When Lord Acton declared that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, he may not have been thinking of the slave economy of 18th-century plantations, nor of the kind of peonage that much of 19th-century colonialism still implied. But his …
The following item is reprinted, with permission, from the English monthly Twentieth Century, where it appeared as a note by its editor. We think it an interesting comment on an aspect of American life as seen by an English observer.-Ed. …
. . . Never before had the fact of being an American brought one so close to humiliation. The sight of Washington in August was enough to make one cringe, so enormous was the upsurge of elemental stupidity and reasonless …
It is possible that by the time this issue of DISSENT appears, the problem of Guatemala will have been forgotten, pushed aside by some new catastrophe. But forgotten, we are convinced, only for the moment. What happened there is so …
The Geneva agreement which brought the fighting in Indo-China to an end wrote finis to the French Empire in Asia. France is the last of the European powers to have been driven out of Asia, and with its defeat a …
I. The Sociology of the Sect A sect, as the Latin etymology suggests, consists of men who have cut themselves off from the main body of society. They have formed a restricted and closed group which rejects the norms of …
There are signs that Senator McCarthy is slipping. One holds one’s breath, for he has stormed back into the headlines to win new triumphs before. But whether he stays or goes it is important to define the social and political …
Editors: David Sachs’ article “On Ends Justifying Means” (DISSENT No. 2) seems to me to have treated too lightly certain ethical questions which have long been a source of division in radical movements. Western Socialism has been characterized by a …
Since the end of the second World War Communism has achieved no victory in Latin America as effective as its defeat in Guatemala. The optimistic declarations of diplomats could not help. Nor did legal action undertaken by the Attorney General …
THE PROPHET ARMED (TROTSKY: 1879-1921), by Isaac Deutscher. Oxford University Press, New York. 528 pp. $6. Stalin is “waiting in the wings” as Mr. Deutscher concludes this first half of what is to be a two-volume biography of Leon Trotsky. …
Before 1930 a passable history of Latin America might have been written without any reference to its labor movement. Today this would be impossible. Peronist demagogy and its equivalents throughout the continent have inadvertently succeeded in drawing the working class …
The only review of Individualism Reconsidered by David Riesman (The Free Press, 1954) which I have seen up to this writing is a dithyrambic piece of Granville Hicks’ in The New Leader of July 19, 1954. He concludes his appreciation …
Russia: Methods of Analysis In his article (DISSENT, Summer 1954) Mr. Deutscher asks whether a higher level of civilization corresponds to a higher level of economic development and whether a mass increase in literacy induces progress toward democracy. To such …
The following article is a condensed version of a pamphlet entitled Is This Socialism? recently published in England and written by G. D. H. Cole. Though clearly intended as part of the discussion preceding the Labor Party conference this fall, …
