No Time for Silence  

The Federation of Atomic Scientists has issued an appeal to the United Nations to investigate the danger that continued test explosions of the hydrogen bomb may result in unpredictable genetic damage to the human race. This appeal, which has been …







The ADA: Vision and Myopia  

By one of those neat coincidences that sometimes illuminate political life, former Senator Harry Cain launched a powerful criticism of the government’s “security” program at the very moment the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) was opening its recent convention in …



Germany: Unity and Rearmament  

As this is being written, Bonn’s parliament is voting for German rearmament. This caps the policy of “restoration” pursued during recent years by the U.S. in Western Europe; at the same time it introduces additional elements of rigidity not merely …



What I Think of Artistic Freedom?  

This article has an interesting origin, and may yet, have a small history. It was requested of several American writers including myself by Melvin Lasky, editor of “Der Monat” in West Berlin, and there is a chance that Bert Brecht, …



Merger and Monopoly in the U.S.  

The recent rash of mergers in American industry has , once again highlighted the problem of monopoly. Quite the most glamorous corporate marriages have occurred in automobiles, where the overwhelming strength of Chrysler, Ford and General Motors forced Hudson into …



Problems of Labor Unity  

The re-unification of the CIO and AFL, after twenty long years, will send hopes soaring in the battered House of Labor. The word “unity” has a magic which deeply affects not only the man at the lathe but his intellectual …



Keynesian Economics — A Critique  

There are few occasions when so abstruse a discipline as theoretical economics enters into general currency. Adam Smith’s unseen hand and Marx’s surplus value are the two main examples up to the present in which recondite notions were absorbed into …



Mendès-France — A Domestic Account  

Premier Pierre Mendès-France, it is reported here, is being criticized in the United States for lacking a sense of humor. Be that as it may, for the first time in recent history the entertainers of Montmartre are at a loss …



What Manner of Change in Russia?  

The intense interest which Isaac Deutscher’s recent writings on the Soviet Union have aroused reflects the fact that, adequately or inadequately, he has, almost alone, posed the critical questions which confront serious students of contemporary Soviet power. A keen historian, …



Science and Religion in America  

AMERICA NOW HAS A LARGE intellectual industry devoted to showing that there is no conflict between science and religion, an industry that is but one aspect of the increasing general tendency to play down elements of conflict in American life. …



Bolshevism and Jacobinism  

Between Jacobinism (by which I mean the government of the Mountain, from June 1793 to July 1794) and Bolshevism, there is a significant parallel. Lenin himself is fond of drawing it in his speeches. Like all Russian socialists, Lenin was …



Russia in Transition  

The Editors of DISSENT have invited me to wind up the controversy which has gone on on these pages over my views on the present state of Soviet society. Before replying to my critics I would like to make a …



The Choice of Comrades  

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 …




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