The September revolt in Poland was no starry-eyed event. It was a down-to-earth revolt. It took place in a bizarre country that is ruled by a Communist party more than two-thirds of whose members believe in God, a country in …
The stern taskmasters of Mrs. Thatcher’s government have now translated the ideology of monetarism into chilling cutbacks throughout the social services of the United Kingdom. The Conservatives’ goal of reducing public-sector spending by I percent of the Gross National Product …
About 25 years ago, when the work of George Lukacs—and especially of the young Lukacs–was hardly known outside a rather restricted circle, it was easy to see what motivated his interpreters in wanting to find a new audience for him: …
Throughout his life, Herbert Marcuse endeavored to develop a theoretical analysis of the dynamics of contemporary capitalist society that would have practical relevance as well as explanatory value. Indeed, he was not entirely unsuccessful in this regard. The mutual attraction, …
The following article, reprinted with permission from the excellent French monthly Espirit (in some respects a French Dissent), presents the first serious social portrait we have seen of Afghanistan society. Without glossing over its inequities or technological backwardness, Olivier Roy …
Thank You Editors: I am replying to the fund-raising letter that I received today. Dissent is probably one of only a few causes that I support without reservation but I lack the means with which to back up my ideological …
The Image of Karl Marx towers so high above all other socialist thinkers that it has encouraged iconolatry. In no other area is this more prevalent than in considering the problem of Marx and the Jews. This is hardly conducive …
Two weeks before the election, I was surprised by a small story in the back pages of the New York Times. “McCarthy Is Said to Back Reagan”—that was the headline. The brief but unambiguous dispatch told how McCarthy had met …
Why some ideas are picked up and developed and others lie fallow is a question insufficiently addressed by the sociology of knowledge. Gregory Bateson, in his book Steps to an Ecology of Mind, asks if there is some sort of …
Goethe once said that if Byron had had an opportunity to give vent in Parliament to all the antagonisms within him, his poetic talent would have been much the purer. One cannot say this of Solzhenitsyn: had he had an …
There is a new political formation in the United States—let’s call it the coterie. It is rapidly becoming the most effective means for gaining and keeping political power. A tight group, it binds its members through strict loyalties and offers …
Here is another piece continuing the informal discussion among Dissent editors on foreign policyissues after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Different views appeared in the previous two issues; there may be others in the next one. — EDS. The election …
After catastrophes like floods or hurricanes we see strange sights—the cow on the barn roof, the bed floating down Main Street. Revolutions, too, cast up strange sights that upset our expectations about the rightful order of things: religious leaders, messianic …
I can’t recall a time when it was as easy as it is today to glance at the headlines of the morning paper and turn quickly to the sports pages. The presidential campaign is only the most obvious reason for …
When statesmen face world crises, they often tell us that their decisions are based on information the rest of us lack. Crises pass, archives close, and sometimes we forget to look back to count the change from the bill that …
