CORRESPONDENCE
H., W.O. & Hagopian, John V.
David Sachs' article "On Ends Justifying Means" (DcssENT No. 2) seems to me to have treated too lightly certain ethical questions which have long been a source of division in radical...
...If that makes us crackpot realists, what practical or realistic program do you offer...
...For the state is at least that institution "which possesses a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence" ; it always means the organized constraint of individuals, the suppression of freedom, the systematization of murder, and the abandonment of human love and sympathy as principles of organization...
...and as if the childish air weren't enough, you scrawl your name again across the bottom, but this time to prove that you are also backward...
...When two or three generals— I can't help it, but they always remind me of parakeets, for mammals don't usually dress in such colors (save for the back parts of baboons)—sit down together, the whole troop of waiters surround them and nobody else exists for them...
...Our days are taken up with doing our jobs, loving our families, visit ing our friends, listening to music and reading good books, trying to make the best of what we have...
...And because we re fuse to make martyrs of ourselves in hopeless action or spend our hours in the frustration of impotent talk, we are accused of being "former radicals who have signed their peace with the society as it is...
...Or, if we are going to get it, it won't be by talk, talk, talk, and brave breast-beating...
...The next issue will start our second year of our publication...
...I grabbed one of them by the coat-tails and shouted, `Look here, I might be a general sometime, so fetch me a glass of water.' That worked...
...Each envies his colleagues, bullies his subordinates, and is afraid of his superiors...
...Ben B. Seligman, an economist who has contributed to The Jewish Frontier, Commentary and other magazines...
...See back cover for name and address...
...An ethic of ultimate ends is properly opposed in politics by an "ethic of responsibility...
...And then politics becomes of great relevance, and with it compromise, expediency, and a sharing in the responsibility for the evils committed by the state...
...The sad part of it is that most of us honest liberals would really very much like to see the kind of America you en vision—a socialist democracy...
...the higher up he is, the more he fears them...
...In opposition to Mr...
...Sachs, I would hold that we must make the choice between the two ethics—and that most of us have chosen an ethic of responsibility...
...Furthermore, I think that a radical movement of thought must include and sympathize with those who choose the other course— the anarchists, the pacifists, and some of the religious thinkers—who are more "purely ethical" people...
...Like everything else the service there is affected by the military system...
...And nevertheless the system has its gaps...
...The number of regular readers keeps growing steadily...
...Dennis Wrong, a sociologist who writes regularly for the Canadian Forum...
...Those who possess an "ethic of ultimate ends," who believe that the good cannot be obtained by the institutionalization of evil, cannot do this and must always to an extent oppose the state...
...naive as to believe that Stevenson is going to bring us socialism, but because we have no other realistic choice...
...I have just seen your first issue (such things circulate slowly here in the provinces), and your apparently genuine eagerness for reader response prompts me to write...
...That means voting for Stevenson, not because we are so "The only bearable thing in Olmntz is a first-class cafe with ice, newspapers, and good confectionery...
...Victor Alba, Spanish socialist and author of a history of the Spanish Republics as well as of a study of Latin American politics...
...it involves taking a share in administering a justice which is all too blind and taking part in a struggle for power which is often not to our tastes...
...Then we must realize that any abandonment of power, state power included, means a rejection of responsibility...
...I detest the idea of having inscribed on my collar how much I am worth, as if I were a sample of some goods...
...Well, go ahead and raise your traditional banner of personal freedom— it's still a free country for wild talk, though not for calculated action...
...And such persons have always been of importance in radical movements...
...But we also realize that we certainly aren't going to have it...
...Among the new contributors to DISSENT in this issue: G. D. H. Cole, the famous British socialist, author of What Marx Really Meant, etc...
...For example, I personally think it more or less follows from such an ethic and from the present state of affairs in the United States that socialists must give electoral support to something as inadequate as the Democratic party— even including Mr...
...Western Socialism has been characterized by a libertarianism and a humanism which have been seldom equalled in other ideologies of the culture: socialists have often considered human freedom to be the highest value to be striven for and have decried all attempts to devaluate the individual human personality by treating it as instrumental and as an expendable quantity...
...You scrawl your name across the top of the cover in the same print that youngsters scrawl dirty words on fences...
...An officer is a miserable creature...
...They can perhaps remind • us that even for us there may come a time for saying no...
...Once in despair I had to have recourse to swank...
...that is, you don't propose to do anything at all, except take pot shots at all the intellectual liberals who refuse to join you in your paranoid moaning and groaning...
...George Rawick, a graduate student in history...
...Just drop him a card with your request...
...We think it will be the best one thus far...
...The gist of your position seems to be: we ain't clean (like the .100% Ameri 414 • DISSENT • Autumn 1954 cans) and we ain't dirty (like the Stalin ists), we're just slightly disheveled...
...Let me put it to you straight: you provoke amusement, the kind of amusement that grown-ups experience in watching children at silly play...
...David Sachs' article "On Ends Justifying Means" (DcssENT No...
...Then our views concerning the state will be different...
...Autumn 1954 • DISSENT • 415...
...For a listing of articles already on hand see our announcement on the back cover...
...It is perfectly obvious that the existence of the state is incompatible with the realization of these values...
...If we accept the state we must, in a sense, accept this...
...The Commanding Officer was here recently from Briinn and went into the swimming baths, when I was astonished to observe that his trunks carried no marks of distinction !" From a letter of Freud, quoted in The Life and Works of Sigmund Freud, by Ernest Jones...
...The distinction is made by Max Weber in an essay which can be recommended to all libertarian socialists, "Politics as a Vocation," which is reprinted in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, translated by Gerth and Mills...
...We now have a national distributor who will put DISSENT on any stand or bookshop desiring it...
...Stevenson...
...And this acceptance of the state is no light matter, it is not like a taxi-cab that one can take at one's will...
...You made it quite clear that for all practical purposes you are useless and impotent: "DrssENT is not and does not propose to become a political party or group...
...If we believe that the crucial evaluation of our actions is to be found in an examination of their effects tomorrow, if we accept responsibility for the effects of our day-to-day actions, we cannot be so much concerned with responsibility for the natures of the actions themselves...
...2) seems to me to have treated too lightly certain ethical questions which have long been a source of division in radical movements...
...and it wouldn't help to get him elected by publicly proclaiming him the lesser of the only available two evils...
...I am not simply objecting to the way you write your name, but I do think it is significant in more ways than you realize...
...we now have a paid circulation of over 2,000 and hope to reach the 3,000 mark with this issue— provided our friends do a bit of hustling and get subscriptions, find newsstands and bookdealers willing to take the magazine...
Vol. 1 • September 1954 • No. 4
