THE RADICAL PAPERS

Companion to The Liberal Papers and The Conservative Papers, this volume will be for many readers the most challenging and provocative of the three. No congressional group has sponsored it; instead, it is intended to present the broad view of American democratic radical thinking as viewed by 22 independent contributors, editors and writers for the magazine Dissent. Their common background is the democratic left, their belief in humanistic values and the extension of welfare legislation. While stressing the moral components of the socialist opposition to the status quo, they see socialism as irrelevant today. Still they challenge the present set-up not only of government but of big business, big labor unions, etc. in a country which has the slowest industrial growth among the advanced nations (some will quarrel with this), where the rich get richer, the poor stay far behind. Is the new war on poverty going to work? They consider this along with civil rights and social equality, job security, the right to education, new views on urbanization, and other topics. Their concern is with domestic affairs; international policy is touched on only occasionally and then briefly. While no final conclusions are reached, this offers the thinking of some of our intellectuals and deserves attention. Irving Howe, overall editor, provides a pertinent introduction.