Capitol Ideas/We're Not KGB

...Court of Appeals judge (called a "moderate" by our confusing media taxonomists), and over yonder was Roger Wilkins, the Negro celeb...

...Representatives from the underground Communist parties of Western Europe were also present...

...Mark and Dick and IPS do not think what they think and do what they do because they are acting on anyone's instructions...

...Although slightly inaccurate (IPS thought bears a strong resemblance to socialist thought the world over, and as such shows conformity rather than independence), Warnke's comments are in an important sense correct...

...from abroad...

...He was blown up in an automobile on Massachusetts Avenue a few months later...

...The results were calamitous: sky-high tariffs on imports, retaliatory measures by other countries, trade warfare, unemployment - depression...

...From every single Warsaw Pact country the representative was either the Minister of Justice or the Deputy Minister," Grenier recalled...

...As a principal economic power, the U.S...

...The Soviets consciously borrow from the United States-technology, managerial know-how, style [my emphasis]," Barnet wrote in The Giants...

...McGovern, who made over million dollars trading real-estate i the decade following his presidentu race, commented that he had give the matter some thought that after noon, but "couldn't recall any indica tion at all from Mark or Dick that the ever wanted to be either red o dead...

...But I stress the word student -not instructor...

...He's quite a sketcr One wonders what can have bee going on in his head since he was a assistant secretary of defense durin the Vietnam debacle...

...El Salvador's rebels are indigenous, the socialist aspirations of IPS are indigenous, Dick Barnet and Marcus Raskin are indigenous...

...H dabbled in arms-control negotiation with the Russians, before returnin to his practice, shared with Clar Clifford...

...Grenier at the time thought it was a bit incautious of Barnet to be so openly associated with the Communist world -a period when "an endorsement from Moscow was still considered death"-but Barnet saw the future more accurately than Grenier...

...and Canada...

...Politically, such measures may have appeal...

...Hundreds of lefties were pouring in the main entrance, all kissing one another on sight and swearing fealty to Mark and Dick...

...The poor dears think of these old buildings, with their adorable quoins and corbels, as their very own cathedrals, and in their secular way they moon about inside them, communing reverently with the Commodore Vanderbilt trappings, the Frick friezes, and the Jay Gould joists...

...Now Andropov woul have applied for a transfer . . . [a fe words inaudible here...

...For those who may still be wondering what I'm talking about, IPS has been certified by the New York Times's Charlotte Curtis as an "independent research organization," and Jimmy Carter's disarmament expert, Paul Warnke, who was to be IPS's master of ceremonies for the evening, would further attest that IPS is an organization which "can;t be controlled by the KGB...

...Cohen told me that he was "celebrating the rejuvenation of the Left...

...Moreover, he had "alway had a certain appreciation for peopl who think that avoiding death as Ion as reasonably possible is a fairly hig priority . . . the color I want least fc my children and grandchildren i dead...

...All nations, of course, want good economic times and high employment for their own people...

...An explanation based on instinct can be far more effective, and the Left itself sometimes invokes it...

...And so it was to be tonight at the Pension Building, vintage' 1883, designed by Gen...

...students of left-linkage might want to look into the links between IPS and the D.C...

...He is a part of the Washington Post brood that goes "cluck cluck cluck" at Reagan every day, but endlessly confers the benefit of the doubt on Andropov, Arbatov & Co...

...I tried to,visualize Richard Barnet and Marcus Raskin, co'-founders of IPS, twanging banjos and mandolins and hopping about in cowboy suits, but it was too much for the imagination...

...Governments beset by economic troubles, especially unemployment, find themselves increasingly prodded to embrace such measures as import restrictions, trade quotas, and export subsidies...

...The think-tank business was opening up, and there were new financial vistas for those who couldn't make partner in the prestigious law firm...

...No doubt that is why Haynes Johnson, whose columns always repay study, quoted Arbatov at some length recently and duly noted his "disturbing eloquence...

...Tom Bethell is The American Spec-:or's Washington correspondent...

...Warnke wants the unfashionablenes of his friends to illustrate the purit of his principles, then there are a fe right-wing gatherings I could direct him to...

...ell, back at the IPS party we all had our spareribs and chicken, and then, after a hearty round of applause for the guests from the Nicaraguan Embassy and the Cuban interest section, an effusive welcome from the mayor of Washington, and a resolution declaring April 5 "IPS Day" in Washington, D.C...

...Richard Grenier tells' me that in about 1963 he met Barnet shortly after a "blatant Communist-organized" meeting in Paris, with some such title as World Jurists for Peace...

...No, IPS is ui controllable...

...This was at a time when all fashionable folk in Washington were zooming off to Cuba, preferably in the entourage of Senator Abourezk or Senator McGovern, waiting with bated breath in Havana for the midnight invitation from Fidel, then coming back to Washington and making little moaning noises of ecstasy in the arms of those who had been left behind...

...Let's not choke off imports...

...I paid my tax-deductible $35 and went into the Pension Building-a great brick structure from the Robber Baron Era and one of those buildings that brings out the sentimental side of left-wing intellectuals...

...It had been several years since I had seen him, but he was as affable, composed, and relaxed as ever...

...He mentions his new book-something about the alliance, coming out in the New Yorker...

...While some jobs may be saved in a protected industry, others are lost elsewhere in the economy...

...I myself had met Barnet at a dinner party given by a genial fellow called Iqbal, then in the Pakistan Embassy...

...government), we all enjoyed a The Protectionist Illusion The stagnating economy makes protectionism an ever more seductive temptress...

...They don't work...

...He courteously inquires what you are up to these days...

...They are self-defeating, wiping out more jobs than they preserve...

...Economically, they promise only disaster - a deepening of the world's economic ills, more people out of work, perhaps another outbreak of trade warfare like that of the Great Depression...

...I already knew exactly what they'd be wearing: tweedy sports jackets, gray slacks (dark gray), preppy button-down shirts and nondescript ties-in other words media rig...

...Let's expand exports...

...Warnke is a choleric-looking fe low, and you get the feeling that h wants to show the world that he' made of sterner stuff than his righ wing critics have suggested...

...Those who would call ini question whether even America might always makes right can fin themselves the subject of such thing| as a cheap novel that suggests KG control of ideas," Warnke told the 800 assembled before him...

...A bold move this, by IPS...

...And I recall that there were some moaned reunions that night, before we sat down to Iqbal's curry...

...Denial of the conspiracies (which once existed but no longer do), exposes to ridicule the suggestion that there are patterns (which do exist...

...The rebellion, they say, is indigenous, implying that deep in the human heart there is this natural, instinctive desire for socialism which (if not repressed by capitalists et at), will somehow find expression...

...Nations and people everywhere are better off with a trade system that's free and fair...

...Retreat from free trade lessens competition, deprives consumers of a full choice of products, drives up prices, and stokes inflation...

...I think we must agree with Barnet about this...

...and other countries are undermining the international trading system that has evolved over the post-war decades and stimulated economic growth in most parts of the world...

...It can't be controlled the CIA, or by the FBI, or by the KGB...

...From the lessons of the past, it's clear that protectionist remedies are an illusion...

...I sat opposite a rather mean-spirited fellow, a Chilean Communist, who easily outdid all the others in the stridency of his anti-American table talk: Orlando Letelier...

...Arbatov is a friend of Andropov, and a close student of the United States (see his co-authored book, The Soviet Viewpoint just out from Dodd Mead...

...Protectionist fever was rampant in the 1930s...

...The longer the economic slump, the stronger the sentiment to protect American products and the jobs of people who make them by erecting barriers to the flow of goods into the U.S...

...Producers protected from competition lose their incentive to invest, improve, modernize, expand, compete - create more jobs...

...Paul Warnke spoke toward the en of the evening...

...Conservatives must abandon their conspiratorial explanations of leftist patterns of behavior and thought...

...In turn, products made in America have found acceptance around the world, generating jobs here at home...

...Here in earnest confab were Victor Na-vasky of the Nation and good old sturdy left-wing philanthropist Philip Stern, who has been bankrolling IPS since its inception (Phil has foundation-matured Sears Roebuck money to dispense...

...Round tables were decorated with red and white balloons (true-blue missing, get it...

...Barnet is so cool and attentive, you mentally take your hat off to him...

...should lead the way to greater cooperation and openness in commerce as the best hope for economic health among all nations...

...So I dressed the same, with the risque substitution of navy blue corduroys (1930s Harnpstead-socialist, poetry-reading and hiking-type), and bright RED belt, to tone in with the mood of the evening...

...And so IPS is an indigenous research organization, not controlled by the KGB...

...When rightists suggest that Soviet-armed, Cuban-supplied guerrillas in El Salvador or elsewhere demon- strate a world-wide conspiracy, the Left has an interesting response- again containing an element of truth...

...Richard Cohen was on hand, as was his wife Barbara, the news director of National Public Radio...

...They are not "card-carrying" anything and they do not secretly attend meetings with Soviet agents...

...It was probably also imprudent Warnke to bring up the subject, new explicitly addressed by Robert Mos and Arnaud de Borchgrave in the novel The Spike, of "KGB control" < IPS...

...UNITED TECHNOLOGIES "roast" of Barnet and Raskin...

...I wonder if Warnke's advice to his clients can be equally miss leading...

...Montgomery Meigs and the whole containing 15.5 million yummy red bricks...

...Now the protectionist peril is welling up anew...

...Barnet made small talk, conveying an impression of "economic opportunism," Grenier recalled...

...Perhap that is why he is willing to chair a IPS gathering...

...Can yc imagine Mark and Dick confronte with the KGB...

...Forces at work in the U.S...

...Okay, I'll buy that...

...The American representative was Dick Barnet...

...Now I see that IPS is co-sponsoring a Minneapolis disarmament conference in May, with Georgi Arbatov's Moscow-based Institute of the U.S.A...

...Arbatov is learning from the American Left, not teaching them...

...So now you know: IPS-independent research organization, not controlled by KGB...

...The rhetoric and vocabulary of Arbatov's book much more closely resembles that of the New York Times editorial page, the Haynes Johnson column, and the IPS study than that of Lenin...

...With millions of Americans out of work, pressures are mounting to restrict imports in hard-hit industries...

...Next to Letelier at the dinner sat Dick Barnet: no stridency there-he was simply the cool, attentive, watchful, independent researcher (and no naive Cuba-moaner, either...

...The United States is less so than most...

...I greatly underestimated the influence these people would have in the coming decades," said Grenier, who'd had an opportunity to speak to Barnet and ask him what he was up to...

...and a band was setting up amidst the usual electronic shambles and twanging exploratory decibels out across the football field-sized space...

...If anything, the direction of influence has been the very reverse...

...Sue well-known jokesters as Georg McGovern, Cora Weiss, Ron Del lums, Robert Kastenmeier, an Ralph Nader hammed it up on the dais...

...He doesn't read the magazine much but he did rather enjoy William Buckley's articles recently...

...Exactly th wrong way 'round, of course...

...To me he cor veys the impression that he learne one thing from Vietnam-America i now on the losing side, and we shoul therefore reconcile ourselves to thi position as speedily as possible...

...Here was Abner Mikva, the U.S...

...And here finally was good old Dick Barnet...

...To one degree or another, all countries are protectionist...

...radicals of the right have manage to escape this stigma, and to retai social acceptability...

...He said, misleadingb that "unconventional thought" i "still somewhat suspect," and th...

...It said on the invitation "Attire: picnic casual," and something about Blue Grass music...

...But Americans, even those who would like to see fundamental change in the system, have little interest in the Soviet model...

...Since the end of World War n, we've been opening our borders and vast internal markets to other countries' wares...

...It's a demonstration of the fundamental independence of American thought...