In a society that extols its egalitarian tradition and during periodic bouts of national self-delusion even proclaims its essential classlessness, it might be instructive to examine the range of income inequality, as illustrated, for example, by the salaries of top …
In Saul Bellow’s latest book To Jerusalem and Back [Viking Press, 1976], I found on p. 43 the following account: Eban’s attitude toward Russia is shared by many. In a different form, I heard it recently at the Beth Belgia, …
The Land of Eternity The first act of the tragedy, or comedy (in the scholastic sense of the word), whose main character is a certain Gould Verschoyle, begins as all earthly tragedies do: with birth. The rejected positivist formula of …
For decades democratic socialists have debated whether it is desirable or possible to reform capitalist society. The fundamental question has hardly changed: does what has come to be known as the welfare state represent a new type of society, a …
Not much East German writing has reached this country in the 30 years of that state’s existence. The publication in 1977 of a slim volume of sensitive observations by the hitherto unknown Reiner Kunze, The Wonderful Years (New York: George …
Although Andrew Greeley has written this book to be read primarily by non-Catholics, its in-depth sociological portrait of today’s Catholic will also surprise and enlighten most Catholics. Much of the material will not be entirely new to followers of Greeley’s …
God, it seems, Is Not Altogether Dead, even in the countries whose governments consider themselves “objectively socialist.” To be sure, Viterslav Gardaysk), the Marxist philosopher who chose this for the title of his book, found himself transferred from the post …
The crisis in the American steel industry is not the one we read about. The steel corporations’ pleas for protection from foreign imports mask an effort to wrest lucrative tax and environmental concessions from Washington, and the Carter White House …
It is the central thesis of Professor Dunham’s extraordinary book that toward the end of World War II the Soviet regime, weakened by a chain of devastating catastrophes, having lost its revolutionary zeal and with it the loyalty of most …
A volatile relationship binds the Communist parties of France, Italy, and Spain, the Communist party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), and the Soviet dissenters espousing various Marxist tendencies. Central to the instability of this relationship are the attempts by the …
A new “crisis” in capitalist social organization has begun to command the attention of scholars and commentators—the much-discussed problem of “overeducation” in America—a problem that one necessarily approaches with some caution. For decades now, liberal intellectuals have looked to education …
In 1955, the Metropolitan Museum somewhat unpredictably acquired its first and only Dali. Considered “melodramatic” though admittedly impressive by some critics, the painting depicts, in the precise aberrant detail of the surrealist master, a crucified figure that may represent the …
Before World War II, no indigenous Marxian tradition existed in France. Stalinist hacks dominated the scene, and the socialist movement largely subsisted on a thin gruel of traditional Marxist ideas mixed with generous infusions of Jacobin ideology and native “utopian …
This is a bad movie. Surprisingly so, since it had a naturally sympathetic subject on which there is likely to be universal agreement in feeling. The reviewers haven’t let on to its failure, perhaps they didn’t notice. Its badness is …
Particularly at a time of slow growth and global economic disarray, a new president’s first budget assumes even greater importance than usual as a statement of priorities and a forecast of policy for the remainder of his term. As commentators …
