Palmists and Scholarship

...But where the working class is weak, divided, disorganized, or oppressed, individual freedom is slight or non-existent...

...Those who lack faith in humanity's capacity for this task lack faith in humanity itself...

...We analyze history and society in terms of class struggles not because we desire to "'stir up conflict between the classes" but in order to abolish this conflict in the only way possible - - by abolishing classes...

...They climax the historical drama of man's selfcreation which if it is to culminate in fulfillment rather than in the bloody farce of totalitarianism, must culminate in man the socialized individual confirming both his individuality arid his sociability by taking collective possession of and asserting purposive control over that which he invented to take possession of and assert purposive control over nature: his social system...

...But if Mishan sees himself with Mr...

...Bhutto Ferdri Bish were trampled to death by a herd of drunken elephants...

...o Attorney General Mitchell resigned to direct Mr...

...We do not counterpose the individual to society...

...Toyota recalled several thousand defective autos and it was in Dingle Dghem India that Mr...

...In such a scheme of things the Bureau of Labor Statistics becomes the barometer indicating society's health...

...I do not contend that the Detroit worker on the line really has an interesting worklife, but then again, whoever supposed that the poor chap who earned his way pulling a barge down the Erie Can'al relished his labor either...

...I figure he is more correct than not...

...From this view it follows that society ought to be so organized as to allow for the maximum expression of individual freedom - - "'equality of opportunity" - - consistent with the maintenance of law and order...

...This undue concern over methodology has left everyone quite bored, save for the many textbook writers who are committed to an unending review of the technique of our society's operation...

...Lawrence Wise's albino snake...

...The conflict between man and society is a phantom conflict between two abstractions, having no more reality than the idea of man in the absence of the society which creates him or the idea of society in the absence of the men who compose it...

...First, one can appreciate both...

...I am not convinced that one is so much better off spending his Saturday evening down at the poolhall, rather than with the tube and "Saturday Night at the Movies...

...Palmists and Scholarship Dan Joy T HERE IS SOME reason to believe that after many years o f dreariness the Academy may be coming to life...

...Without totalitarianism, capitalism would long since have evolved into democratic socialism...

...Whatever the problem, industrialism did it -- "'It 'is my conviction that the continued pursuit of economic growth by the 'advanced' nations is itself almost wholly responsible for the crisis...

...He challenged .the dual doctrines as representing blind faith in Time and a superficial utopianism based on the power and destiny of economic development...

...Plus they're all fascists anyway...

...I would think him correct in his support for the conclusion, but one must be more than a little skeptical of the conclusion itself...

...He is correct...

...The masS, electronic media has done its part in corrupting the language but in the process it has brought distant historical events into the living room...

...We believe man realizes his individuality not against or in conflict with society, but in and through society, which is to say, through his social relations, his associations with other human beings...

...continued on page 23) The Alternative April 1972 11...

...On the contrary, because they bring to fruition a profound human drive to assert conscious control over the very social processes and institutions which make man human rather than animal, they result in the flowering of human individuality on a scale undrea/ned of in earlier ages...

...Sixteen thousand Frenchmen perished from road accidents in 1971...

...Unfortunately, as a theorist, he seems compelled to make outlandish conclusions from sound analysis...

...So intense has his enthusiasm for a more beautiful landscape become that the Wisconsin Solon has also announced that he is undergoing a painful hair transplant...

...And it has nothing to do with the bombs of the Weathermen...

...This remarkable essayist contends that we are "'living on the brink of annihilation...

...Second, those who read -- always a few in number -probably continue to do so, and not always Time or Life...

...There is much in the Mishan essay which is wise and, in my opinion, quite correct...

...But now the Weavers and Kirks have been joined by a strong voice from what has traditionally been the domain of liberalism, the serious and literate establishment intellectual...

...Haldeman, attracted similar reactions from Democrats for what they construed as an objurgative remark about them...

...While the two might be temporary allies, they really have nothing in common...

...e The drive to keep America beautiful received a digitalis when comedienne Phyllis Diller got a $4,000 nose job, and Senator Proxmire had his face lifted...

...Nixon's re-election bid...

...To support the contention he pofnts out that the world's greatest cities are subject to "'the choking din and the endless movement of motorizea traffic...

...In his enthusiasm to condemn that which is a product of technology he gladly puts intellectual blinders on to prevent his seeing that the automobile, albeit in altered form, meant a revolution in delivery of such non-plentiful items as fresh fruit in the cities and seafood in the boondocks...

...In a word, Mishan hates factories...

...Now sporting a toupe Georgia's Lt...

...He adds majestically "'I am not one of those who believe that the Luddites were wholly wrong...

...Nader, then a little restudying is in order...

...I have had time since to reflect on this statement and to revise my judgment to the effect that the automobile is the greatest disaster to have befallen mankind...

...As he carefully works toward a sober point he abruptly changes direction and with apparent pleasure blows you off your chair with such statements as: "'I once wrote that the invention of the automobile was one of the greatest disasters to have befallen mankind...

...Socialist theory proceeds from fundamentally different premises...

...And in Vietnam, President Thieu grumbled about a slight he had received from Secretary of State Rogers...

...That the working class is the modern world's chief force for liberty as well as equality is not just an article of socialist theory but a demonstrable fact...

...Men of the Right have been making this point for years...

...The drift of our intellectual world under the dominance of secular liberalism has been more crucial to our contemporary unease than the machine, per se...

...Socialists are for collectivizing private economic power as a means of realizing human individuality, not suppressing it...

...CONTINUING CRISIS (continued from page 2) Longshoremen,s strike indicated that the pay board was doing about as well as expected...

...Unlike the feudal aristocracy, however, which could obscure its contempt for mankind behind a cloak of faith in the supernatural, with which it justified its own god-like powers on earth, defenders of contemporary capitalism (which turned the supernatural into a cash proposition long before the counterculture) must assert their faithlessness in man as bald secular propositions...

...What it all amounted to, he contended, was that Samuelson's economics required the worship of the Gross National Product, with the best of all possible worlds being the experience of seeing it grow and grow and grow...

...Man versus society is the primeval theme of nearly every serious theoretical justification of capitalist society that I have encountered...

...Instead, we see society in conflict with itself and the individual in conflict with himself, and in each of these conflicts the reciprocal of the other...

...To him, the actual problem is the industrial mechanism i~self...

...This is not how Mishan sees it at all...

...This latter correlation holds true, albeit in much different degree, whether the economy of the country involved is capitalist or statist...

...We view human individuality as gradually emerging in historical time through a process of social evolution, much as the human infant gradually acquires identity and selfhood through the socializing influence of its family group...

...Nevertheless, this much can be said: the various social theories of capitalism, or what we have been calling conservatism, in general, regard individuality as an inherent human trait, as an a priori of social analysis and criticism, as the given ' datum, whereas socialist theory sees human individuality as the end product, as the thing to be striven for, as a potentiality rather than a reality, as the goal to be achieved...

...outrageous" would be more like it...

...It would be a mistake to convey the impression that Mishan's critical effort is not worthwhile...

...As a man of letters he laments the increasing sloppiness in language, and as an educator he argues that our loss of true education is disastrous...

...Some theorists line up on one s i d e o f this dichotomy and some on the other (i.e., some conceive of human nature as inherently bad and of society's restrictions and limitations on it as the source of-good, while others view human nature as spontaneously good and society as its corrupter...

...In the Summer, 1971 issue of The Public Interest, a journal identified with those who long have been on the Left, a most interesting essay written by E. J. Mishan appeared...

...Back in the States, Assistant President H.R...

...William Ruckelshaus of the Environmental Protection Agency was criticized in the Senate for "not doing enough" or for doing it with the wrong sort-of people...

...Maddox is beautiful, and Szlvardo Silva E. Souza has designed a thirty-nine story vertical, laigh-rise cemetery for downtown Rio De Janeiro -- the first of its kind...

...If man is 'born free" and his individuality is a natural biological or spiritual trait, then every social norm, obligation and limitation - - indeed, every social relationship, every association with another individual no matter of what type - - is an infringement and a, restriction upon his inherent freedom, his 'natural rights...

...And twelve pigtailed macque monkeys were lost by the Penn Central railroad somewhere between New York and Washington, D.C...

...Despite all the teat tensions and conflicts separating them, the two systems have that stake in each other's existence...

...We look upon the man versus society dichotomy as an ideologically distorted representation of a real conflict constantly going on between groups of men within society...

...The shred of truth in this civilized nihilism lies not in its notion of a link between totalitarianism and human nature, but rather in its implicit acknowledgement of the link between the rise of totalitarianism and the perpetuation of capitalism...

...Rightists who are truly concerned with the survival of libertarian values in the modern world - - as opposed to those who prefer being merely mouthpieces for the wealthy - - would do well to ponder a contemporary relationship whose significance looms much larger than the historical relationship discussed above: that those countries where the working class is well organized and politically powerful (and where as a result socialist inroads on pure capitalism have proceeded farthest), are the countries with the greatest political and personal freedom, the most" ideological diversity, the greatest pluralism and tolerance...

...The measures we advocate, whether they be piecemeal reforms or sweeping transforraatious, do not _9 "level" mankind or impose a stifling sameness on human variety and distirctiveness...

...Local elephants have been going berserk after eating overripe fermenting lruit...

...The anti-New Deal arguments o f the t930s, based on economic utili10 The Alternative April 1972 tarianism, have given way to more fundamental criticisms that the materialism, upon which the experiments and adventures of the New Deal and New Frontier were founded, was bankrupt and incomplete...

...Some critics make the mistake of suggesting that polar opposites are television or a book...

...When totalitarianism disappears from the world, capitalism will have lost its last justification...

...No, not _9 'interesting...

...On the other hand, those nations whose working class finds itself enslaved, such as the U.S.S.R., or severely oppressed, such as Taiwan or Spain, are consummately countries of tyranny...

...If you were to rely on the title you would think that Mishan is probably a devotee of Ralph Nader, that paranoid crusader who spends much of his time telling Congressional committees where it's at...

...Mishan's critique is close to total and his rhetoric as severe as it could be without drifting into screams and diatribes...

...To him, an imperfect car is to be reo called and the failure blamed on some greedy businessman who did it all intentionally while pursuing profit...

...Such things are not unimportant, even if not primary...

...The last decades, especially in the colleges and universities, have been devoted to systems analysis and decisionmaking processes...

...He notes, that the automobile has caused cities thousands of miles apart to appear strikingly similar, and hence boring...

...The ideological implications of human individuality and its relation to the human collectivity is not the sort of subject that lends itself to condensed treatment...

...Air pollution threatens the ski necked turn of Long Island, and in the British Parliament Labor Party MP William Hamilton has warned that the Royal family seems "to breed like rabbits...

...thus springs up the authority-anarchy debate continuum so characteristic of political discussion in capitalist society...

...If there is one encouraging thing from a growing number of intellectuals today it is the return to the question, What kind of society should America be...

...Richard Weaver, writing in Ideas Have Consequences, suggested that the doctrines of economic growth and Progress, so dominant in our intellectual and political affairs, were the cause "of much that had gone wrong...

...For confirmation they rely upon our centu/'y's bestial innovation, totalitarianism, which, they claim, offers all necessary evidence of man's inescapable perversity...

...For no anti-socialist propaganda of the conservatives has been of even marginal significance in demoralizing Western man and obstructing his advance to socialism as compared to the devastating influence of totalitarianism...

...eThe ecology crusade continues...

...To return to Richard Weaver, he wrote the Mishan article more than two decades ago -- but did it from the view that it is man's inclination toward false notions and incorrect ideas which has led us to the monumental crisis in Western life~ a crisis which Mishan perceives, even if with misplaced emphasis...

...Nader is a technocrat who sees himself in the role of bringing perfection to the existing industrial mechanism...

...Lost in this maze has been the traditional appreciation and quest for understanding of the society's foundations...

...Mishan's problem is one of cause...

...The most important ideological reason .conservatives are against collectivizing the economy, from what I can gather, is that they regard social organization per se - - that is, society, social institutions - - as the fundamental source of all oppression of the individuality, and hence of repression of freedom and creativity on the part of human individuals...

...Without go'rag so far as to contend that the source of all our problems is the intellectual attitudes which go to make up secular liberalism, it might be suggested to Mishan that he take into account those attitudes...

...Interesting" is not really the word to describe the essay, the title of which is "On Making the Future Safe for Mankind...

...I simply demur from accepting his bombshells regarding the cause of man's woes...

...It's just that every time he locates a problem he also finds a machine which ought to be smashed...

...The Tulsa Zoo is reportedly interested in Mr...

...When the Richard Weavers and Russell Kirks entertained the critique, there was hardly a ripple -- because it is known in intellectual circles that from the Right one is destined to get the "'anti-intellectualism" of which Hofstadter duly warned...

...But all, or nearly all, of these justifications proceed from this fundamental counterposing of the individual to society...

...By and large, where workers are free - - free to organize, free to strike, free to press for political power - - freedom prevails as a general condition for everyone (except perhaps for the rich whose idea of freedom starts and stops with the unhindered right to accumulate and dispose of wealth...

...and Mrs...

...He concludes that the Doomsday prophets are right, probably understating the case, and further, "the forebodings of the past may after all soon be vindicated...

...Contemporary critics, most of whom have resided on the political and philosophical Right, have questioned the directions taken by Western culture in general, and American society in particular...

...Edgar Snow died, as did the poet, Marianne Moore, and Joe Hernandez, known to millions as "the Voice of Santa Anita...

...It was the third reported rampage in the last two weeks, and many more cases are suspected to go unreported...

...This abstract and delusive way of posing the problem effectively ensures that it can never be solved, but only stoically accepted, which needless to say is rather how one would expect it to be formulated by those whose interests lie in not having it solved...