CORRESPONDENCE
H., S. & Miller, William & Lasker, Bruno & Marsh, Corinna & Orlans, Harold
Being a subscriber to Commentary and an admirer of Nathan Glazer's usual calm intelligence I was surprised to read his angry and erratic review of your magaiine. Obviously there is something...
...Their point is that our scope should be defined politically rather than personally...
...This is how the British Labour Party first got itself, in 1906, into the position of a noteworthy minority...
...It is conceivable, although unlikely, that some form of democratic "Communism" might emerge in Europe, Asia., or the Americas, which socialists would want to support...
...Howe's complaint that Mr...
...The same holds true, in a general way, for ex-radicals...
...When you come right down to it, the fact is that in most cases wild horses wouldn't drag Stalinists or ex-radicals into our pages, because very likely they are as much aware as we should be that discussing things with them on our own home grounds, so to speak, is much more to our advantage than to theirs...
...Several friends have observed that this contradicts the next sentence, "We shall welcome any expression of lively and competent thought, or scholarly contributions touching upon our area of interest, even if these dissent from DISSENT" and is not a notably liberal position of socialist issues...
...Howe says his concern is "with the terms and nature of the support the liberal and left intellectuals gave Stevenson...
...To characterize this Russia as "Stalinist" is to give yesterday's answer to today's question, and to ignore the need for ongoing historical analysis...
...Needless to say, my solidarity with DISSENT is implicit in the above remarks...
...I do not think there is any serious disagreement among the editors on this matter...
...The carping criticism of Adlai Stevenson by Irving Howe would seem out of place, or at least ill-timed in the opening number...
...Our magazine will be open to a wide arc of opinion, excluding only Stalinists and totalitarian fellow-travellers on the one hand, and those former radicals who have signed their peace with society as it is, on the other...
...We should invite contributions in our area of interest regardless of the author's past or present politics— for instance, a good analysis of the pros or cons of nationalization by Stalin, Trotsky, Sidney Hook or Joseph McCarthy should be welcomed, if any of these gentlemen or their executors could and would submit one to us...
...but the nation gives an appearance of relative instability and readjustment, and Malenkov has plainly not acquired Stalin's power of fame...
...However, as I have suggested, that analysis is dating, if not outmoded, for Russia and does not satisfactorily characterize Titoism 208 • DISSENT • Spring 1954 or Maoism...
...or we must use whatever word is closest to our specific purpose— "Communism," "Russian Communism," "sovietism," "bolshevism," "dictatorship," "Marxism"—and, occasionally, "Stalinism...
...I see no reason why qualifications need to be made beforehand...
...I have read most if not all of the press response to DISSENT as of this writing, and I think the comments which most deserve study are those expressed in the February issue of Commentary...
...Being a subscriber to Commentary and an admirer of Nathan Glazer's usual calm intelligence I was surprised to read his angry and erratic review of your magaiine...
...Why not "Communism" and "Communist...
...This is no slight recommendation for your magazine...
...Permit me to congratulate you on the appearance of the first number of the new magazine...
...not a day goes by without news of some measure of liberalization—or another purge...
...But I will admit beforehand that I am more hopeful than optimistic about the results of my criticisms and suggestions, being wellaware that the kinks of tradition are not likely to be unsnarled overnight...
...It is enough to let it be known that we are firmly opposed to Stalinism...
...Mr...
...Obviously there is something in your first issue, which his review does not indicate, that disturbed him deeply and led him to drop his usual manner of moderate and close argument and lapse into "the unpleasant tradition of vituperative intemperance...
...Does it not practically come to this, that any progressive or radical party leader is enjoined to behave as though he were merely an individual called upon on every public occasion to voice unimpeachable personal sentiments...
...attack all forms of totalitarianism, whether fascist or Stalinist...
...I have two comments about the editorial statement introducing our first issue...
...The poor" and "the workers" seem to me to suggest stereotypes as chauvinistic in their way as "the rich" or "the boss...
...The world had merely to read or listen to know what they are...
...I certainly agree and, indeed, regarded the editorial statement as a shorthand way of saying this...
...Why should he...
...This implies that we have a special grudge against, say, Max Eastman, who in his time and for some thirty years or more of his life wrote some of the best stuff of the anti-Stalinist left...
...But let us make our purpose clear each time and not substitute a worse slogan for a poor one...
...We cannot forecast their ultimate direction, and only the parched wanderer in that desert of lost hopes will take for the dawn these faint threads of light...
...but if that country is totalitarian, surely we will oppose its political system as we oppose that of Franco Spain, regardless of its alliance with the West...
...Sure ly the man has made his views luminous ly clear...
...He further objects because Stevenson "did not speak in the name of the poor or the workers...
...A case may, of course, be made for this in the case of a small party that has no hope of ever electing more than 206 • DISSENT • Spring 1954 an odd mayor or county official...
...I was much interested in the first issue of DISSENT and agreed with a good deal of it—but definitely not with Irving Howe's "Stevenson and the Intellectuals...
...This concerns the use of the word "Stalinism" in such passages as "The purpose of this new magazine is . . . to dissent from the terrible assumption that...
...In a true democracy—the kind Stevenson represents— people are people, not "classes," and social progress is the concern of all...
...But even such a party surely might, from the standpoint of educating the citizenry, gain far greater advantages by focusing on issues which the electorate can understand and leaving others in a convenient chiaroscuro...
...I enclose a year's subscription...
...At present, however, Communism abrcad and its braying asses at home—and not just the Stalinism which succeeded Leninism and defeated Trotskyism— are clearly and unequivocally our enemy, and it should embarrass no democratic socialist to say so...
...We may wish to reserve judgment on Yugoslavia, the latest love of the British left...
...Either a new word must be introduced, after appropriate analysis of the common features in the three principal centers of independent communist development...
...In particular, I would have to agree that there is manifested in our first issue too much of one fault which has long been a characteristic malaise among radicals— the tendency to impugn the motives of those who disagree with our point of view, especially when their point of view is in many important respects close to ours...
...Significant internal changes are clearly in progress in Russia since the pock-marked dictator's death...
...But I think it would be a mistake to conclude from this that none of the points made in the attack are valid...
...It is, of course, a hatchet job worthy of the Stalinist press, and the driving force in it seems to be pure malice...
...Finally, let me take issue with what seems to me to be an inverse snobbery in ,Mr...
...It might indeed be a good thing to invite a wellknown Stalinist to debate in our pages occasionally...
...There is another point raised in Commentary, on the people to whom the pages of DISSENT should be open...
...There is, to my mind, one good reason for preferring the word "Stalinism" to "Communism" in our editorial statement: the latter has too often served as a vulgar and unthinking battlecry, whereas "Stalinism" suggests at least an attempt at serious politcal analysis of the nature of the enemy...
...not to challenge their formal choice but to evaluate the assumptions behind it," etc...
...At the worst he was the only candidate they could support effectively in 1952...
...Our object is to understand the times, not to preserve our shibboleths...
...Stevenson was above demagogy...
...while we view with relative equanimity a lifelong Milquetoast liberal like Stuart Chase (or name your own example...
...American society is not ranged like that...
...the only way to defeat Stalinism is through atomic world suicide" and "DISSENT Spring 1954 • DISSENT • 207 will...
...But the net effect of the article (which the Republicans will certainly cite for their purpose if, heaven forfend, they read it) is that of a below-the-belt swipe at the man many thoughtful liberals consider their white hope...
...Howe have had Ste venson speak ill of his country while he was the guest of strangers abroad...
...There are still people on the Stalinoid fringe who might be attracted to a view of genuine socialism as a result of a sharp juxtaposition of the viewpoint, say, of Sid Lens with that of Leo Huber man...
...In my opinion it is a sorry day for progress in American life when a magazine like DISSENT takes a man to task for his high principles, his statesmanlike idealism, his human decency, his integrity and humility, and the fact that he has the grace to express these things with eloquence and taste...
...And "Communist" fits the case of China and, above all, Russia, better than "Stalinist...
...Howe objects to Stevenson's being a statesman rather than a politician— as though that were bad!—and to his "indecisions and hesitations"—as though they were not the perquisites of any thinker worth his salt...
...Why should ex-radicals be subjected to special treatment...
...But we put ourselves in a bad light by announcing in effect that we're out to censure these two particular groups as against all possible others...
...And would Mr...
...This ought to be a matter not of set policy but of editorial discretion...
...Then we would have to find a new word to distinguish that novel political system from the one-party dictatorships of Russia, China, and their vassal states...
...On my second point, however, there is apparently a real difference of opinion...
...Mr...
...I'm not going to waste space on congratulations for a first issue which is in most ways first-rate...
Vol. 1 • April 1954 • No. 2
