LETTERS
May I say a word in reply to Arthur Waskow's criticism of my criticism of the prevailing trends in peace research? Mr. Waskow tilts at a straw man. The instances he cites in no way rebut...
...Johnson should be tinkering with is not poverty, but an obsolescent machine that was never designed to operate effectively...
...Forty per cent of the people voted for Goldwater...
...Waskow seems to feel that if you proceed on the basis of more radical assumptions, then you "already know all the answers," hence "peace research is unnecessary...
...But stupidity is not "filth," and not everyone who spouts cliches is wicked...
...his idea that the rural whites who voted for him have anything to conserve except their conceit of racial superiority is wrong, but not evil...
...What we should be discussing is not whether it is permissible to begin with assumptions—all researchers have assumptions when they set out, otherwise chaos would result—but rather which set of assumptions is more likely to lead to sound predictions, or to more consistent theoretical frameworks, or to the development of better tools for changing things in a desired direction, etc...
...Cain bridge, Mass...
...After all, this is not Germany, 1933...
...It is a mistake to write of "primitive" racial phobias, echoing the racists' own language...
...He really thinks the South is "conservative...
...Criminals in Harlem, criminals in Mississippi, are entangled in the same mess...
...Editors: Paul Jacobs' case (DISSENT, Autumn 1964) for the "committed individual" in the war against poverty is sound and admirably put, but I do not think President Johnson's program, even with many more billions and a great deal more commitment than are now remotely possible, can eradicate poverty any more than did Franklin Delano Roosevelt with the palliatives of the New Deal which Johnson's remedies so closely resemble...
...What Mr...
...May I say a word in reply to Arthur Waskow's criticism of my criticism of the prevailing trends in peace research...
...To the contrary, I share Waskow's concern that since we do not know which of a series of alternative hypotheses as to the nature of international conflict is true, we should indeed work hard to find out...
...The kind of deprivation which millions suffer in the United States is built into the capitalist-free-enterprise system as logically and as firmly as are the riches of Rockefeller, Getty, Dupont and Ford...
...Are these phobias any more "primitive" or "racial" than what leads Negroes in Harlem to commit crimes of violence...
...The real issue, which I wish Waskow had discussed, is how to go about equalizing the ability of alternative assumptionholders to receive funds from a one-sided, assumption-bound Establishment...
...The ones in Mississippi, to whom it is hardest to give any sympathy, may even need it more...
...The poverty which is its inevitable by-product cannot be eliminated so long as one man is permitted by the conventional ethic to extract a profit from the necessities of another...
...When enough people understand this fully, and commit themselves to bringing it about, poverty will disappear...
...Goldwater speaks with good motives, as Truman dropped the bomb on Hiroshima with good motives...
...The instances he cites in no way rebut my basic criticism of peace research as being in the main unconcerned with the dynamics of political and social change...
...This does not make recipients "whores of the Establishment" any more than it makes people who point this congeniality out sloganeers or "know-it-ails...
...they are just as desperate as the residents of Harlem, probably more so, since the Negroes, or some of them, now know what they want, while the rural whites in the South are still daydreaming in black and white...
...He ought to extend his compassion to those murderers too...
...I do not "know" it for sure, but my reading of history leads me to the working hypothesis that people's assumptions about the world change with their own experiences...
...unsafe on the streets...
...This is worse than oppressing the ten per cent who are Negro...
...But if you proceed on the basis of the dominant assumptions in peace research today, then you're truly openminded and doing real research...
...Editors: I agree with most of what Irving Howe says about Goldwater [DISSENT, Fall, 1964], but I am troubled by his apparent belief that Goldwater is making a cynical appeal to racist emotions when he talks of "our daughters, our wives...
...We need not despair...
...Do we have to write them all off as subject to the appeal of "filth" and "not nice...
...Those murderers are not "unmolested" even if they are not convicted...
...I didn't say peace research is unnecessary...
...Unfortunately that is what most peace research today avoids doing because it is already wedded to one set of approaches, namely a consensus model of domestic and international relations which does not require us to investigate fundamental social change...
...This is a stupid cliche that like any cliche prevents thought and therefore has pernicious effects...
...I am fairly sure that the debate between social scientists who emphasize the static and the functional, and those who emphasize the dynamic and the historical will mount in intensity as the fundamental crises of our time deepen...
...It happens that some sets of assumptions are more congenial to the Establishment than others—which may in part account for the way research funds are distributed...
...They are as much oppressed by circumstances as criminals in Harlem, and they are an even harder social problem...
...The dispute on the nature of peace research is only one facet of this more general debate...
...The crux of the issue is not which of us thinks the other has a closed mind, but rather which set of assumptions is more likely to be fruitful in the process of "learning how actually to move in a direction one wants to take...
...In which case the balance of forces in social science may change for the better...
...Howe talks of desperate juveniles in Harlem and unmolested murderers in Mississippi...
Vol. 12 • January 1965 • No. 1
