Post-election wisdom is about as good as pre-election wisdom. Still, here goes: The old coalition is dead, long live the new! This seems to me the main point of the election results. True, in the last hours of the election, the …
The distinction between the commitment of the engaged writer and the outcry of the enraged writer is not merely verbal. Engaged literature—the term is reminiscent of numerous, now dated discussions among French intellectuals in the early postwar years, particularly of …
Of course, one wishes that the 1968 New York teachers’ strike had not happened. The social fabric of the city was severely tried and suffered grievous wounds. Reconciliation is to be hoped for, but I fear it is unlikely, pretty …
Not only the East has its revisionists. In this country, too, and even more insistently in Western Europe, honest research has led to a thorough and often painful re-appraisal of recent history. The conventional view of the so-called Cold War, …
We were accustomed to seeing the Communists and their friends in every country of the world quickly forget the “errors,” even the “crimes,” of the Soviet Union, attributing them sometimes to “capitalist encirclement,” sometimes to the “cult of personality.” But it …
In Chicago, Allen Ginsberg declared that the 35th National Democratic Convention was a mass hallucination. Maybe he is right, and the whole thing never happened. His account should be interesting; Jean Genet’s more so; and Norman Mailer will have much …
Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber belongs to that small but influential group on the democratic Left in France which regards technological innovation as a key to a more progressive social order in Europe. These men pride themselves on their pragmatism, their lack of dogma …
The story of Czechoslovakia has meaning far beyond the suffering and hopes of its 14 million people. Its establishment in 1918 was a tribute to aspirations for national self-determination and democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. Its betrayal by the …
If books about the university continue to appear at the present rate, we may have to establish one of those new interdisciplinary fields that many of their authors favor—academiology: the study of higher education and its pedagogical, philosophical, social, and …
Watching the proceedings of the U.N. Security Council during the August crisis, one could not fail to be impressed by the young representative of Czechoslovakia, Ian Musik, who calmly and without any rhetoric read the documents which refuted the Soviet …
The following conversation was taped toward the end of August, 1968. In addition to BAYARD RUSTIN, the well-known civil rights leader and Executive Secretary of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, the participants included IRVING HOWE, editor of Dissent; Tom KAHN, …
The new interest in Kropotkin is part of the worldwide revival of Anarchist action and thought, in both “private enterprise” and socialist countries. So Bakunin, Kropotkin, and the other Anarchists were right after all: the real enemies have proved to …
Daniel was repeating first grade in a run-down Chicago school — big, dingy, half-lit rooms and old-fashioned screw-down desks. I was the fourth teacher he had had that fall, and before the year was over he would have many more. …
On Socialism and the Jews Editor: George Lichtheim is to be commended for bringing to the attention of your readers certain aspects of the problem of socialism and anti-Semitism (“Socialism and the Jews,” DISSENT, July—August 1968). The more so since …
A fortnight before George C. Wallace visited Fort Wayne, Indiana, for a rally in his pursuit of the Presidency, there was looting in the city’s Negro areas. Several hundred youths roamed the streets, breaking the windows of white-owned stores and throwing …
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