The First Ten Years
Howe, Irving
This magazine was begun in the hope that it would survive at least a year. It has lasted ten. And it is going stronger than ever. Our paid circulation is at the highest point since we began;...
...But our friends and ourselves continue to do what needs to be and can be done, trying to remain firm in our values and free in our thought...
...There follows, also, a recognition that the retreat to "privatism" was both unwarranted and insensitive...
...It has suffered from uncertainties, from vagueness, from poor writing, from portentousness—at times...
...The compulsive anti-radicalism, the sickening complacence, the readiness to join in celebrating the virtues of American capitalism, the Cold War hys terics—all these have lessened, in some instances disappeared, among American intellectuals, among the more political circles of the labor movement, and among reflective people in general...
...it was a symptom, we were told, of our "nostalgia for the thirties" to talk about such matters Today, everyone knows that poverty is an urgent problem, and an important reason for that awareness is the work of one of our editors, who brought together and developed the kinds of material that eight or nine years ago were appearing in DISSENT and other socialist publications...
...I attend a teachers union meeting and find a dissenter building a fine organization...
...but it now seems clear to us that this goal, valuable as it remains, will not be reached easily or quickly...
...We now enter our second decade, full of plans and hopes...
...We shall give as much as we can of our energy, thought and time...
...for a little magazine of socialist persuasion it is remarkable...
...We have not, to be sure, reconstructed that new synthesis of socialist thought which we had fondly, indeed naively, hoped to reach...
...Ten years ago we were mocked and scorned for insisting that poverty remained a major problem in the United States...
...For in the last few years, wherever I have gone in the United States, I have found friends and co-workers, some Dissenters closely attached to the magazine and many more dissenters who share our general outlook and carry out the ideas we advance...
...and so is our morale...
...and we know that our friends will help...
...But on reflection I do not find this very dismaying...
...and that, in however modest a way, we can influence the changing directions of thought and perhaps events...
...Sobriety and doubt have replaced the trumped-up euphoria of the early 1950s, and from sobriety and doubt there has followed a recognition that the social problems of this country have not been solved and that, on the contrary, new and severe ones have begun to appear...
...Wherever there is work to be done for justice and freedom, there Norman Thomas, our friend and inspiration, is to be found...
...And it is going stronger than ever...
...The editorial board functions with good spirit and sharp criticism...
...But it has also published an impressive body of work both in political analysis and topical reporting: you need only look through Voices of Dissent, the book collecting the best pieces of our first five years...
...For a little magazine this is notable...
...We are happy and, for just a moment, permit ourselves some pride...
...It will be a matter of new experiences, new problems, new generations...
...It does not yet add up, of course, to the kind of new democratic radical movement we should like to see in this country...
...A great deal has changed since we began to publish...
...We thank our readers, those who have helped us every two years with financial contributions, those who speak about the magazine, those who are content simply to read it...
...that we all have work to do in this world...
...But more than a specific social ill is at stake here...
...or the series dealing with American social problems which we will be publishing under the general title of The Radical Papers, first in the magazine itself and then as a book, Something else: The kind of tight-knit "community" of writers and friends, extending beyond the immediate circle of our editorial board, that we had in mind at the beginning, has not quite been built up...
...or the several special issues we have put out, such as those on New York City, Africa, the American trade unions, academic life...
...This magazine was begun in the hope that it would survive at least a year...
...The magazine has had its faults, and we know them well...
...Even —but don't make too much of it—our finances are a trifle better than in the past: they are merely critical...
...We are glad to have stuck by the fundamental outlook of democratic radicalism, and glad, as well, to have tried to abandon those elements of traditional ideology which came to seem obsolete or mistaken...
...for a little magazine of socialist persuasion in the 1950s and 1960s it is phenomenal...
...Books keep coming out, some of them with material that had appeared in our pages, some obviously influenced by our work...
...our influence, so far as we can judge, is also...
...The whole idea of fundamental social change, of a new society that would be democratically structured in both politics and economics, a society planned for the needs of men rather than subject to the fetishes of the past— this begins to take on a new meaning today, a revived and stronger meaning, as it becomes clear that things go badly, the values of competitive society are dismal, the distribution of goods and power is unjust...
...Consider the question of poverty...
...In the civil rights movement, our friends work hard and well, making real the values of democratic socialism...
...We thank those writers who have sent us their work, and for whom publication in our pages has meant a loss of income they could gain elsewhere...
Vol. 11 • April 1964 • No. 2
