A specter is haunting Irving Kristol—the specter of The New Class. It consists of “some millions of people whom liberal capitalism has sent to college in order to help manage its affluent, highly technological, mildly paternalistic `post-industrial society.” These educators, …
Introduction There are 13 arguments for socialism; they have to do with distributive justice, equality, the need for planning, self-respect, fraternity, and so on. But the one that seems to me the easiest and best is a political argument, an …
Now I know why I flunked the test given by Vivian Gornick at lunch in a Chinese restaurant. It turned out that she was screening me for an interview to be used in a book she was writing on the …
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 …
