Garrett Hardin has finally made it. Once a little known man preaching strange science, his name now appears in Time magazine and on placards at demonstrations in India. He has seized the time and found a friendly reception from an audience fully primed with tales of welfare chislers, lazy poor folk, and belligerently...
Archive - November 2021
Class societies must provide a system of police in order to maintain themselves. Historically such a system has had a dual basis, physical and ideological. The development of ideological weaponry is accomplished largely through the work of intellectuals. To counteract the ideological arsenal has been, and still is, an...
The following is an adaptation by the editorial committee of a pamphlet — “Academics in Government and Industry” by Charles Schwartz. 800 years ago, at the University of Bologna in Italy, professors had to obtain permission from their students and post bond in order to leave town on private business. No such...
Last May the Science Teaching Group was asked to participate in the Great American Food Act, a festive day on the Boston Common, devoted to the food crisis. In line with other current crises, in ecology, energy, war, and unemployment, this year it was food. We wished to expose this crisis as symptomatic of the...
That exposure to chemicals leads to cancer in humans has been know for two hundred years. In 1775 a British physician noted the high incidence of cancer among chimney sweeps, and correctly attributed it to their exposure to coal tar and soot. Since then a vast body of evidence has accumulated showing that many...
This paper is addressed to people interested in agriculture and agricultural policy in relation to food production problems in the world today. In our opinion, many articles which attempt to discuss food production problems fall into two disjoint categories:
A new wave of technological change is gathering. Only this time it threatens to be more than a new arrangement of control systems and conveyors. The “robot” is finally upon us and may condemn to the scrap heap people who are working not only in factories but in offices and in various service industries formerly...
The Ann Arbor chapter of Science for the People has been active in a number of projects since last September. A display board explaining the differences between the conservative, liberal and radical approaches to the food and population issue was constructed and set up in the Zoology department at the University of...
On May 13, at Countway Library in Boston, a packed audience heard three panelists with various scientific backgrounds describe an ominous trend that seems to be turning scientific research into a “secular priesthood” lending its image as scientific “truth seekers” to those who would “cash in” on it.
Throughout the past year Joe McDonald and I taught a course on work at Home Base School in Watertown Ma. I am a volunteer, and Joe is a regular salaried staff member. Home Base is a public alternative high school with 100 students drawn mostly from working-class families. It is informal and tries to involve students...