U.S. Arms Budget and Israeli Needs  

You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s Rye, but can you be both a dove and an American supporter of Israel? Obviously, there’s no built-in contradiction. Yet some of us who stood together in opposing the American intervention …



China by Daylight  

Ever since the West first came into contact with China 250 years ago, the Western image of China has been remarkably volatile. Based on an ignorance rooted in great differences in language, culture, ideology, stages of development, and geographical location—and …



Socialism and Equality  

. . . there is now, with the existence of a large amount of sociological research on inequality of opportunity and inequality of result, and with the resurgence of interest among moral philosophers in inequality, as manifested in John Rawls’s …



What the Washington Labor Lobbyists Do  

Here are some of the things one Washington labor lobbyist was trying to do in the final weeks of the 93rd Congress: • help break the Senate filibuster that was killing the proposed Agency for Consumer Advocacy; • save from …



Political Technicians, Corrupters of Democracy  

The roots of Watergate, I would maintain, are to be found in an antidemocratic philosophy carried by a new political type I shall call the “political technicians.” Their emergence can be laid to the weaknesses and decline of the regular …



A View of Wage-Price Controls  

Wage-price controls are not currently on the political agenda—partly because of a widespread ideological abhorrence of direct government intervention, but mostly because wages and, to an extent, prices as well are now being restrained by the rapid decline in the …





Russian Dissidents Debate on Détente  

The debate over Soviet-American detente called for by Secretary Kissinger has been in progress now for some time. Parallel with the discussions in the United States, an unofficial debate among the Soviet dissidents over the terms of detente has taken …



Thinking Back to the Student Revolt  

The record of the Mexican Student Movement of 1968 tells a story of buoyant collective fervor that soon takes on darker overtones; the wave of hope and generous idealism generated by these youngsters breaks against the wall of sheer power, …



The Devil and Leszek Kolakowski  

“Does the doctrine of original sin present a truth accessible to natural reason unaided by revelation, or a truth known from revelation alone?” Though it might sound strange in these pages, that, in his chosen idiom, is the question we …



Our Proposals for the Crisis  

The current crisis of the capitalist system seems so deep that even investment bankers, like Felix Rohatyn of Lazard Freres, are advocating “state planning of the economy.” There is, therefore, no question as to whether there will be structural change …



Oil, the Marines, and Prof. Tucker  

The lead article in the January Commentary, prominent on the cover, was “Oil: The Issue of American Intervention,” by Robert W. Tucker.* It argues a case for the armed seizure by the U.S. of the Arabian coastline bordering the Persian …



Three Poems  

Nothing at all happens—neither fear, nor stiffening before the executioner: I let my head fall on the hollowed block, as on a casual lover’s shoulder. Roll, curly head, over the planed boards, don’t get a splinter in your parted lips: …



Letters  

Chomsky and Draper Editor: In the Winter 1975 issue of Dissent, there is a “Public Notice” consisting of a paragraph from a review of my book Peace in the Middle East? by Theodore Draper, in which he alleges that my …



Kakania und Kultur  

Wittgenstein’s Vienna, by Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin. New York: Simon & Schuster, Touchstone Books. 314 pp. “A place where one would like to spend one’s life, or at least a place where it would be smart to stay, even …