Surely no literary vision of the future can match the power and enduring influence of Orwell’s 1984. Perhaps the most provocative element of that vision is the prospect of using sophisticated technologies of intrusion and manipulation to consolidate totalitarian power. …
Forty years ago Henryk Erlich, an internationally famous leader of the General Jewish Workers’ Bund, the Jewish socialist party in Poland, wrote these words to his family from Moscow. It was his first opportunity to write to them since his …
This spring an extremely interesting volume, The Daughters of Karl Marx: Family Correspondence 1866-1898, will be published in New York. By the kind permission of the publisher, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, we print below several letters (written in English, like much …
If we judge by technical virtuousity then these are the best of times. But if the times make us willing to judge by technical virtuousity then they are the worst of times. Touring the country now, playing with full orchestra …
Reds, like all soap opera, is a test of one’s good will. Does one see the glass half-full, and credit earnestness and energy? Or see the glass half empty, and allow oneself to feel annoyance at scenes in which the …
Alvin Gouldner’s interests transcended the boundaries of academic sociology. Throughout his career he was interested in developing a critique of social theory as well as an understanding of the place of scholars and intellectuals in society. These concerns are brilliantly …
So remarked Enrico Berlinguer, leader of the Italian Communist party Partito Comunista Italiano—PCI), in a recent report to its Central Committee. Yet the casual reader of the rest of his report might be forgiven for not having divined this antipathy. …
Strange things have been happening on the interface between religion and socialism, and few more strange or interesting than some of the developments within the Catholic church. In Poland, at this writing, the Communist bulldozer has buried the first offspring …
General Jaruzelslci’s martial-law regime has swiftly and mercilessly trampled on independent trade unionism in Poland for the present moment. We are all aware of this bitter turn of events. But few know of another crackdown on workers that has been …
Once the Socialist Francois Mitterrand assumed power, the catchword “transformation” swept France. The term is rather apt, for since Mitterrand’s victory there has been a wave of reforms. The new Socialist cabinet has been tackling several important tasks at once. …
The beginnings of the almost palpable meanness of spirit that pervades the Reagan administration’s domestic policies go back to the early Nixon years. The new element is the institutionalization of meanness; that is, meanness of spirit is now expected and …
“Sorry about this mess, I don’t want to drive down your property values!” exclaims the young hostess, tripping over stray sheetrock and spackling compound toward 30 members of the new block association gathered stiffly in her living room—including a few …
Even in this hour of defeat when thousands of its militants are held in concentration camps, Solidarity remains the most promising social movement to have arisen in Europe since the Second World War. We live in a dispirited moment, petty …
The topic of “denial of the dead” that Nadine Fresco addresses (Dissent, Fall 1981) is an important one. Examples abound. Thus Indonesia is now mounting still another military campaign in Timor in the course of aggression that has claimed the …
Fifty-three American fighter planes were lost in the effort before the Thanh Hoa Bridge in Vietnam was finally destroyed by a guided missile. Complex-weapon enthusiasts readily cite such episodes when pressing Congress and the public for sophisticated hardware. “What they …
