UTOPIAN ESSAYS AND PRACTICAL PROPOSALS, by Paul Goodman. Random House. 289 pp. 1962. Some of the “practical proposals” in Paul Goodman’s collection of essays are: Solve the traffic problem by banning private cars from Manhattan; rebuild a few of America’s …
HONORED JOSEPH VISSARIONOVITCH: One who has been condemned to the supreme punishment—the writer of this letter—appeals to you for commutation of his punishment. My name is no doubt known to you. For me, a writer, to be deprived of the …
A document such as the 1961 Draft Program of the CPSU serves so many different purposes that at first sight it may appear pointless to try to classify it with reference to the tradition it purports to incarnate. It is …
I went to Moscow, invited by the General Commissariat of Expositions, to talk to the Russians about painting. As my theme I had chosen “the artist and the world today.” This would allow me to touch upon delicate subjects such …
To be contemptuous of the fine arts in suburbia has by now come to seem as “peculiar” as respect for or practice of the fine arts used to be in small-town America. The suburban Babbitt knows that he had better …
For over a decade American social scientists have been developing a theory of political pluralism which claims that real political power is parcelled out, more or less equally, among the various groups and classes of American society. At the same …
After years of effort and expense, the Fund for the Republic’s Trade Union Project is coming to an end. One of the rare products of this concentration of talent, resources, and contemplation is a 75-page booklet by Solomon Barkin, “The …
I don’t much look at the movies, television, or the other popular arts covered by Show magazine. About once a year my wife and I go to a movie to see what that is like. Occasionally, if I am immured …
The editors of DISSENT are pleased to print the first English translation of this remarkable philosophical and social essay by the distinguished young Polish writer, Leszek Kolakowski, whose…
Milovan Djilas is in jail once more, this time because he has published, during the era of deStalinization, a book with unflattering recollections of Stalin. As he himself remarks, there is little new in what he says. Anyone who remembers …
Our fact-oriented Administration might consider the folIowing facts in evaluating its interventionist policy in South East Asia (Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand): • Since 1954 we have spent over $2.5 billion (by the end of this year it will be $3 …
As there are at least twelve different questions raised by this symposium, all to be answered in four or five pages, I have decided to limit myself to a few ideas. Roughly, there are two separate themes posed—the individual’s private …
Since the Second World War the American radical has had the unenviable task of having to advocate socialism in the midst of capitalist plenty. So unrewarding have been his efforts that nowadays he hardly talks about socialism at all, but …
1) The term “radical” as most of today’s young radicals apply it to themselves is adequately defined by any standard dictionary— going to the roots of social problems, demanding a change in the very nature of existing society. However, in …
1.) I am a radical because as a child I found myself in a world of lies. The three lies which, put together, make the biggest lie, are the lies of sex, money and authority. We were taught by conscious …
