NONTHEMATIC / Vol. 27, No. 3 (Fall 1960)
- Social Research An Int'l Quarterly
- Oct 1, 1960
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 29, 2023
Americans in the period between the two world wars were often exhorted to seek world peace through international law and novel world institutions. In the aftermath of World War I many loyal and responsible persons felt a deep sense of shame and guilt. While Woodrow Wilson had been the prophet of world law and order, the Senate, after his return from the Paris Peace Conference, repudiated the League of Nations. The generation that included the nation’s intellectual leaders, among them such men as Nicholas Murray Butler and James Shotwell, called for rededication to world organization and effective world law. Their resolve and conviction and that of many others paved the way for American sponsorship of the United Nations and a new International Court.
A basic function of national propaganda is to improve a foreign nation's image of oneself. From such improvement a groundswell of changes in the foreign nation is expected, favorable to the interests of the propagandizing nation. Thus the stated central purpose of the USIS, the official disseminator of the American image in Italy, is to expose Italians to the American way of life, and persuade them of its values…
In political debate, judicial practice, and economic-policy discussions the term public interest plays a dominant role. The term lends itself to convenient use--partly because it resists, by its nature, precise definition. For this very reason, however, the idea of the public interest has been viewed with suspicion by those who try to formulate a rigorous 'scientific' theory of political science or economics, especially public finance. Thus the recent literature in these fields has revived earlier efforts to do without a concept which so stubbornly defies neat and precise nomic behavior.
Although quantitative analysis has been applied to many aspects of class, the "class" character of given strata has not been treated in qualitative terms. "Being a class" has not been described as a property that may be present in varying degrees. This is not to say that the concept has always been used with the intent of asserting the full-blown existence of a class. The point is rather that, as yet, attention has not been directed to such questions as "To what extent is a give system of stratification a class system?" or "How do different segments of that system compare in the degree to which they are classes?" The chief purpose of this paper is to develop an approach that would make it possible, both conceptually and operationally, to pursue such questions.
In earlier years the Fur Workers International Union (FWIU) was considered a member of the constellation, but the link was loosened in the 1920s, when communists took over the furriers, and recently they were absorbed by the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butchers of North America and ceased to continue as an identifiable union entity.
Of course an idea that reappears at different times is in some respects not the "same" idea. Each age clothes it in its own dress. At each period it appears against a different philosophical background. It might thus be argued that to discuss Spinoza’s view of freedom apart from its metaphysical background is to distort it; that Spinoza cannot properly be treated as if he were a psychologist in the modern sense. While it is clearly possible to focus on differences, this paper will emphasize, rather, the essential core of similarity between certain of Spinoza’s ideas and certain modern ones.
Review of book by Seymour Martin Lipset. Garden City, New York: Doubleday. 1960. 432 pp.
Review of book by David B. Truman. New York: John Wiley. 1959. xii & 336 pp.
Review of book in collaboration with Samuel C. Chu, Leslie L. Chark, Jung-pang Lo, Yuan-li Wu, under the editorship of Hsiao Hsia. New Haven: Human Relations Area Files Press.
Review of book by Sidney Weintraub. Philadelphia: Chilton. 1959. xi & 123 pp.
Review of book by Richard Hartshorne. Monograph Series of the Association of American Geographers, Derwent Whittlesey and Andrew H. Clark, eds.Chicago: Rand McNally. 1959. 201 pp.
Review of book by Reinhard Bendix. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. 1960. 480 pp.