Richard Flacks’s article is the most serious discussion of “participatory democracy” that has yet come out of the New Left, and with most of it I am not in fundamental disagreement. I have some questions, or different emphases. Flacks defines …
In his 1966 State of the Union message, Lyndon B. Johnson said that if the war in Vietnam were to go on, it should not be financed at the expense of the worst-off in the society but rather by the …
For long stretches of history, no one but the poor has been interested in poverty; but at intervals—and we are in one such period now—it has become respectable to see it as a problem. Sociologists, economists, social workers, and politicians of …
Let us recall the early days of our struggle when, in 1954, the Supreme Court made its historic decision. A great psychological ferment began to take place, which, as you know, was followed by a period of intense direct action. …
I write these lines as a hasty last-minute response to the news that the CIA has been secretly subsidizing certain activities abroad of the National Student Association (NSA) and other student groups. By the time this issue of DISSENT reaches …
A good part of the comment about the dispute inside the AFL-CIO has been empty of understanding. Reporters have made much of the votes inside the Executive Council, but these votes have limited meaning. Jacob Potofsky of the Amalgamated Clothing …
Many arguments, good and not so good, poor and spurious, have been invoked in the controversy about the Warren Commission; that is, about the more or less voluntary confusion shrouding the investigation of the murder of President Kennedy. Compared to …
Defense Secretary McNamara recently announced to the Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars a “salvage” operation aimed at bringing tens of thousands of “SubStandard” youths into the armed forces—for their own good, of course. He proposed—and has since instituted—a …
Both countries groan under the weight of the problems connected with modernization. But they take sharply different paths, and the contrast is instructive. India is not a happy land today— far from it. At least 1-0 million of its people …
You don’t have to come South to see the face of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. You can see it—the concave cheeks, the deep-set pale blue eyes, the blowy, sandy hair—in the meaner streets of Chicago and Detroit and Cleveland. These are the …
The pseudo-folky, he-man dialogue that sounded so intellectually and humanly inadequate when reported by Lillian Ross is given here by Hotchner at full length, and still sounds just as inadequate. But we see now what we had only glimpses of …
Washington is a dismal place just now. The muddy Potomac, dreary and snuff-colored, stirs slowly and painfully like and old man waking to the agony of his years. Somehow, even the Capitol dome conveys an impression of timidity in pointing …
1) The Heritage of Traditional Society India has been a traditional society for centuries. Writing of the country as it was after the death of Akbar the Great, in 1605 A.D., W. H. Moreland, the distinguished historian of India, observes …
Last November, 800 Harvard students blocked the path of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, demanding that he consent to a public debate on Vietnam. The demonstrators thereby touched off a controversy on the tactics of confrontation, a controversy which continues …
Three years after President Kennedy’s assassination, we still don’t know much more than on the day after it. Nor are we ever likely to know more. The Warren Commission and its critics have not produced conclusive evidence of either Oswald’s …
