LETTERS
Editors: I find much to disagree with in Bernard Avishai's lengthy diatribe against Commentary Magazine. However, I write not to present a detailed rebuttal but to refute a statement attributed...
...And he asks That El Salvador not be forced to have to make a choice between the power blocs of East and West...
...The experience raised two issues for us: the left's difficulty in dealing with our own sectarians, and the left's ambivalence toward civil liberties...
...The major problem I have with Howe's analysis is that his ambivalent conclusion does not coincide with his own assessment of political realities—particularly when he cautions that there is no side or force "we ought to support...
...Now, with respect to any one individual, you can say, well, here is a decent, if overzealous, person, and I will try to reason with him...
...While some of the left respect them as dedicated but misguided revolutionaries, others hate them passionately as violating everything that socialism stands for...
...BaaderMeinhofers, Red Brigades in Italy, doctrinaires of "revolutionary" violence...
...Rustin home after the meeting and pressed him on the point...
...He conceded as we discussed the matter in the car that the "Commentary crowd" were in their own way as discreditable as those black leaders who've been putting forward a narrow view of their own interests while betraying a common and historic need for a democratic coalition...
...I do not deny that since then Commentary has undergone significant political changes...
...This striking divergence across the left spectrum conceals what we think is perhaps the most important fact about such groups as the RSL, CWP, and RCP: they are our lunatic fringe, our sectarians, our doctrinaire and authoritarian purists, our dangerous "crazies...
...others have become absorbed in local issues and still others have turned to doctrinaire leftism...
...Hasn't Mr...
...That the guerrilla groups are "anti-Soviet" is not decisive...
...In a series of mock-dialogues, Cohen addressed several major objections to free speech for the Nazis in Skokie, from the patent evil of their anti-Semitic exhortations, to the psychic harm they might do to survivors of the Holocaust, to the encouragement such expressions might give to anti-Semitic acts...
...Oh, no...
...And it is also important to underscore, as does Robert E. Leiken in the Spring Foreign Policy, that "the three major left-wing guerrilla groups all have antiSoviet origins, harbor mutual distrust and retain separate organizational structures...
...Our": it may stick in the throat of many Dissent readers, but neither the urge nor the act of disowning can efface the common origins and common commitments...
...Leave the ACLU to such problems...
...We should not be discussing these things in public...
...New York City BERNARD AVISHAI REPLIES: Bayard Rustin participated in a discussion of blackJewish relations, sponsored by the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, on December 9, 1979, at the home of Stanley and Simone Plastrik...
...Support of the opposition, therefore, does not have to mean that we are backing left authoritarians...
...In daily life, the claim retains its class character: effective free speech is the province of those who have the means to be heard...
...The meeting of 500 people was disrupted by the shouting members of several left sects...
...They are politically hazardous, and not at all fit to be considered as a faction of the "left," "center," or, more generally, the community of socialists, liberals, whatever...
...Of course, we must provide answers for the growing cynicism of people like that recently "radicalized" Jesuit...
...Doherty like to misuse the Thirteenth Amendment (concerned in 1865 when it was adopted with the abolition of Negro slavery) to provide a little statist legitimacy for their antistatist campaign against such democratic institutions as military service and the income tax...
...Conditions may make it extremely difficult for our sectarian comrades to make the passage, but there is only one passage to be made: if the left is to become real in America once more, we will do so only as a part of America...
...American society and culture, especially in this period of our history, make even more difficult the dilemmas faced by socialists in all times and places: how to remain firmly rooted in this world, speaking its language, voicing its concerns—while aiming at a better world...
...will then become a matter of necessity, not mere tactics...
...Guillermo Ungo has stressed, as he did in a March interview, that "after a democratic victory, the country's development will take place within the sphere of the Western capitalist system: co-existence with the U.S...
...Editors: Compared with the furor over Skokie three years ago, the threatened Nazi-Klu Klux Klan march in Detroit in the summer of 1980 was a tempest in a teapot...
...They were certainly voiced and agreed to...
...I drove Mr...
...The Salvadoran military has learned that they can ignore international pressure for such negotiation, since they rightfully interpret the Reagan policy to mean support to their drive for victory...
...Finally, I have yet to hear of a fox so crazy that he penetrates a hen house just to cackle...
...Yet, as Leiken explains, their strength lies in concrete ties with mass popular organizations who turned to them for protection...
...The U.S...
...The issue is hardly a matter of sectarianism...
...In the end, 52 people signed a letter indicating their opposition to the Nazis and the Klan but affirming as central to both democracy and socialism "the right of all persons to publicly argue their viewpoints, however repugnant, provided they respect the rights of others...
...But my argument for Universal Citizens' Service is not directed at those who think democracy is an exercise in illegitimacy or that rights can exist in a natural void independent of civic responsibility...
...there are those who would ignore them, those who would debate them (but not in public), and those who would deny them free speech...
...Some of the negative responses are instructive: "As crazy as [the members of RCP] are I don't think we should call on the authorities or anyone else to punish them...
...It is in this context, as Pierre Schori notes, that the guerrillas in El Salvador have obtained a "substantial following among the people," and hence their country cannot be governed without them...
...I'll give them only this benefit of the doubt: they are not "crazy...
...Editors: In the summer 1981 Dissent Irving Howe has presented a sober if depressing picture of current realities in El Salvador...
...He was busted, as so many students were...
...I am sorry for that...
...Nor could ! assert that I agree with every article which has appeared in Commentary...
...Still, it would be absurd to tolerate these putative terrorists, however minuscule or ineffective, because they presume to speak in the name of a higher humanity...
...In reaching that judgment, Howe is asking the critical question about El Salvador that the democratic left has a moral responsibility to ask: Does our opposition to the military dominated junta mean we are boxed into support of a future left authoritarian government...
...Would that they were...
...It appears that the situation is so bad in El Salvador that even such an outcome is now seen by some as preferable...
...Not mine...
...511...
...If the claim to a "universal" right to free speech is indeed a hallmark of the ascending bourgeoisie, it is also one of their contributions to the advancement of humanity...
...But we can only have leverage, I think, working within that coalition and alongside the opposition...
...Avishai's gratuitous reference to "suburban princesses" is an example of a phenomenon that I have noticed with increasing distress: people who would ordinarily be extremely self-conscious about maligning one group or another do not scruple to do so when that group happens to be female...
...If a bridge or building is built, we should have the best architects and engineers...
...Lacking a continuing movement to sustain commitment independently of subjective will and personal acts, all '60s and '70s activists have found passage difficult into political maturity...
...His summary of political developments in that country reveals that Howe does not regard the Duarte regime to be a moderate government of the political center, as it has constantly been depicted by both the policy-makers of the Carter and Reagan administrations...
...Avishai about Commentary's editorial "line" or any other matter...
...but in order to get the rest of what they need, they need political liberty...
...The answer again lies in the context...
...Our "lunatic" sects...
...First, it is important to understand that the FDR, as Richard E. Feinberg writes in the Summer 1981 Foreign Affairs, "is a front organization only to the extent that any grouping of middle-class social democrats and Christians momentarily allied with Marxists qualifies as such...
...New York City IRVING HOWE REPLIES: I am grateful to Ronald Radosh for the civility of his letter, but not convinced that he is right on our one point of difference...
...The problem with medicine is not that doctors are too competent scientifically...
...Only a few editors will have seen these comments before publication, so I speak primarily for myself— and, I would hope, for most readers of Dissent...
...Bronx, N.Y...
...Once, before he was bailed out, he spent some time in the slammer with fellow demonstrators...
...The creed of socialism, however, is "From each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs...
...Not only have I never made such a claim and not only would I never make such a claim, I do not recall ever having spoken to Mr...
...We say that the situation is near-impossible: few situations, and certainly not our own, are so grim as to leave no roam for an effective politics...
...They are in the race for money...
...But those of us who remain committed to politics rather than exhibitionism have been unable to offer them compelling political vehicles for change...
...indeed many are incompetent...
...Aronson and Wellman are quite right to "anticipate some disagreement...
...Consider: have the crimes committed in the name of "socialism" been any less terrible than those committed under other banners...
...When I go to a doctor my life is in his hands and I want the best...
...But as the shouters grew bolder it became clear that a number of them had come for one purpose: to break up the meeting...
...Socialists have many reasons to feel alienated from American society today...
...I might remind Mr...
...On the second issue we expect that our conclusions will warm a few hearts among Dissent readers...
...Extreme case, of course...
...To the contrary, those of us who can be bracketed in an amorphous "left" have a special responsibility to criticize those unwholesome fanatics, keep them at arm's length, and denounce them in the strongest terms...
...Avishai and the readers of Dissent that even in the 1960s during its "radical" phase, Commentary defied the conventional liberal point of view on racial matters and other social issues...
...Or of the current Marxist-Leninist-led guerrillas...
...At the beginning, the hearing seemed to reflect Detroit's progressive politics at its best: the City Council was holding an open forum on an issue that moved the community...
...For example, no one signed who was close to or a member of the Communist party or the Socialist Workers party...
...Its purpose was to disassociate publicly the rest of the left from actions that were not only inappropriate but showed contempt for the people assembled to speak and to listen...
...How far can those who believe in a radical transformation of the society enter into its system of power, authority, and values, without deforming their commitment...
...Is it certain that if his side wins, the future of El Salvador will be determined by hard-line Marxist-Leninists, who will call all the shots behind the scenes...
...and they are afraid of competition...
...Why should sectarians of the "left" have extra privileges...
...He noted that his country had no freedom of the press, no free assembly, and that the only forces killing priests and nuns were those of the government and its security forces...
...Viewed historically, they result from centuries of struggle, progress, and maturation...
...Since the guerrilla rebels now seem to acknowledge that a military victory is impossible in the short run, he writes, "the guerrillas are willing to give more power to the moderate FDR" Military weakness—symbolized by the failure of the guerrillas' January "final offensive"—worked to strengthen the hand of Ungo and the democratic left...
...As the Mexicans realize, the best hope for stability in Central America is through the building-up of the social democratic opposition...
...We must do all we can to urge our comrades to accept negotiations (and to oppose those guerrilla leaders who also oppose such a course...
...The problem is not with merit but with meritocracy, which is people with special talent seeking to be a superior class and greedy for gain...
...and along with others at the meeting he expressed disappointment with Jewish intellectuals who were using their opposition to quotas to abandon the very concept of affirmative action and dissociate themselves from the interests of the black community...
...Chicago, Illinois BENJAMIN BARBER Replies: Just as certain gun-lobby zealots like to misuse the Second Amendment (concerned with state militia and national security) to lend a little constitutional luster to their selfinterested campaign on behalf of Saturday Night Specials, so libertarians like Mr...
...As Michelangelo said, "A trifle is perfection but perfection is no trifle...
...These liberties are at once valuable in themselves, the indispensable components of a more fully free society, and tools for continuing the struggle to achieve this society...
...I ask myself, under a Communist regime, what we would have to lose...
...What else could their "politics" become but repeated demonstrations of alienation and futility through forms of exhibitionism that only intensify their isolation...
...In the ideal, all human beings—from the most humble to the most powerful—are conceived of as rational beings, capable of self-government, and thus entitled to speak and hear all opinions...
...Slowly, reluctantly, the crowd joined in...
...Avishai in the body of his essay...
...Those of us who seek other possibilities have been trying to learn to live with the tension of having a commitment to fundamental change but no guidelines or coherent organizational forms with which to pursue such change...
...But if the left was to be brought into the process, would it in fact respect democracy, pluralism, and a mixed economy...
...Sectarian groups are viewed by some on the left as "crazies," by some as comrades, and by some as agents...
...Those in such groups as RSL, RCP, and CWP "solve" the problem faced by all of us by choosing doctrine over reality...
...The statement was sent with a covering letter to over 100 socialists across the entire Detroit left spectrum— from the Detroit Alliance for a Rational Economy (DARE, the organization of Councilman Ken Cockrel), the New American Movement (NAM), and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), to such "far left" organizations as the Communist partyMarxist Leninist (CPML) and many independent and unaffiliated socialists...
...Detroit, Michigan EMANUEL GELTMAN Replies: Crazy Like Foxes...
...members of the Revolutionary Communist party (RCP) and the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) were arrested...
...the question is, are they in favor of a dictatorship...
...their values are bourgeois...
...Editors: How prophetic the comment of your "Diplomatic Correspondent" re: Carl Gershman in your Spring issue...
...Let me go back a bit...
...Washington, D.C...
...Rustin now advances in his letter is, he would have it, the more considered one...
...The Nation first encouraged a piece on the issue but then rejected it as too narrowly focused on Detroit...
...It was quite another to prevent Hubert Humphrey from speaking, and still quite another to advocate trashing buildings, or to denounce good, liberal faculty members who were opposed to the war, and were on the side of the students, but opposed despoiling classrooms...
...There is a third, hidden tradition, as the Marxist Gordon K. Lewis puts it, of a Caribbean democratic socialism...
...Political liberty is obviously not all the people of El Salvador need...
...Kramnick deplores our "slavish preoccupation with merit and talent" and endorses the idea of assigning students to universities at random...
...510 Editors: The article in your Spring 1981 issue by Isaac Kramnick, "Equal Opportunity and the Race of Life," is an attack on merit, not meritocracy...
...I answered that he had just learned part of the truth that might have seemed to him narrow-minded had I tried to convince him of it before...
...From a socialist point of view, Cohen's argument needs to be historicized: he was describing correctly the current stage of civil liberties, attained after centuries of human struggle on many fronts...
...It is directed to those worried about the future of democracy and about the continuing erosion of the notion of responsible citizenship—of which Mr...
...Viewed thus, this "absolute" is both achievement and goal for the future...
...From their point of view, selfprotectively isolated from the real experience of most people in the society, they alone have answers while others are "revisionists" and "opportunists...
...Among these groups are people of deep conviction and enormous energy who have gravitated toward a doctrinaire vanguard politics under the same debilitating pressures, and in the same rudderless situation, faced by all American socialists—and liberals...
...The view of Commentary Mr...
...They may not be our preeminent problem today when Reaganism poses a greater threat to humane programs...
...To send this type of letter is divisive...
...Lord knows, some of us have spent part of our lives in sectarian movements...
...It would be this, although the slaves would be paid wages and would serve only a few years...
...But who in his right mind would expect me to engage crossburners in a reasoned dialogue...
...The priest's comments underscore the point enunciated by Howe: the Reagan program of all-out aid to the military, combined with abandonment of even the pretense of support to reforms, only sharpens the polariza506 tion and thus strengthens the hands of the authoritarian left...
...And I am also sorry that he has found me less memorable than I found him...
...As a Jewish woman, I am tired of hearing about "princesses," suburban or otherwise, and I do not find anti-Semitism any more attractive when leveled by Jews against other Jews, even when one group is men and the other women...
...The civilian moderates of the FDR could once again gain the upper hand...
...Gershman feeding spurious material to Buckley to smear Timerman...
...Barber heard of the Thirteenth Amendment...
...Does he really think that students are assigned on the basis of merit and talent...
...Half the people contacted refused to endorse the statement or its purpose...
...Until the dilemmas are comprehended, our historical limitations faced, and effective political vehicles constructed, sectarian leftism is but one of many pseudosolutions to a near-impossible situation...
...In short, it was one thing to demonstrate against the war, against injustices in school administration, and so forth...
...Coming of age personally and politically in a movement that burst on the scene without firm ties to the past and future, they awoke like the rest of us in a period of reaction...
...But the Duarte government has rebuffed any steps toward negotiations, since they are interpreted (correctly) as including a political role for the left opposition...
...It is an amazing piece of mental confusion to advocate slavery in the name of equality and better citizenship...
...These stalwarts of revolutionary law and order mean what they say...
...Highland Park, N.J...
...In my article I remain skeptical about the claims that in case of a guerrilla victory, someone like Ungo, obviously "one of us," could exert enough control to prevent the authoritarian elements among the guerrillas from establishing a new kind of dictatorship...
...Those who attend universities are those who can afford to, so assignment is on the basis of money...
...Even worse than he imagined...
...They bring nothing but dishonor to any conceivable cause of social justice...
...Finally one inspired leftist began to chant: "Put them out, put them out...
...Doherty's letter offers one more grim instant...
...Their presumed humanitarian motives do not earn them a single Brownie point...
...We agree that the Reagan policy regarding El Salvador is a disaster, and we agree that the only hope for that unhappy country is a "political solution," that is, 507 some sort of arranged compromise in which all the contending forces can participate in peaceful, free elections...
...Avishai writes that "Bayard Rustin . . . once told me he considered [Commentary's] line on social questions a dishonor to the relations between blacks and Jews in New York...
...Disturbed by the destructive role played by people identified as socialists, the authors, along with Professor David Herreshoff of Wayne State University, circulated a draft statement intended for the Detroit dailies...
...They are our opponents, not our "lunatics...
...In this struggle for justice, Pierre Schori has stated, "the front lines are already drawn," and "in that struggle, social democracy has made its choice...
...Free speech, in its most elastic context, is one thing...
...The safety and well-being of the users is at stake...
...But sectarians who would wipe me out, assault me physically, terrorize other political groups...
...What's the truth...
...At the time of Skokie, Carl Cohen offered a defense of the First Amendment that the left would do well to study...
...But this means—and here is my disagreement with Howe—that we must aid and support those seeking to disband the military power that props up oppressive regimes, and we must stand with those who seek social justice and national independence...
...Nowhere is its isolation from the soil of America more evident than in the ultraleft's dismissal of concern for civil liberties as "abstract" and "bourgeois...
...Many have retreated from politics...
...Let us build a just society based on this creed but let us not produce a society of mediocrity...
...We in the United States must support a political solution that will end the violence...
...Within the coalition struggling against the right-wing militarists, we must work to enhance the power and position of the democrats of the left, who are not fighting to replace one kind of authoritarianism with another...
...But why am I obliged to share friendly or sharp discourse with others (no cross-burners, to be sure) whose minds are choked with Certainty and who might conceivably try to shut me up—if they could...
...But as an abstract absolute, the right reflects an ideal of human development...
...His logic brings us a step closer to that dread combination of private anarchy (rights for everyone) and public tyranny (duties for no one) that is the undoing of modern democracies...
...Yet, he adds, Ungo and the moderates of the left do have "somewhat more power in their alliance with the guerrillas than the Christian Democrats have in their alliance with the army...
...Which means, at the very least, affirming our commitment to one of America's most basic unrealized visions—a society of free and thinking people...
...Again and again, however, he returned to the central point, classically argued by Mill's On Liberty (but found in this country at least as far back as the writings of Jefferson): the harm of suppressing free speech is greater than the harm that might be caused by tolerating it...
...Is the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR), whose chairman is the social democrat Guillermo Ungo, merely fronting for a totalitarian military command structure...
...At that meeting, he scored several black leaders for anti-Semitic statements and for promoting the PLO...
...But the Reagan team sees things differently, and has even opted for increased military aid to the brutal regime in Guatemala...
...Yet this is the very choice being forced upon the peoples of Central America...
...And the police acted...
...Be that as it may, I consider the discussions in Commentary on international affairs and social questions to be intelligent, enlightening and useful contributions to the debate over public policy...
...Do you know," he asked, "that some of these guys I was in jail with talk just like the fascists we are supposed to be fighting...
...Editors: I wish to protest Bernard Avishai's slur on Jewish women in his otherwise trenchant and timely article on Commentary magazine...
...A vital American left will begin with free speech, elections, and the right of unions to organize and bargain collectively—and will struggle to extend democracy to all segments of the population, and to the workplace including such areas as employment rights and job security...
...And let us work like craftsmen or artists for the joy of the work and for creativity...
...I was near Madison at the time and went to see him...
...See "Skokie — the Extreme Test," Nation, April 15, 1978...
...This is something which is particularly valuable at a time when the struggle for racial and social justice appears to have reached an impasse...
...Then we would see better health care in all areas and among the lower classes and more emphasis on preventive medicine instead of on spectacular operations for the few...
...The editor of In These Times decided not to run the statement, arguing that the left-sectarian groups should be ignored as "irrelevant to American politics...
...The Detroit Free Press published the statement with two of the 52 submitted signatures, but the Detroit News passed it by...
...However, I write not to present a detailed rebuttal but to refute a statement attributed to me by Mr...
...Terrorist behavior or talk is anything but socially useful "lunacy...
...This mixed response mirrored the initial reaction we received...
...This is indeed a dilemma...
...but on the first we anticipate some disagreement...
...But with movements, tiny as they are, that openly resort to or imply the threat of terror, I can see no common ground for dialogue...
...Some of these words were his, some mine...
...However, under Norman Podhoretz's stewardship, the virtue of Commentary has been its keen ability to break through the cliches and dogma which seem to pervade and paralyze thinking on social issues and programs...
...There is a lack of quality in America and we are not producing the best...
...But Howe shows little trust or faith in the Salvadoran social democrats, or understanding of why they have acted to join the guerrilla opposition...
...Our first order of business is to mobilize against racism, not to defend the abstract right to express it...
...To these responses must be added those of persons 508 who agreed to sign only after we deleted the original concluding sentence: "Repugnant as they are to us, we nevertheless will defend the right of the RCP itself to freedom of speech and association...
...For socialists, free speech is a central value—not merely because we need to be heard, but also because there is no path to a 509 socialist society—a society of free, rational human beings—that bypasses people's free, rational judgment...
...The problem is lack of social concern on the part of the medical profession, which has consistently fought socialized medicine...
...Of course, paramedics can do a lot of their work and there should be cooperation instead of competition between doctors and paramedics...
...And, in an early Dissent, I went so far as to argue that sectarians have served, and can serve, useful purposes...
...Gomez's point is simple...
...The choice for Central and Latin America must not be defined as one between Castroism or American imperialism...
...But either we are for the basic freedoms that have already been won, or we are not: one's attitude toward free speech is a kind of litmus test on the left...
...Leonel Gomez, an architect of the original land-reform program who is now seeking political asylum in the United States, notes in the Summer 1981 Foreign Policy that increased repression and a support to the military increases the strength of the guerrillas in the FDR coalition and works to erode civilian power...
...Receiving countless proposed changes, the authors doggedly rewrote the statement to preserve the widest possible consensus...
...Thus a Jesuit priest told journalist Anne Nelson "I think that anything, including the most extremist, repressive, Stalinist regime imaginable would be better than what we are living now...
...Editors: The proposal by Benjamin Barber, in your Summer 1981 issue, for "Universal Service," is essentially a proposal for compulsory labor service, which, to put it bluntly, means slavery...
...A touchstone of the left's ability to live in this world while seeking to change it becomes evident in the controversy over the KKK-Nazi demonstration: our attitude toward civil liberties...
...My son was at the University of Wisconsin during the great student upheavals...
...The controversy erupted at a Detroit City Council hearing called to consider granting a parade permit to the NaziKKK group...
...It may turn my stomach sour, but I am obliged to defend First Amendment rights for Nazis and Klansmen (and equally defend the rights of counter-protesters...
...The DARE Dispatch printed the letter, with all the signatures, and an approving introduction (Cockrel had been one of the only two Council members to take a consistent civil libertarian position on the Nazi-KKK march: the "progressives" faded under public pressure...
...But they cannot win either, and—unless there is to be a long and bloody war of attrition—there must be a broadly based coalition government, one similar to the October junta, that consolidates reforms and breaks the stranglehold of the military...
...The whole thing comes on too civil libertarian...
...These members of the RCP, RSL, and the Communist Workers party (CWP) took over while dozens of other socialists—perhaps one-third of the group—sat passively...
...What role the guerrillas will have vis-à-vis the democratic left should they be brought into the political process rests with the context in which a new alignment of forces takes place...
...evidently is not yet ready to live with a left-wing nationalist revolution in our own backyard, especially one committed to social equality and breaking the power of long-entrenched local oligarchies...
Vol. 28 • September 1981 • No. 4
