Letters
Editor: It seems to me that Erazim Kohak's article on The Confession [April DISSENT] missed the point of the film and does a grave disservice to thesearch for truth. He does state the real...
...I am still waiting to receive a responseto my proposa ls...
...Who can forget the episode showing London and his friends voting for support of the Rajk trial and condemnation...
...citizens do not invest more in Canada than Canadians do in the U.S...
...economy...
...Pachter's defense of his article on imperialism, I was not stimulated to find the earlier issue of DISSENT in which the full article appeared...
...it tells how it happened, not how a great artist might try to explain a bizarre, incongruous, unbelievable chapter in history...
...and though that's not the whole story, that's the main reason why they confessed...
...However, for those interested in the matter I recommend the September 1970 issue of DISSENT, and, for the opposite point of view, an article by Miles Wolfin in the Spring1971 issue of Polity...
...owned most of the rest of the world since it has the fourthlargest national population...
...Moreover, is it equally astonishing that India and China do not own their proportionate shares (that is, most) of the U.S...
...According to this population-basis-forforeignownership thesis, it would be equally acceptable and unastonishing if the U.S...
...It makes mercilessly clear what happened— and I was wrong to speak of that as the"small" truth...
...Although I have been familiar with DISSENT forthe past five years, only recently did I enter a subscription...
...They are "unorthodox" only with reference to thealarmist rhetoric of proselytizers for instant zerogrowth, who are for the most part not social scientists and who show little familiarity with thework of demographers...
...No one who lived through the revolutionary cycle can escape the awareness that the "deformations of socialist legality" were no accident, but the inevitable result of the destruction of human freedom in the name of a revolutionary ideal...
...Moyers has not read I tried toshow that imperialism is a political force whichoccasionally uses economic means...
...This one shows what happened, "wie es eigentlich gewesen ist...
...OK, patiently I explain to the letter writer that what matters is not the nationality of the investor but the way the investments are used...
...Kohak says he is doubtful that the film was useful in France and other places where it wasshown...
...I did not read Mr...
...and that Anglo-Saxon Canadians invest more in Quebec than French Canadians do outside Quebec...
...Clark agrees that I state the main point of the trials correctly...
...The Party—and the thousands of Arthur Londons of whom CIark speaks—might be able to live with a theoretical admission of "de formations of socialist legality" and keep the LETTERS faith...
...The Confession fails as parable because "a parable must tell the reader what it was all about," and this, he argues, the film doesn't do...
...That is the point which is made in Artur London's book, andalso, though more forcefully, the point made by the film...
...Keep up the good work...
...I wrote a long essay in which I made several proposals to deal with imperialism...
...common market agreements for Latin America and Africa...
...But it does not say why it happened...
...I did do injustice to the film, vastly underestimating its significance and impact...
...I do not think The Confession faces up to that...
...The "small truth" may be small as theory—it is overwhelming as experience...
...I emphasized that the film does tell what I called the "small truth...
...I failed to appreciate the vast difference between an abstract awareness of "deformations of socialist legality" and a concrete confrontation with the merciless reality of it in human suffering...
...For example, since India has twice the population of the U.S...
...WILLIAM H. MOYER HENRY PACHTER replies: We should expand our letter column...
...The shortcoming of the film, which Kohak doesn't even discuss, is a more fundamental one...
...dollars is invested in Canada...
...JOSEPH CLARE 0 ERAZIM KoHAx replies: I welcome Joe Clark's comments on my review because, in one way, he is utterly right...
...to create international corporations to run the production and distributionof some basic raw materials...
...To Our Contributors In sending manuscripts, letters, and other material, please do not use special delivery unless requested...
...It is their privilege to crave the substitution of the ones for the others, as it is their privilege to make pronouncements on articlesthey do not read...
...Pachter's original article, but I question the insight and relevance of an article on imperialism by anyone who believes that it is "not astonishing" that foreigners (U.S...
...it flows in exorably from the fact that London remained a Communist, albeit, a "revisionist" Communist, critical of Stalinism and its awful works...
...investments in Canada mounted to $18.1 billion, Canadian investment in the U.S...
...And be sure to keep a carbon of all manuscripts...
...And then there is the Czech-jailer-Communist spitting out the view toLondon that Hitler should have finished the job of exterminating the Jews...
...MARK W. WEBER...
...Kohak makes other complaints...
...To prove the need for my proposals I had quoted certain statistics, showing in at least three different places that something like 18 billion U.S...
...This is why the Prague press unleashed a barrage against London, why the Chilean Communists banned the film, why even trusted Soviet officials abroad were forbidden to see it...
...In a jocular mood, I suggest that on the average, U.S...
...To the man in the street this might make the film in credible...
...I think we have an obligation to face up to that awareness, and draw the consequence: that it can never be different, that the revolutionary rule of the Righteous cannot, in principle, realize thesocialist ideal...
...The same statistics I used elsewhere in my article...
...DANIEL BELL q Editor: In defense of a criticism of his article "The Problem of Imperialism" Henry Pachter made the following reply in DISSENT (April 1971) : "U.S...
...Did we see the same film...
...Allende, who favors very much the further investment of U.S...
...To make this point, the letter writer quotes— what...
...the figures, therefore, are not astonishing...
...The Communists in Chile sought, with apparent success, to prevent theshowing of The Confession because it is such a searing condemnation of Communist totalitarianism...
...I proposed: to give the assets of American corporations to the countries where they operate...
...The illogic of Mr...
...Issues like the June 1971 issue make me glad I did...
...Editor: It seems to me that Erazim Kohak's article on The Confession [April DISSENT] missed the point of the film and does a grave disservice to thesearch for truth...
...But in one footnote I made the distinction, which seems important to me, that in some countries American investment affects LETTERS the political and economic development unfavorably, whereas other countries, such as Canada, Brazil, and now Chile, exercise complete sovereignty over their political fate (or as much sovereignty as any country can hope to enjoy in an age of world communications) and also can direct the flow of investment capital...
...But then, I did not question that...
...Should China, therefore, own even a bigger portion of Canadian industry than India...
...tions of The Confession is that the Communist undertook even greater persecution of the vet...
...and for most of them it is Jew...
...should India own twice as much Canadian industry as the U.S...
...In any event, I regret that the Sextons, unwittingly, attributed to me sentiments about the present which I do not hold...
...Canada has about one-tenth the U.S...
...A case in point is much-maligned India...
...That the scenes are not taken in Prague, and the coins "Gerard" pulls out of his pocket did not go into circulation until several months later...
...And that I had not kept up with developments in the trade union movement in any substantial way since...
...An important contribution of this film to the search for truth is that it provides an answer to the question, asked and answered, asked and answered, but never to full satisfaction—why did they confess...
...Moyer will now read the original article...
...And further: in attacking the ills of foreign investment, what matters is not to quote lamentablestatistics but to ask specific questions and to analyze specific situations: is the investment beingused for purposes of political domination (I spenta lot of space to discuss this in my article...
...Understandably— but this is why the new true believerscan perpetuate the illusion that it was all an accident, that next time it will be different, that we have to try the same revolution again and again...
...I shall not mention the other proposals, hoping that Mr...
...Each time I hear young people speak of The Confession as an argument for a new" people's dictatorship" h la Mao I cannot help feeling that in this case, the film's omission is a lie...
...Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of Kohdk's article is that it misses another aspect of the film and its impact, namely, that there are many thousands of Artur Londons all over the world...
...Nationalist griping about who owns what leads to nothing...
...People who won't read articles even if they were paid to do it, still read letters...
...No film has ever been made about the Com munist trials, till this one, that even tried to show what it was all about...
...What, then, are Kohak's complaints...
...In our own country there are several hundred thousand men and women who have gone through the ranks of the CP, who have accepted the indictment of Stalin as the world's biggest mass murderer since Caligula and who still feel that Communism, either in its Russian or Cuban or Chinese variant, is both viable and good...
...The film only hints vaguely, he charges, that many of the de fendants were veterans of the Spanish Civil War, The film, and the book, don't hint this at all...
...How much more explicit can you be...
...Possibly themost dramatic moment in the courtroom scene is when the prosecutor reads out the nationality ofeach defendant...
...Arethe immediate advantages of rapid industrialization outweighed by the long-term burdens ofamortization, and if so, are there better ways of financing the "take-off...
...Except for a few speculative conjectures, my views on American population trends do not differ greatlyfrom those of most contemporary demographers...
...I do not wish to appear to lay claimto a bold unorthodoxy to which I am not entitled...
...There is also a typographical error, for whichI myself am responsible, on p. 362: the latestCensus Bureau projections show the United Statesreaching a population of 300 million by the year2010, not "2110...
...I can now bolster that point by quoting Mr...
...The film does show graphically and accurately what happened...
...whether it speaksEnglish, French, or Russian (I sincerely regret that I cannot add: or Spanish, since capital is fleeingfrom Spanish-speaking countries, and the first taskof Latin-American governments should be, not tostop the inflow of American capital, but to stopthe outflow of national capital) . What matters is whether this capital is invested for private exploitative or for public productive purposes, for development or without regard of the consequences...
...Here Clark is entirely right...
...capital in Chile even while nationalizing the big copper mines...
...After reading Mr...
...If for no other reason, this is a truthful film because it tells the story of these people—incredible people without doubt—but this is what they are and they include some of the greatest actors in the world, including many who perform so magnificently in The Confession...
...q A Correction Editor: The word "Unorthodox" in the title of my article, "The Population Problem: An UnorthdoxView," in the August issue, was added without my knowledge...
...It does not matter whether the capital one uses in building up or modernizing a country is black or white or yellow...
...So, Kohak "deepens" hiscomplaints...
...But I have received a letter on afootnote and a letter on the letter...
...One of the reasons this is so apparently stems from the obsession of the antiimperialists with nationalism, provincialism, ethnocentrism, inverted racism, and other forms of chauvinism...
...For thatreason, we prefer not to speak about it...
...I was wrong and owe an apology to CostaGavras and London...
...He does state the real point of the Slansky trials, "that men who destroy thesafeguards of human freedom, even when theydo it with the best of intentions, that Virtue might triumph over Vice, become defenseless in faceof the very power they created...
...Unfortunately, thisawareness is inseparable from the awareness of guilt shared in spite of purest intentions...
...From all indications it created a crisis for many French Communists because, amongother things the film shows what an ignominious role was played by the French Communists insupporting the Slfinsky trials, up to the point where the French Communist wife of London wrote to Gottwald and praised him for prosecuting her husband...
...Pachter's unconscious acceptance of Pax Americana is revealed when applied to the other high-population nations...
...Editor: For what it is worth, I am writing to tell you that I felt the June 1971 issue of DISSENT was one of the finest issues you have ever put together...
...I suggested thatit might be easier to neutralize the latter than todefuse the former...
...to $2.6 billion...
...Editor: In the August 1971 issue of DISSENT, Brendan and Pat Sexton quote me, citing the New York Times, as saying: "The degree of corruption in labor has been incredible...
...My error was in assuming that since the XXth Con gress the world has become sufficiently aware of the what of Stalinism...
...But Clark's objections do not speak to my central criticism—that the film tells what happened, not why it happened...
...In the article Mr...
...Regular mail will, as a rule, be adequate and more convenient...
...The articles by Gordon Zahn, Michael Harrington, Norman Gall, and Jesse Pitts were particularly excellent—a credit to the ideals ofsocialism and democracy...
...citizens) own 46 percent, 62 percent and 52 percent of key economic sectors of another nation (Canada) because one nation has 10 times the population of another...
...whether they still hold I do not know...
...Promptly I received a letter, not on my article but on the footnote, and not on what the footnote says but on my failure to consider Canada's plight...
...I would still stand by my remarks as relevant to the character of the trade union movement, circa 1955-60...
...that it happened necessarily, not as a fortuitous deformation of the revolution, but as its inevitable result...
...The labor movement has stagnated...
...But then he answers his own reproaches: it was supposed to be filmed in Prague, "but then the tanks rolled again...
...to form worldwide cartels for the trade in the great international commodities...
...population...
...It is the presentation of that theoretical admission in terms of concrete experience, in London's book and film, in Solzhenitsyn's One Day, in Brodsky's Solution Gamma, that shakes the faith to the core...
...So I conclude that, perhaps, it might be a good idea to repeat my proposals in the letter column...
...Again and again the word rings out as an accusation in the courtroom...
...they tell it, and one of the most terrible accusa...
...Is the government andthat means, the social structure of the receivingcountry, strong enough to use and direct foreign investments...
...They were tortured...
...but, in the last analysis, this is also why it is so truthful...
...Kohfik complains that the film "notes, much too briefly, the crude anti-Semitism of thetrials...
...etc...
...518 erans of the war against Franco than Hitler had conducted...
...As I wrote to the Times (which did not print my letter) and to New America (which did, after it had used the same Times quote), I had been describing to their reporter the reasons why I had stopped writing about labor 13 years ago...
...more than a hundred years later the same people whom he then declared obsolete still are fighting the foreign s-o-b's insteadof their own s-o-b's...
...Poor old Marx thought that by invading new markets capital was "revolutionizing" undeveloped countries...
Vol. 18 • October 1971 • No. 5
