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 …
Throughout most of his career, Mikhail Bulgakov, author of The Master and Margarita, was under attack by Party critics. By 1930 his plays were barred from the Soviet stage, and ultimately a general ban was placed upon all his publications, …
The poor prospects for peace in Vietnam arise directly from the military and political situation. Militarily, the war continues to be a stalemate, neither side being capable of winning, but both being able to deny victory to the opponent indefinitely. …
A presidential candidate may not need a policy, but a President does. Nixon’s election seems, in part, to have been due to his skill at gathering the support of those discontented voters who, for a variety of reasons, wanted to bring …
Elegant Tombstone Editor: In “Elegant Tombstones” (DISSENT, January – February 1969) Professor Macpherson’s major contention is that a “moment’s thought will show” Milton Friedman’s view, that under capitalism transactions are voluntary, to be wrong. For Macpherson argues “the proviso that …
A. Philip Randolph Throughout my life I have drawn much of my inspiration as a socialist from Norman Thomas. I learned from him, as well as from Eugene Victor Debs, that the struggle for racial justice is organically tied to …
It has been over three years since the young draft resister, David Henry Mitchell, III, launched his effort to persuade our courts to enforce the principles of international law proclaimed at Nuremberg. Unfortunately, that effort has not been a particularly successful …
A Friend Editors: Every time a copy of Dissent arrives at our desk we feel thrilled. All of us are so eager to go through it. It is a pity that such a fine venture has to ask for funds. Or, …
On Holy Thursday, 1968, a youth named Bachmann, an admirer of Hitler, shot and critically wounded Rudi Dutschke, the leader of a militant Berlin student group. As a result of this attempted murder, there were violent student demonstrations during Easter …
Like other minorities, black Americans have a history of their own—peculiar sufferings and peculiar experiences, as well as special forms of resistance or of protective evasion. But this history is distinguished from the history of all other minorities in that …
In his latest film, Weekend, Jean-Luc Godard attacks the phenomenon of violence. He piles horror on horror—adds gore, callousness, perversion, brutality, all culminating in cannibalism. Not since Hieronymus Bosch and Goya have we been exposed to such ghastly pictorial visions. …
The hippies are merely the latest in a continuous series of revolts by a younger generation against its fathers, both literal and symbolic. The process has become so much a natural development that it no longer occasions surprise—although always some …
The open society—insofar as it actually is open and fulfills its claims—is a standing invitation to trouble. Its liberties, tolerance, and constraints upon powerful minorities invite attack, license, and violence by the aggrieved, short-tempered, and politically unskilled. Its ideological commitment …
