On Bureaucracy  

The Bureaucratization of the World, by Henry Jacoby. Translated by Eveline Kanes. Berkeley: University of California Press. 241 pp. A good book on bureaucracy is yet to be written, and it is unfortunate that, despite the virtues of this essay, …



Mobility in America  

The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880- 1970, by Stephan Thernstrom. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 345 pp. For more than a decade Stephan Thernstrom has been studying patterns of social mobility among American workers in the …



Rumblings on the French Left  

The French Left has seemed strangely silent since its defeat–which was so nearly a victory–in the election of May 1974. Perhaps it had first to overcome its disappointment at having missed out by so narrow a margin. But the new …



Socialism and Scarcity  

Although it has received considerable attention, Robert Heilbroner’s most recent book may easily be lost in the glut d social commentary-filed away as this year’s most stylish doomsday tract. This would be a shame if I am correct in regarding …



Inequality, Poverty, and Taxes  

Income distribution in the United States has remained virtually unchanged for onequarter of a century. According to government figures, the poorest 20 percent of all families received 5 percent of the cash income in 1947 and they receive the same …



Mill, Malthus, and Growth Without End  

Last December at the meetings of the American Economic Association, there was a major address by MIT’s generally admired theorist of economic growth, Robert M. Solow. He chose for his title, “The Economics of Resources or the Resources of Economics,” …



On the Death of an Old Militant  

Messali Hadj, father of the Algerian nationalist movement and one-time charismatic leader of the Algerian people—in Algeria itself, but particularly among those Algerians who had gone to work in France during the colonialist days—died in France on June 3, 1974, …





Feminism in the 1970s  

If there is unprecedented concern with sex roles today, it is in large part because of the revival of feminism. The women’s liberation movement has launched a drive for social change that promises to alter some of the fundamental values …



The Real Secrets of Science  

Some 55,000 people in the federal government now earn at least part of their pay by practicing intellectual birth control as they stamp “confidential” on stacks of documents. And 3,000 superior civil servants are active abortionists of ideas, stamping “top …



Zionism: From Realism to Autism  

What happened on Yom Kippur 1973, and is happening today, is not the result of a single or frequent mistake but of a process that began a long time before that day. Over the years, Israeli policy—in this term I …



The New Greece: Prelude to Freedom?  

The overthrow of the Portuguese dictatorship was front-page news throughout the Western world. But in Greece, as in Spain, it was almost the only front-page news for many days after it happened. Under the rigid press censorship Greek newspapers could …



Cages—at Home  

Fort Dix Stockade: Our Prison Camp Next Door, by Joan Crowell. New York: Links Books. 250 pp. Joan Crowell reports in conscientious detail on the history of the June 1969 uprising in the Fort Dix stockade. She writes of the …



Politics of Schools  

The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973, by Diane Ravitch. New York: Basic Books. 449 pp. The importance of Diane Ravitch’s The Great School Wars is, I think, best illustrated by turning for a moment to Christopher Jencks’s assessment …



Footnote—Or Perish  

A footnote appears, at first sight a trivial thing, and easily understood. But in the pages of the new Social Sciences Citation Index, these scholarly creations step forth as independent beings, endowed with a life of their own. The Citation …