the most anxious readers they have) that Conservatism is little more than a revival of crude reaction, the New Conservatives have had to give certain intellectual assurances. These …
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 …
READERS or DISSENT are probably as tired as everyone else of analyses of McCarthy. This note is offered for only one reason—to say a word on the continuing fears of a “McCarthy movement.” A close look at contemporary America discloses …
CHARLES A. BEARD: AN APPRAISAL, edited by Howard K. Beale. University of Kentucky Press, 312 pages. $4.50. Charles A. Beard once summarized for a friend the “laws of history”: First, whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. Second, …
