Any American hard hat or British miner would understand. Solidarity is the name of their union game. Alone each worker is nothing; together, over the decades, the unions have forced a redistribution of wealth, have shaken governments. The nations of Africa are new at the game. On the broader, world field they too recognize the power of unity. They too would redistribute wealth—on a world scale. But can economic solidarity, a “trade union” of African nations, inject cement into the shifting sands of their dubious political unity? That is the big question hanging over the continent.

In the past several months American intellectual circles have spawned a new series of challenges to the morality and efficacy of responding to the needs of the poor countries. One of the surprising aspects of these arguments—one which has given considerable satisfaction to the devoted opponents of such aid and even raised eyebrows among the usually uninvolved—is the fact that these challenges have been spawned within the development community, by some who have spent a lifetime advocating help for the poor countries. Unlike earlier challenges which pointed out that much of American aid was used for overt political and military purposes, these new challenges hold that the provision of assistance is in and of itself immoral.

The fate of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) is instructive beyond the borders of Italy. Its relation to democracy and religion may yet provide a pattern for a number of other countries.

As a result of the June regional and administrative elections in Italy the Communist Party vote rose 5.5 percent since the 1972 General Elections. In fact, this was a greater increase in party strength than during all the previous two decades. This puts the Italian Communist Party practically on a par with the Christian Democrats (D.C.), while it gives the PCI control of most of the major cities and regions in Italy.

Before I went to Israel in 1973 as a fellow of the Ford Foundation I had heard many words used to describe Israel as a nation. Some of the most frequently used were “neocolonialist,” “expansionist,” “imperialist,” and “racist.” The Israelis were described as “arrogant,” “pushy,” “cold,” and “racist.”

Usually when these terms were tossed around I was in the middle of a heavy “rap” with those of my students who described themselves as of the New Left or with blacks who claimed lo be militant. Invariably my ears perked up, and became keenly attentive when I heard the word “racist.” For years this reaction had been as automatic to me as salivation at the smell of good food, a result of being black in America for over thirty years. As time went on, it became increasingly important for several reasons for me to look into alleged Israeli racism.

At the present moment there seems to be a worldwide agreement that conflicts between multinationals and host countries do exist, that they are bound to increase in intensity in the near future, and that something must be done about it. Speaking on U.S.-Latin American relations earlier this year the U.S. Secretary of State singled out multinational enterprises as one of the key hemispheric problems. A senior economist from the Brookings Institution said last fall that the likelihood of international conflict on the issue of multinational corporations is growing sharply, and the clash of the national interests involved could become in the near future a central problem of world economics and politics. In Latin America and elsewhere in the developing world similar preoccupations are expressed by an increasing number of policy-makers, policy advisors, and public opinion-molders.

The principal occupation of the Nixon Administration was an attempt to build what it called a “structure of peace.” President Ford has made it perfectly clear that he agrees with the basic thrust of his predecessor's foreign policy. Public opinion polls show that a majority of the American ipeople share Ford's assessment of the Nixon Administration's alleged achievements in world affairs. I propose to challenge the basis on which they intend to build that structure and to pose an alternative basis. Before positing that alternative I will compare the Nixon-Kissinger grand design with other policies that compete for our allegiance today.

All I demand of the reader, James Joyce is supposed to have remarked of Finnegans Wake, is his lifetime. Fortunately and unfortunately, Karl Marx makes the same claim. Fortunately, because his work is so vast and rich that you can profitably spend a lifetime assimilating both its specific insights and a methodology that enables you to confront new and unprecedented realities. Unfortunately, because it is impossible to dabble in Marx. Such otherwise brilliant scholars as Karl Popper and Paul Samuelson have often written downright silly things about Marxism after acquiring a tourist's knowledge of it. There is probably a larger library of worthless writings on Marx than on any other major thinker in Western culture.