The welfare state represents easily the most appealing program socialists have ever offered. Its success in alleviating both the specific costs and existential anxiety of industrialization, together with its proven compatibility with liberal democracy, make it an ideal basis for …
At least for the moment, Women’s Liberation is “in.” Its advocates get wide publicity in the mass media, and there is talk, mostly not very serious, about what “those women” want. On campuses, as in professional organizations, there has been …
Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay—now Chile. One can no longer breathe on our continent. Latin America has become a pyramid of ruined ideas and victims’ bones. At the top, a tribunal of uniformed and bemedaled pygmies legislates, excommunicates, and executes nonbelievers. All …
The heritage of colonialism in Vietnam is Communism. The strength of the Communist party of Vietnam is a unique phenomenon in the developing world. Vietnam was the only country where a Communist-led government was established at the end of World …
Seeking a review of our twenty years of existence that would be neither encomium nor assault, but instead a considered and critical judgment, the editors of Dissent invited the writer Joseph Epstein to put down his opinions about and reactions …
The Arab countries hide beneath their sands most of the world’s known petroleum, accounting for one-third of total production and three-fifths of shipments in interregional trade. The United States, with only 6 percent of the earth’s population, uses up as …
The last 40 years have witnessed the collapse of most of the great politico-social myths bequeathed to us by the 19th century. As a result, certain kinds of people who had relied on these myths as a compass find themselves …
I. What Is Meant by Decentralization and What Is Not Meant Decentralizing is increasing the number of centers of decision-making and the number of initiators of policy; increasing the awareness by individuals of the whole function in which they are involved; …
When one glances through the writings of our modern, hard-headed, nonutopian sociologists—students of industrial organization, of “labor relations,” of the corporation and its managerial structure—one notices a strain of controlled optimism in their otherwise businesslike and down-to-earth findings. Much as …
One day, not soon, the welfare state will extend its benefits to all those men and women who are at present its occasional victims, its nominal or partial members. That day will not be the end of political history. But …
Ever since men climbed down from the trees and found it necessary to establish ground rules, they have fought over what those rules shall be. They have fought longest, and perhaps most bitterly, over the most fundamental rule of all—the …
The energy crisis illuminates the nature of late-capitalist society. Let us hope that it will also make possible a political challenge to it. I will not argue the details of this statement. Dankwart Rustow’s article in this issue provides ample …
A man is dead: you think of his living face, of his gestures, his actions, and of moments you shared, trying to recapture an image that is dissolved forever. A writer is dead: you reflect upon his work, upon each …
We are in for an increasingly hard time of it. Like bad money in circulation, individual terrorism and acts of violence committed in the name of “the revolution” have a way of showing up cyclically. While the California kidnapping of …
What the Lord did on the eighth day the Bible does not state; it is permitted to speculate that He continued to rest and, for all that the last million years’ record shows, never returned to the hectic working spree …
