Nearly 40,000 West Virginia soft-coal miners returned to their jobs March 4 after conducting a political general strike in support of a state bill to make “Black Lung” a compensable ailment under the state’s workmen’s compensation system. The walkout began …
I wholeheartedly concur with Barry Bluestone’s position in “The Poor Who Have Jobs” (DISSENT, September-October 1968) that the currently popular proposals to adapt the poor to our modern industrialized economy through programs of manpower training and development are totally inadequate as …
The following appeared in a leaflet distributed by Students for a Democratic Society at New York University the day after it broke up a meeting at which James Reston was scheduled to speak, as well as another meeting at which …
One of the most arresting aspects of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has been the confrontation between Mao Tse-tung (or the Maoist group) and the Chinese Communist party. There is, to be sure, an area of vagueness and uncertainty concerning this …
The June War and the continuing Middle East tensions have not produced the same effect in Beirut as they have in Cairo or Amman. In Beirut there is the accustomed freedom of speech, one of that city’s singular virtues. There …
Lowenthal: We face here a worldwide problem, an apparent breakdown of communication between the generations. A significant part of the younger generation seems not to accept the beliefs, values, and institutions that have been handed down to them. This degree …
Much of my life has been split between two worlds: blue-collar unions and the intellectual-academic arena—a sort of long-haired working stiff, or at least an uncommon marginal man. Born in a tough Irish working-class neighborhood and reared on Catholicism, Irish …
Peter Gay’s book breathes elegance, wit, and discernment. His portrayal of the scholarly, literary, and artistic brilliance of the first German republic illuminates much that has been obscure or available only through specialized monographs. The Bauhaus, German Expressionism, the internationally …
Recently the idea of a volunteer army, as a substitute for UMT or the draft, has gained adherents among pacifists and opponents of the Vietnam War. The following “theses” have been circulated among DISSENT editors and have received favorable as …
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 …
