Not since the early days of 1946, before the Cold War became a reality, has the climate for controlling the nuclear arms race been so propitious. Both the United States and the Soviet Union talk (but do not yet act) as …
Twenty-seven young soldiers have been standing trial for “mutiny” allegedly committed in the Presidio, an army installation in San Francisco. The issues raised by this trial extend far beyond the immediate events. The Presidio, headquarters of the U.S. Sixth Army, …
Not only has President Nixon failed to tackle any major problem, he has not even defined one. As Max Frankel has written: By this stage in their administrations John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson were forging new designs for European …
Nearly 40,000 West Virginia soft-coal miners returned to their jobs March 4 after conducting a political general strike in support of a state bill to make “Black Lung” a compensable ailment under the state’s workmen’s compensation system. The walkout began …
I wholeheartedly concur with Barry Bluestone’s position in “The Poor Who Have Jobs” (DISSENT, September-October 1968) that the currently popular proposals to adapt the poor to our modern industrialized economy through programs of manpower training and development are totally inadequate as …
The following appeared in a leaflet distributed by Students for a Democratic Society at New York University the day after it broke up a meeting at which James Reston was scheduled to speak, as well as another meeting at which …
One of the most arresting aspects of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has been the confrontation between Mao Tse-tung (or the Maoist group) and the Chinese Communist party. There is, to be sure, an area of vagueness and uncertainty concerning this …
The June War and the continuing Middle East tensions have not produced the same effect in Beirut as they have in Cairo or Amman. In Beirut there is the accustomed freedom of speech, one of that city’s singular virtues. There …
Lowenthal: We face here a worldwide problem, an apparent breakdown of communication between the generations. A significant part of the younger generation seems not to accept the beliefs, values, and institutions that have been handed down to them. This degree …
Much of my life has been split between two worlds: blue-collar unions and the intellectual-academic arena—a sort of long-haired working stiff, or at least an uncommon marginal man. Born in a tough Irish working-class neighborhood and reared on Catholicism, Irish …
Peter Gay’s book breathes elegance, wit, and discernment. His portrayal of the scholarly, literary, and artistic brilliance of the first German republic illuminates much that has been obscure or available only through specialized monographs. The Bauhaus, German Expressionism, the internationally …
Recently the idea of a volunteer army, as a substitute for UMT or the draft, has gained adherents among pacifists and opponents of the Vietnam War. The following “theses” have been circulated among DISSENT editors and have received favorable as …
India is celebrating this year the 100th anniversary of its modern “saint,” Mahatma Gandhi. Saints, as George Orwell once pointed out, are difficult people. We like to believe that the Mahatma would have looked with disdain upon the idolatrous ceremonies now …
To the Russian invaders, the liberal socialism of Ota Sik, one-time head of the Czechoslovakian Economic Institute, was intolerable. After the Russians entered Prague, Sik was high on the list of those to be removed from office. He happened to …
The name of Leszek Kolakowski is famous outside the borders of his native Poland and far beyond the circle of professional philosophers, not because his doctrines are exciting like Sartre’s or his discoveries pioneering like Galileo’s, but because his much …
