The grass-roots organizing of the 1970s is an ambitious and at least partially successful effort to bring working-class women and men into the political arena as organized, self-conscious actors. The organizations that provide structure and direction to this “movement” are …
What has happened to the young men and women of the New Left? The movement is invisible these days, a specter regularly invoked only in neoconservative writings. Where have all the “kids” gone? Many of them are simply burnt out, …
As we enter the 1980s it seems certain that working people in the auto towns will suffer the full impact of the latest round of recession and regional depression. With all their press puffery, the auto executives cannot hide the …
The question nags, gruesomely: is the fate of the Cambodian people as dreadful as that of the Jews and gypsies in Europe? It isn’t a question one need finally answer; a modest distinction will hold us. The Jews and gypsies …
Both Joan Baez and Jane Fonda are to some extent public figures in their art because they are public figures outside it: Ms. Baez for her marches against the H-bomb and the war, her marriage to a draft resister, and …
The following is taken from a quite remarkable article by Abba Eban that appeared in the American Jewish magazine, Moment. It’s reprinted here with permission. — Eds. Let us look at the mechanism of the agreement. Within a month of …
The fortunes of political movements change rapidly these days. Consider the French Socialist party, which could boast at the beginning of this year that it was France’s “largest party”: it had a membership of 200,000, the highest percentage of the …
The two-way Soviet-American negotiations on SALT II have ended and the three-way negotiations that will determine the outcome of the treaty are under way. The 100 members of the U.S. Senate have become the third side in the bargaining. Whether …
When President Carter called us onto the “battlefield of energy,” he was only the latest leader to suppose that peacetime problems can be solved by applying the alleged wartime virtues of unity, productivity, and sacrifice. As early as the 1820s, …
In the summer 1979, Dissent printed several articles on the energy problem, from various points of view. Below appears another article, in line with our policy of providing a forum for a range opinions, within the spectrum of socialist and …
Mr. Randolph was a successful and uniquely gifted labor and civil rights activist because of his human qualities. His leadership flowed from the depth of his humanity—and from his understanding of the human condition. His modesty, his integrity, and his …
DAVID T. BAZELON, who teaches English at the State University of New York at Buffalo, is the author of The Paper Economy (1963), Power in America (1967), and Nothing but a Fine Tooth Comb (1970).
Histories of socialism usually begin with the Old Testament prophets, mighty preachers against usury and “those that buy the poor for silver,” visionaries of a golden age and messengers of perpetual peace. Their god was a god of Justice above …
The notion that there is a New Class in our society—”class” for large groups like owners or workers; “new” because Marx did not include it in his grand schema—is an idea that has arrived. After nearly a century of episodic …
On the first of May in Palma, Mallorca (Majorca), I asked my non-Spanish friends whether there would be a May Day parade in town. Nobody knew; some had never heard of May Day. A taxi driver finally located the parade …
