King and Reuther for '64!
Rosenberg, Bernard & Walzer, Michael
For a long time, we of the antiCommunist Left have been politically dispossessed. There is no home for us in either of the big national parties. There never was. Every few years, a few of...
...No one has made this prophecy except a few newspaper reporters and journalistic observers...
...Perhaps his involvement in independent political activity would arouse other unionists from their slumbers...
...It strikes us now, for the first time in ten years, that the moment may be ripe for a re-entry into conventional politics...
...And we could extend a comradely arm to heroes abroad who sought to throw off the yoke of tyranny or to establish their independence of colonial domination...
...The time is now Why now...
...There is no home for us in either of the big national parties...
...This activity, though cramped and limited, was peculiarly satisfying...
...With we need to plan not only for autoa sudden and dramatic urgency, he mation but also for peace...
...Despite his regrettable absorption during the last decade and a half with the bureaucratic imperatives of union organization, Reuther still represents the best sentiments of American labor...
...in Ghana as a "bourgeoise nationalist party...
...He has participated in the drive for civil rights...
...spread poverty which shamefully surthe Negro cannot enter an economic vives and is fed by unemployment...
...if we are to overcome the wide tion...
...Organizing the Ticket Today one vital component is lacking in the civil rights struggle, namely political representation...
...He has necessarily been identified with Negro liberation...
...Now, first of all, because of the tremendous upsurge of the Negro people, who demand more rapid and profound social change than either of (continued on page 390) ern economists, of whatever theoretical persuasion...
...Now, the troubles that have beset us since even more importantly, because the 1929...
...continued from page 300) the major parties dares attempt...
...Let McCord and others like him address their concern for freedom to their own countries, about which they are presumably better informed...
...These are interlocking problems...
...King's techniques, his whole outlook, are those of the universalist...
...10...
...Nigeria's investment policy is no more "reasonable" than Ghana's—both are flexible and friendly...
...Civil Rights stands at the center of a broader American struggle, and Martin Luther King is its brilliant symbol...
...How fitting that he should be a Negro leader of Negroes...
...For a long time, we of the antiCommunist Left have been politically dispossessed...
...It would have meaning only if large elements of the labor movement, the intellectual community and the Negro movement were to accept it...
...For a man so loose with his facts, and promiscuous with his concepts, it is absurd for him to invoke the spirit of Camus, who was a man of utmost scrupulosity, an Algerian, and a fierce and honorable anti-colonialist...
...Why men like King and Reuther...
...It is a view shared in official Washington...
...To imply that this is a communist idea, is, among other things, simply inaccurate...
...Every few years, a few of our breed will allow themselves to be carried away by momentary enthusiasm for a liberal Democratic candidate— who betrays their best hopes soon after his inauguration...
...This is why the undersigned feel that it would be desirable to initiate and support a third party ticket in 1964—call it socialist, liberal, independent—with, say, Martin Luther King for President and Walter Reuther for Vice-President...
...Thus, our habitual withdrawal from electoral activity...
...We are in deep vision within the range of democratic crisis with unabated arms production...
...We need today a political party with a program that includes but transcends the struggle for equal rights, a party that can accommodate Negroes and whites with a conscience—like Walter Reuther, our most intelligent and enlightened, and at present, most frustrated labor leader...
...and social system in dissolution...
...We therefore put forward this proposal to the left and liberal public, as an idea to be considered and a possibility to be acted upon...
...For many of the most articulate, this magazine became a forum in which they undertook, often painfully, to recast, clarify and express their political ideas...
...Yet the good they would do as candidates is incalculable...
...The Negro, like all those voiceless ones in our depressed third of a nation, is effectively disenfranchised—whether or not he is legally entitled to vote...
...King and Reuther in '641...
...It may be instructive for Mr...
...From the Bernard Rosenberg and Michael Walzer columns of DISSENT, one also lent support to those bravely engaged in direct action for securing rights long overdue, which no government agency would grant...
...King and Reuther could not win the election...
...How such a ticket might be set up, what organizational forms would be required, it is of course premature to say...
...McCord to learn that the distinguished Indian diplomat, K. N. Panikkar, characterizes the C.P.P...
...Embittered by the Republocrats' failure to meet his elementary needs, the Negro begins to see some merit in separatism, a position enthusiastically endorsed by the Black Muslims, the Communist party— and the American Nazi party...
...Fortunately, politics is not circumscribed by the ballot box...
...In these circumstances, while cherishing the right not to vote, there was still much a man of socialist and humanist views could do...
...We therefore deem the notion of a Negro party not only to be narrow and offensive, but self-defeating as well...
...Like the Socialists in 1932, the leaders of such a party might well provide the next Administration with a program for social change...
...But how sad if his cause were restricted to Americans with dark skin—who could never attain their full stature short of a general commitment to the welfare of their fellow Americans, and indeed, to mankind at large...
...Ghana has gone out of its way to attract and protect Western investment...
...11...
...And now, finally, out unemployment and without a because all these issues are indissolu• gigantic arms industry seems far beably linked to foreign policy and be-yond the ken of either Democrats or cause the United States is woefully un-Republicans...
...there is nothing to prevent that movement from being broadened to embrace a vision of the good, peaceful, abundant and fraternal life for everyone...
...It seemed to us through all these bleak years that no political act could be less significant than voting in an election whose outcome would too largely depend upon which ad agency might manage to establish marginal differentiation, or the illusion of difference, between two ideologically indistinguishable candidates...
...No new African nation has shown any serious inclination to "confiscate" foreign enterprises, but McCord's bland attitude toward colonialism does reveal the shallowness of his understanding of its economic and psychological aftermath in Africa, and helps illuminate the slant of his thinking...
...prepared for the peace that threatens Only a third party can bring such a to descend upon us...
...Intellectuals, concerned with the well being of society, always have an obligation to think, talk, write, criticize, stir the populace up...
...Only a third Cutting back is likely to exacerbate all party can push President Kennedy, who is almost certain to be re-elected, in the direction of international economic planning, toward the total emancipation of Negroes and other underprivileged Americans, toward the creation of an environment in which creative leisure could be the lot of Everyman...
...Finally, I must confess that I am unmoved by McCord's plea against the "self-fulfilling prophecy that tyranny in Africa is inevitable...
...he has worked with the peace movement...
...But an requires us to face the duty of trans-economy without discrimination, withforming that system...
...If we are to extend the reach question of civil rights forces upon of our democracy, including for the the nation other issues too long first time in history all American citiignored: unemployment and automa-zens...
...Up to a point, given the intellectual exhaustion and ideological disenchantment that prevailed, it literally sustained many of our contributors and readers...
...The British High Commission in Ghana stated last time that the new investment Act is a model for other developing countries seeking to attract capital: "The investment law meets every test I have ever encountered for encouraging and protecting investors...
...discussion and debate...
Vol. 10 • September 1963 • No. 4
