A First Book on Vietnam  

Joseph Buttinger, ex-European, author of In the Twilight of Socialism, wrote The Smaller Dragon, A Political History of Vietnam, in part because he had experienced “something of the quality of a conversion” during his first brief visit to Viet Nam …



Lonely Outsiders  

WHITE MAN, LISTEN!, by Richard Wright No one knows better than Richard Wright that the white man has not listened for a century, has neither plans nor intention to start listening now and probably couldn’t listen if he wanted to. …



Life in the Factory  

ON THE LINE, by Harvey Swados. Fiction about factory workers has been a rarity during the past two decades. Most novels at all concerned with work take as their setting and inspiration the air-conditioned offices on Madison Avenue, not the …



Okinawan ‘Showcase”  

In the election for Mayor of Naha City, capital of Okinawa, held on January 12, there were two candidates, both of whom designated themselves as Socialists. The major issue of the election, according to a New York Times report, was …



Dzilas and the Yugoslav Press  

The publication of Djilas’s book, on August 11, 1957, was greeted by the international press with comments generally favorable to his views. None of these comments was, of course, printed in the Yugoslav press; but there is in that country …



Morality, Reality – And Peace  

Can there be a “foreign policy” for socialists? In a world not of their making or choice, have socialists anything to offer but a moral stance? Against the harsh realities of world politics, morality might seem to be the least …



Letters  

Role of the Scientists Editors: So much in Edward Speyer’s article, “Scientists in A Bureaucratic Age” [DISSENT, Summer 1957] is merely implied, so many half-truths are only half voiced, that it is difficult to know where to start taking issue. …



The Suicide of France  

French public opinion, kept in ignorance of the true state of affairs by design and deceit, does not yet understand that the Sakiet bombing marks a decisive turn in the Algerian war. We have constantly maintained that a military Dien …



Letters  

Role of the Scientists Editors: So much in Edward Speyer’s article, “Scientists in A Bureaucratic Age” [DISSENT, Summer 1957] is merely implied, so many half-truths are only half voiced, that it is difficult to know where to start taking issue. …





Poland: The Evasion of Freedom  

“What has changed in Poland since October? Gomulka has changed.” This joke, circulating in Warsaw a year and a half after the Polish “spring in October,” is characteristic of the current mood of disenchantment. Polish intellectuals who were in the …



The Vietnamese Mandarin  

There can be no doubt that the mandarins, whose authority derived from the acquisition of knowledge, were the country’s only wielders of power, nor that as a class they were firmly opposed to technical progress and social change. Thus, if …