He is a small man, neatly turned out, compact, looking maybe like the chap who runs your stationary store, reminding me improbably of William Faulkner, quiet, dignified, never raising his voice. He speaks before some two dozen people at a …
There is overwhelming evidence that political power is a class phenomenon in America. From the beginning of the Republic, federal officeholders and most state officials have been drawn from the professional upper-middle-income class of white, Anglo-Saxon males.’ While the civil-rights …
The following article is excerpted from Marxism: For and Against, by Robert L. Heilbroner, © 1980 by Robert L. Heilbroner, to be published by W. W. Norton & Co. late in February. Marx’s view of capitalism is essentially historic, always …
“Not the ‘republic of Iran,’ nor the `democratic republic of Iran,’ nor the ‘democratic Islamic republic of Iran,’ just the `Islamic Republic of Iran,’ the Ayatollah Khomeini told the nation imperiously before the referendum of March 1979. On behalf of …
Since at least antiquity, animals have been used to illustrate the “natural” reasons for human behavior in both the economic and sexual spheres. Our own follies and foibles are thereby projected onto the animal world, where they lead a colorful …
What the poor win in American politics, they win by mass defiance, not by the use of the regular political system”; in their book Poor People’s Movements, Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward draw this lesson from the study of …
Where did the belief originate that the existence of a draft makes us more willing to engage in warfare? The draft did not cause us to enter the Vietnam conflict. And though it facilitated our continued involvement in that unjust …
America is at a turning point. The radical nature of the period is recognized even by conservatives. When he was sworn in as secretary of the Treasury last summer, G. William Miller said that the nation had “inherited the most …
Calling a book a popularization is usually taken as an unkind remark. This is mostly a matter of snobbery: the popularizer is writing for the masses and, therefore, his work must lack depth and sophistication. But popularizations need not be …
Having time on my hands, I sent away to the FBI for my dossier to which I am entitled under the Freedom of Information Act. I was sure I had a dossier (pronounced doezher by the FBI), because many years …
For some time, welfare-state capitalism has been on the defensive. Programs that were taken for granted now face destructive budget cuts, and crude individualistic theorists have won the initiative in public debate. Peter Albin argues that this second-class status of …
A Correction Editors: In my article, “What is Political Equality” (Dissent, Summer 1979), I referred to an allegedly “crude formulation” of Nelson Polsby’s, “that if, say, poor people fail to vote in large numbers, it must be because they think …
Israel’s political and social life is still reeling from the impact of two seemingly contradictory developments unforeseen by even the most knowledgeable pundits: first, the end of 30 years of Labor’s hegemony in the 1977 elections, and second, Sadat’s visit …
Unlike most books by former athletes, Dallas Cowboy wide receiver Peter Gent’s North Dallas Forty is anything but a modest “I was there” piece of writing. Although structured around eight days in the life of Phil Elliott (like Gent, a …
Americans do not meditate on History; they dream about fresh starts and wide horizons. We are an impatient people, pragmatic to our bones, eager to get on with the business of getting on. It is hardly surprising that our response …
