Two months ago the largest atomic bomb yet tested in the Nevada desert brought sudden sunrise to cities 300 miles away. Only two miles from the center of the explosion a small town had been built with no purpose other …
The following article forms an epilogue to a book that is to appear this fall under the imprint of Beacon Press. Tentatively entitled EROS AND CIVILIZATION. Mr. Marcuse’s book deals with some of the social, political and cultural implications of …
The British elections have created only a faint stir. For once, the expected took place largely as expected. A million and a half voters who in 1945 had supported the Labor Party simply abstained from the ballot, thus allowing the …
When the relationship of socialism and peasantry is explored, it is necessary to understand the peasant’s conception of development. It is, however, not easy to trace it. The peasant is not a very articulate being. He has not gone in …
IT IS A WELL-ESTABLISHED axiom that a state must jealously guard itself against the large-scale disaffection of its citizens. Those whose personal convictions have prevented them from adequately fulfilling their obligations to the state have often been punished as an …
Americans for Democratic Action would be a vastly improved organization if it would do two things. The first would be to unfrock the Hon. Hubert Humphrey as its vice chairman. The second would be to give its annual award this …
Recently, a newspaperwoman said to me: “When I am in England I feel like a Conservative, in Italy I feel like a Socialist, in India I feel like a Communist.” When asked what she meant by this, she explained that …
The past ten years have not been easy for democratic socialist theoreticians. Their economic models, so long shielded from the rough winds of reality, were put to a decisive test during the tenure of the British Labour Government and found …
If there is one lesson to be learned from the Malenkov “resignation,” it is that most of the journalistic guesses about the specific power relations in the Kremlin are utterly fruitless. No one really knows. And if the subject were …
The American Dream enjoins limitless social mobility. Class barriers don’t exist for it, or if they do they are so fluid as to be virtually without meaning. “From each according to his abilities … ” could really stand as its …
Surely the most curious paradox in recent U.S. history is the breakdown of caste relations between the races. It is curious because it is occurring under official auspices—under the sponsorship of a government not noted, at least in recent years, …
Now does it happen that the masses sell their souls to leaders and follow them blindly? On what does the power of attraction of leaders over masses rest? What are the historical situations in which this identification of leader and …
In a footnote to his essay “Sects and Sectarians” (DISSENT, Autumn, 1954), Lewis Coser advises that he is employing a “typological procedure,” and that the political sect modeled in his study is a sociological construct, neither portraying in its entirety …
THIRTY YEARS AGO WALTER LIPPMAN had already noted that the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements and that a revolution was taking place in the techniques of this manufacture. By now the techniques for creating consent have been …
Geltman’s and Plastrik’s critique of my essay seems to me to be based on a misunderstanding of what a typological procedure aims to accomplish. Social scientists can use concepts which are closely geared to the empirical and historical reality at …
