Editorials
I I Contents Volume CVII, Number 16 Correspondence 482 Editorials 483 Name your socialism: Peter Stein~els 484 II II II City Lights: Abigail McCarthy 486 Saving the generals:...
...Of course, the meeting brought together a lot of old friends, and created some new friends, and there was surely much encouraging talk and even a bit of spiritually refreshing.socializing squeezed be- tween all those lectures, which lectures, too, will no doubt find their way into another Orbis Press volume...
...There is a circumscribed answer and a large answer to that question...
...But finally it was not numbers alone that triumphed in Poland...
...For that, governments have an old solution, divide and conquer...
...Telephone: (212)MU 3-2042...
...There were all those Poles who have kept alive the spirit of freedom and whose depth of national feeling was an invisible deterrent against Soviet intervention...
...How sigant was this event--the second Theology in the Americas conference...
...By certain external measures, it was certainly i~t...
...and Canada, $20...
...There are several other ways in which the Polish events ought to make Americans examine their own attitudes...
...26 (UPI) --Jailed leaders of an electrical workers' strike that blacked out El Salvador last Thursday will be tried in military courts and face possible four-year prison sentences, the authorities.say...
...So were some seventy representatives of radical social movements in other nations...
...Moreover, as one well-informed participant said, ~'The or- ganizers tried to shape the conference day by day so that it would lead to a rousing affirmation of socialism...
...In fact, the partici- pants in that 1975 meeting had found it impossible to coalesce around a single theology of liberation...
...There were 350,000 strikers throughout Poland--and their anxious families and friends...
...And certainly the conference's organizers saw the event as important...
...10016...
...Alexander Cockburn, in the Village Voice, was even sharper: "This solidarity with insurgent labor seems to wane once the strikes are taking place this side of the Iron Curtain...
...II U Books 502 The Zero-Sum Society: Daniel M. Murtaugh 504 The Catholic Thing/The Anatomy of the Catholic Church: Robert P. lmbeUi 505 California and Other States of Grace: Jane Howard 507 Literature Against Itself: Michael Hancher 508 Iron Cages: Richard Drinnon 510 I II II Staff Editor: James O'Gara Executive Editor: Peter Steinfels Assistant Editor: David Toolan Editorial Assistant: Anne Robertson Columnists: John Garvey, Frank Getlein, Abigail McCarthy, Thomas Powers Movies: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...I Theology in the Americas NAME YOUR SOCIALISM TIME FOR A BASIC CLARITY OR SIX DAYS at the beginning of August, five hundred Christian social activists gathered in Detroit...
...There were even those elements in the government who, for good reasons or bad, decided to take a chance on change rather than on brute force...
...There was the Pole in the Vatican and his fellow churchmen in Poland, who had put the church behind the people's demand for human fights...
...I am afraid there is...
...The law went into effect three days after the strike by 1,500 hydro-electric plant workers who vowed not to return to their jobs until alleged government repression ended...
...That means solidarity from the West as well...
...The government offered shipyard workers a pay hike that would have given them twice the salary of the average industrial worker...
...The circumscribed answer has to do with Theology in the America's attitude toward the U.S...
...Five years ago, they claimed, a similar meeting had been "heralded...
...But for the mo- ment, is there anything more to say about Theology in the Americas...
...This much is certain: what was won by solidarity will only be maintained by solidarity...
...The junta seized the power plants, ending the strike...
...foreign, $39...
...Single copy, $1...
...The low profile kept by the U.S...
...There were the political dissident who forged links between workers and intellectuals after the 1976 riots...
...They wanted the right to have something to say about conditions in the factories and the economy, which are supposed to belong to them, the right to air their views, more social justice, and less privilege for the leaders.'" But Albert Shanker was surely on target when he urged Americans to "see in this struggle in Poland what they have not always been able to see in their own backyard: that a union gives workers dignity, and that a union is not just a vehicle allowing a worker to win 12 September 1980...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S...
...483 one benefit or another but, rather, a permanent instrument enabling him to fight for his fights without fear of punishment or reprisal...
...It tried to turn the public against the strikers with warnings of the very real economic hardhips the strike was causing...
...DSOC believes that there is a logic that leads from liberal reform to socialist demands, and accordingly it works willingly with a portion of the established labor leadership on common "liberal" concerns...
...Poetxy: Rosemary Deen, Marie Ponsot Staff: Karen F. Silva, Harriette Balsky, Jacqueline Reeves Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor Publisher: Edward S. Skillin Comraonweal,A Review of Public Affairs, Litera- ture and the Arts, is published biweekly, except monthly Christmas-New Year's and July and Au- gust, by Commonweal Publishing Co., 232 Madi- son Ave., New York, N.Y...
...and Western Europe during the August crisis might well be justified, but it is now time for developing careful contingency plans and for ccc~rdinating strategy so that in any future crisis the economic ties of the West with Poland can be used on behalf of human rights, not against them...
...The other is that some kind of modus vivendi can be developed, in which case a pattern may emerge for the evolution of other Eastern European nations locked in the Soviet Communist straitjacket...
...A military spokesman said the 17 leaders would be tried under a new law bringing 100,000 public service employees under the control of the Defense Ministry...
...Despite the fact that the confcrence's attendance fell far short of the anticipated 750 .and despite the fact that participants were being accepted at the door, it seems that various pressures were exerted to discour- age certain applicants...
...The outcome desired was the outcome achieved: Commonweal: 484...
...Those hopes, however, went unfulfilled...
...An opposing view has it that most labor leadership has been assimilated into the status quo, and that the only hope for change lies with explicitly radical dissidents within unions who must fight their own allegedly unrepresentative union leadership as vigorously as they fight management...
...And then there is this bficf report: SAN SALVADOR, Aug...
...Instead they had mounted nine projects, each with its base in a separate constituency--blacks, Hispanics, women, labor, Native Americans, and so on...
...I I Contents Volume CVII, Number 16 Correspondence 482 Editorials 483 Name your socialism: Peter Stein~els 484 II II II City Lights: Abigail McCarthy 486 Saving the generals: Frank Getlein 487 Industrial Democracy, Ltd.: Robert A. Senser 489 Labor rediscovers its past: L.A...
...labor movement...
...A gauntlet of lectures and panels left participants little time to react and express their continuing interest in the separate projects...
...foreign, $22...
...The National Catholic Reporter cartied a story on the meeting on its front page...
...Major theologians were participants...
...mlp~ THE TRIUMPH OF SOLIDARITY I I II I I I l H OW MANY Poles does it take to change the course of history...
...Special two-year rate: $35...
...Once the Wall Street Journal remembers its priorities, it will be urging the Polish government to deal severely with the outrageous and inflationary demands 9f the toilers and recommending that Milton Friedman be taken on as special assistant to Edward Gierek...
...ma, . . r ~ llmm, :mmmmmmm.....~.., ,'r, Illll ';;'.'.%f£'-'m...
...Now the repofl of this maneuvering offended my sense of fair play and raised questions in my mind about the good faith of the conference's organizers...
...One is that they are absolutely incompatible with a one-party Communist regime, in which case it is only a matter of time before either the newly-won rights of free association and expression are extinguished or the regime itself is thrown into question--a sure cause for Soviet intervention...
...m'|i'i,,,', . m...
...There was Lech Walesa and the leaders of the Lenin Shipyard workers...
...These ploys failed...
...The result, naturally, was a revolt...
...What these applicants had in common was a connection with the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), the political group whose most visible member and National Chairman is Michael Harrington...
...There are two ways of looking at the astonishing concessions won by the Polish workers...
...The 1980 conference was meant to bring together the work of these projects and, if possible, unite them in a common direction for the period to come...
...And that, apparently, was pretty much it...
...as a landmark event in the development of a North American theology of liberation...
...The or- ganizers of the conference being of this latter viewpoint, it followed that DSOC participation in Detroit should be covertly limited...
...DSOC, of course, is known for its belief that the American labor movement is a key component in any strategy for radical social change--the labor movement, that is, as it presently exists, in its distinctly non-socialist form...
...It was duly tried by the Warsaw leadership...
...Shortly after the conference ended, a friend mentioned to me the obstacles she had encountered in applying to attend the Detroit gathering...
...No two situations arc exactly parallel, but perhaps therc arc connections we should be making...
...O'DonneU 490 An immoral morality?: Philip S. Kaufman" 493 An open letter to Republican conservatives: Alan Wolfe 497 The establishment alternative: Mary Meehan 500 Screen: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...Flora Lewis may have been exaggerating when she wrote in the New York Times that what the Polich workers were demanding was "socialism...
...A coalition of representatives from the minority projects--blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asian-Americans--joined with the women activists to take control of Theology in the Americas away from the conference organizers...
...It also raised some political questions: why should people who showed themselves so determined, even too determined, to urge an affm'nation of socialism want to discourage participation from one of the most successful socialist groups in the country...
...For what triumphed in Poland is what was blazoned on the T-shirts that quickly appeared: solidarity...
Vol. 107 • September 1980 • No. 16
