The Collapse of a Myth

...But in truth, as I discovered, most young people who indulge in "revolutionary" rhetoric don't really take themselves literally, though they very much wish and deserve to be taken seriously...

...In modern American society everything tends to become bureaucratized--even vigilantism and backlash...

...Their language reflects despair over the war and despair at what may happen this summer in the cities...

...because a growing segment of the Vietnamese people seems clearly not to want us there...

...At home, it could well lead to a new phase of reaction, with retaliation against "traitors" and a backlash against critics...

...has the power to keep fighting beyond such a defeat...

...At the university I visited, I found myself repeatedly having to make certain observations which, to me at least, seemed elementary: that the U.S...

...not at all...

...But still, most of the vigilantism seems likely to take a more structured and bureaucratic form: through the police, through deputies, through the National Guard...

...Almost certainly, not...

...For the kind of analysis which the left-wing students offer these days ought to make them more sensitive to the backlash threat...

...But one thing is clear: The whole rationale of U.S...

...and because the U.S...

...One rationale sometimes offered is that the trade union ranks are so solidly prowar, the leaders can't be critical...

...policy in terms of inexorable socio-economic drives expressing the contradictions of capitalism in its late stages...

...Democracy is very far from perfect, and the system we have in this country is full of flaws and of impediments to the realization of democratic values...

...that the military situation is improving even if "pacification" is slow...

...Then, let there be negotiations such as occurred in regard to Vietnam and Algeria shortly before the French withdrew...

...It is inevitable that this country should have influence in Asia...

...SURELY, THE TIME HAS COME to end the Vietnam War...

...A certain kind of calculation has it that the unions no longer need the idealism of the young or the friendship of the intellectuals, so securely are they rooted in the society...

...It has demonstrated that the Saigon government is pitifully weak...

...I recently spent several weeks at a major Midwestern university, and I was impressed by the extent to which the students—far, far more than the tiny leftist segment—are contemptuous of the Vietnam War, suspicious of the government, and sometimes even inclined to be impatient with the whole ethos of democracy...

...It may well be that a Presidential election offering us the choice of Johnson or Nixon will demonstrate a failure of the democratic system at this particular point...

...is not now in a "revolutionary situation" nor soon likely to be...

...persists in its present course, the only consequences (apart from a growing danger of a larger war) will be the physical destruction of Vietnam and the Vietnamese, as well as multiplying disasters at home...

...Better peace with the probability of a Viet Cong take-over than a war which can only go on and on, without resolution, without reason, without honor...

...So be it...

...UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES, the debate that has been going on within the peace movement about "negotiations vs...

...Where, they wanted to know, is the backlash...

...were defeated in Vietnam as France was, this could have the effect of encouraging new Maoist or Castroite adventures in other countries and thereby pose again the problem of interventionism...

...No doubt, U.S...

...Almost certainly, there will follow a slide into a Viet Cong dictatorship...

...The great error of U.S...

...But no overwhelming military defeat for the U.S...

...But in politics, as in life, there are times when the choices are painful...

...Some will work for Senator McCarthy...

...though I don't see why the young of the sixties must repeat the worst experiences of those who grew up in the thirties...

...Still...

...Is it inconceivable that a power like the U.S...

...It is inevitable that this country should have predominant influence in the Caribbean...

...that would appear, superficially, as an equivalent to the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu...

...To some people it may seem more "profound" to discuss U.S...

...Some of this youthful opposition is so desperate, so frustrated, that it succumbs to a rhetoric which could prove more dangerous to those who employ it than to those against whom it is directed...

...Now it is all very well for certain sorts of wise men, such as one meets both in universities and labor unions, to tell us that this disaffection will evaporate after a time or turn into a new kind of conformism...

...For those who want peace in the world, it is probably desirable that neither side win an overwhelming military victory...

...Visiting Detroit, I was told of "preparations" that sections of the white community, including relatively sedate middle-class sections, were making for the next flare-up...

...Their disaffection, often quiet and without political expression, runs deep...

...There aren't any white vigilante mobs on the street...

...Some will try to persuade their fellow unionists to break from the Meany-Lovestone line and join with those who, like Victor Reuther, have criticized American policy...

...why then do they not say something, however moderate it might be...

...And which honest person does not share that despair...

...it is not inevitable that it should send its Army to fight there...

...Will ending this war mean acknowledging a certain national "humiliation...

...Not that all these events or periods weren't in many crucial ways worse than the current one...

...True enough, but only up to a point...

...There could be worse things for the American character— and one of them might be a "victory" achieved through the sheer weight of military power applied over the next ten years...

...Under standable this may be...

...And if the white suburban folks roused by the idea of "order in the streets" aren't inclined to move into the inner city for some street fighting, they certainly show a strong inclination— both middle- and working-class—to vote for those who use that insidious slogan...

...But meanwhile it is surely COMMENTS AND OPINIONS a social fact of the greatest importance that large numbers of young people—the best, the most selfless, the most idealistic—do not accept the dominant rationale of American politics...

...But if the idea of negotiations is put forward as a strategy for insuring "an American presence" in Vietnam for an indefinite period, it becomes little more than a justification, however intended, for prolonging the war...

...otherwise, why should critics trouble to press for alternative policies and proposals...

...government has steadily had available political choices: just as it was apparently prepared to see Indonesia be taken over by the Communists without direct military intervention by U.S...

...Leave aside, also, the incontestable political reasons...

...Another rationale has it that certain more progressive unionists have had to remain mute in order successfully to carry through their wage negotiations...

...Fissures of doubt and dismay are running through the entire society...

...I don't agree with some of the political conclusions Alex Garber draws in his report from California in this issue, but certainly the data he presents merits serious attention...

...Because the U.S...

...Capitalist governments, like others, can learn by their mistakes and are especially apt to learn to avoid doing what their adversaries tell them they must inevitably do...

...policy has something to do with that...

...troops are decisively beaten at Khesanh...

...seems likely...

...But the negotiations are over, and successful...

...It has demonstrated that, whether or not the majority of the population wants the Viet Cong, there is no firm majority opposed to it or even a militant minority eager to keep fighting against it...

...There are analysts of apocalypse, on both Right and Left, who do speak in terms of inevitability...

...Right now, everyone will find his own way...

...As long as the war continues, the effort will not be made...

...will simply pick up and leave...

...that the Viet Cong is gradually losing popular support—this whole rationale has been shown to be a deception, a self-deception, or both...

...The point has been reached where even motives of what might be called national prudence ought to dictate a complete shift in policy...

...involvement...

...Perhaps so...

...It barely matters...

...it is not inevitable that it should send its troops to the Dominican Republic...

...When I spoke about this to the students, they tended to discount such a possibility, in part because they had lived mostly on the campus, where the "main enemy" was likely to be not-unsympathetic liberal professors or administrators, and in part because they don't (I think) have an adequate sense of what this country is really like...

...It is by no means easy...

...Will the alternative be a happy one...

...One should like to hear from Walter Reuther...

...THE POSSIBLE DOMESTIC REPERCUSSIONS are frightening...

...let's not delude ourselves...

...But in truth it would not be equivalent, for France was unable to recover from its defeat whereas the U.S...

...The country is suffering a deep malaise...

...This isn't to say that the possibility of white mobs countering Negro mobs is out of the question...

...policy—that the cities are secure even if the countryside is not...

...No wonder that today among committed students and liberals there is little of that instinctive sympathy which a few decades ago was felt for the unions...

...Things are pretty quiet...

...And with some reason: right now the prospects for any decent outcome in the 1968 elections are pretty dim...

...has nothing to offer Vietnam except the prospect of endless warfare...

...Leave aside, for the moment, the urgent moral considerations...

...troops, so at any number of points it could have drawn back from Vietnam, deciding, even in terms of its own ideological or class bias, that it was a mistake to deepen U.S...

...If there will be no serious option in the Presi dential election, then we shall have to con centrate our efforts on other electoral points where real choices are available...

...If I respond to the despair and idealism of the students, I also cannot help listening to the realism of certain friends in the labor movement who keep warning about the danger of reactionary backlash...

...unilateral withdrawal" loses a good part of its meaning...

...Will the response of the trade unions be no more than a bleak repetition of the Rusk rhetoric...

...It looks like a hard year ahead...

...I could even imagine that a sophisticated defender of capitalism might feel it more urgent to regain the loyalties of the articulate young than to continue the war in Vietnam...

...But the truth is, I think, that the U.S...

...that the notion of an "insurrectionary" alliance between rebellious students and ghetto rioters is either self-comforting talk or sheer adventurism...

...OUR PROBLEM REMAINS: how to mount a sustained campaign against the war while yet working in such a way as to defend democratic values and improve democratic institutions...

...long ago exhausted its political capital in Vietnam...

...Every sensitive person, of no matter what opinion, has the feeling that the country is in a deep moral crisis, affluence or no affluence...

...And it has demonstrated that if the U.S...

...Why so...

...But recent polls in dicate that the division of opinion among unionists is almost exactly like that in the population at large...

...ESPECIALLY FOR THOSE of us who are friends of the labor movement and do speak out against the excessive attacks upon unions that come these days from both Left and Right, the attitude of the AFL–CIO toward the Vietnam War is a cause for despair...

...policy has, indeed, been to blow up the Vietnam issue beyond its intrinsic importance...

...Some will be active in SANE, Negotiations Now, and other peace groups...

...defensible it is not...

...Suppose, for example, U.S...

...what makes the present crisis so hard to bear is that it does COMMENTS AND OPINIONS not seem so profoundly rooted in the course of modem history—so apparently "inevitable" —as the others...

...I found it easier to argue against talk about "revolution," than to persuade the dissident students that a perspective of political struggle—which means much more than electoral activity—made sense...

...The immediate decisions are made by men in power—men who can err, men who may prove to be irrational or ideologically blinded, and men who can be voted out of office...

...Even if a settlement of the Vietnam War occurred on terms that many Americans regarded as unfavorable, it would not signify a world-wide triumph of totalitarianism or a threat to the national security of the United States...

...Some will choose the path of civil disobedience...

...Not made for intrinsic economic reasons or because of politicalpsychological resistance...

...a great national crisis is mounting...

...Hence, what is involved is political decision, political intelligence, political flexibility...

...The venomous attack made by George Meany against those unionists who, under the auspices of SANE, had gathered in Chicago to express some mild criticisms of the war—who can feel anything but revulsion against such vulgar methods...

...It is surely a fact of great importance that precisely the kind of young people who would usually be absorbed into the governing elite of American society are in rebellion against it...

...Indeed, it becomes clear that American democracy is suffering a major crisis in performance and premise, quite the greatest since the Civil War...

...Will it be no more than to recall the progressive legislation enacted in the early days of the Johnson Administration, as if somehow the war were a mere trivial nuisance interfering with the orderly gains of the welfare state...

...And the virtual certainty is that as long as the war continues, that effort will not be made...

...For I think that even a significant minority of the union movement now beginning to question Johnson's war policy could, at this point, have large consequences...

...In these circumstances, there will surely be people who will become impatient with or contemptuous of the democratic idea...

...On this matter I have been impressed by something Conor Cruise O'Brien, an intellectual hero of the New Left, has said about American power: granted the existence and extension of thispower, it can be used with greater or less responsibility and good sense...

...If the U.S...

...that a politics of "confrontation" could only be advantageous to the Far Right...

...And over a longer time, we shall have to think hard about ways of reconstructing the democratic system so as to make it more in accordance with its formal claims...

...The Viet Cong has demonstrated, no doubt at great cost, that no "military solution" is foreseeable...

...These remarks are being written shortly after the Viet Cong offensive which in early February brought street fighting to the major cities of South Vietnam, and there is no way of knowing what the immediate military outcome will be...

...Negotiations now have meaning only if undertaken with a recognition that they must lead to a rapid and complete withdrawal...

...For serious people the only conclusion will be to dig in deeper into political work...

...IT IS HARD TO REMEMBER a time when the political situation in this country seemed more depressing than it does today—and I speak as one who lived through the rise of Nazism, the Moscow Trials, the Second World War, the McCarthy period...

...But the immediate decisions are not at all inexorable...

...Every sensitive person knows what an enormous social effort must be made to avert disaster in the cities...

...But this is a calculation at least COMMENTS AND OPINIONS open to question—and certainly there remain many trade unionists who feel it is part of their commitment as trade unionists to respond humanely and with social imagination to such problems as the war...