What is the relationship between capitalism, socialism, and political equality? Several recent essays by Robert A. Dahl on the ideal of “procedural democracy” in political and economic life have significantly advanced our understanding of this issue without, however, providing an …
With the following comment we continue the informal discussion among Dissent editors regarding the changed international situation after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The next issue will carry further comment by other editors.—Eds The parochialism of American liberal intellectuals is …
In the spring of 1980, the Senior Tutor and the Master of Balliol College, Oxford, both philosophers, and an English schoolboy were expelled from Czechoslovakia, after interrogation, for attending the unofficial philosophy courses of Dr. Julius Tomin. The Oxford dons …
The following is excerpted from H. W. Benson’s book, published last year by the Association for Union. Democracy cold entitled Democratic Rights for Union Members. Soon after George Meany became its president, the AFL embarked on a campaign against corruption …
The old theme notwithstanding, it’s not East side-West side that separates New Yorkers. It’s inside and outside. Inside meaning those residents who depend on the city to provide their basic services: health, education, housing, child-care, income, recreation and other special …
Yvonne Kapp’s two-volume biography of Eleanor Marx chronicles both the personal and public life of a woman who played a distinctive role in the socialist, working-class, and feminist movements of 19th-century Europe. Before the publication of this biography she had …
In the 1960s, when I was a writer and organizer for the International Union of Electrical Workers, one of my jobs was to travel to communities where plants were closing (sometimes in the aftermath of a strike or other militant …
An exodus is not yet a revolution. In the case of Cuba, it comes as evidence of desperation and geographical convenience. Where the Hungarians and Czechs had to face Russian tanks, the Cuban escapees face Castro’s wrath, hazardous waters in …
We are seeing the wanton gutting of the nation’s heavy industrial plant. This tragic waste of blue-collar jobs and working-class lives will not cease as long as we allow government to abet the sacrifice of production facilities to the momentary …
“All wars end in tourism,” writes Tom Vanderbilt—even the Cold War. Thus we can visit the Nevada Test Site, the Titan Missile Museum, and the fallout shelter exhibit at the Smithsonian. The most extravagant of all U.S. Cold War tourist …
On November 4, 1978, with the best intentions in the world, the weekly L’Express published an interview with Darquier de Pellepoix, former Commissioner General for Jewish Affairs in the Petain government. Readers may remember that Darquier was appointed to this …
In a persuasive tract, Free to Choose (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), Milton and Rose Friedman propound an economic system that does not exist, never has existed, and is unlikely ever to exist except in the fantasies of authors who perceive …
One approaches novels that have been as highly praised as Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter with a certain caution. About one-fourth of the way into the novel, however, all caution breaks down, and the reader finds himself ready to acknowledge that …
To ask about the new feminism and contemporary American culture, I must begin with Le Deuxieme Sexe, which Simone de Beauvoir published in France 31 years ago. Joyless but monumental, that book articulated a concept of woman that American feminists, …
When I was teaching for a few years at Stanford in the early ’60s, that excellent university was as politically dormant as American universities were then supposed to be. Perhaps the first political meeting held on campus in some years …
