LETTERS
More on Working-Class Authoritarianism Editor: A letter by S. M. Lipset in the Winter 1973 DISSENT mentions some work of mine. He says that he "never understood what relevance...
...Now, I grant you that much harm is done to our black brethren by what may well be a largely racist, white society...
...The quotations he offers in his present letter are asides, hedges really...
...The French accepted publicly the Yugoslav critique of their wartime and end-of-the war behavior...
...Samples, complimentary, and other free copies...
...As to Howe's judgment that the above revelations suggest that Jaffee may be more hard-headed than myself in judging Browder's behavior or "independence" of Moscow, I am inclined to enter a "nolo contendere...
...He says that he "never understood what relevance Hamilton's research on the correlates of opinion on war has to my work...
...I doubt it...
...STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION (Act of August 12, 1970...
...But Mr...
...Puretz will agree that Jackson's desperate ideology and his involvement in further violence within prison walls were very likely related to the treatment he received from jailers and parole boards...
...10017...
...is not true...
...As to Jaffe's tidbits that Duclos probably never wrote the April 1945 article attacking Browder, and that Duclos was himself accused at the first Cominform meeting in September 1947 of the "revisionism" earlier leveled at Browder, much of this will be found in my detailed analysis of the Duclos article...
...E. Total distribution (sum of C and D...
...More on Working-Class Authoritarianism Editor: A letter by S. M. Lipset in the Winter 1973 DISSENT mentions some work of mine...
...In the footnote, I credit Browder himself with the fact...
...There is no "complex multivariate" argument at all in those contexts...
...I see it as a phase within the development of the Communist movement...
...And I wonder whether Howe's older and understandable hang-ups are not getting the better of him...
...At a later point, in a key formulation, we find this statement...
...Nor do I believe, as I indicated, that we will ever know the full story of his continued incarceration...
...I certify that the statements made by me above are correct and complete...
...Title 39...
...Extent and Nature of Circulation...
...In an article three years ago I presented evidence showing that educated, upper-middle-class Americans tended to favor a "hard line" in foreign affairs and that persons of lower status and education preferred more moderate policies...
...My book has serious faults, in retrospect, which stem from a failure to deal with the larger questions of a democratic socialist perspective in our country, for example, in the sense that DISSENT has done all along and that Michael Harrington does in his book Socialism...
...The arguLETTERS ment with Irving Howe is, however, an intellectual pleasure...
...C. Total paid circulation...
...DONALD PURETZ JEREMY LARNER replies: I thank Mr...
...Mr...
...As for who, if either of us, is right, or more right, let others judge...
...It also seems to me completely appropriate to present evidence on the question and to point out the implication for the Lipset claim...
...Actual number of copies of single issue nearest to filing date-5,725...
...I did not know that Browder's communications with FDR contained warnings against a variety of liberal, and radical, social democratic figures, including important independent journals because of their refusal to endorse the labor-draft-law bills of 1945...
...RICHARD HAMILTON q Of Things Past Editor: Irving Howe's generous but challenging review of my book, American Communism in Crisis: 1943-1957, broaches the problem of what today's democratic Left shall make of earlier radical movements, in this instance the American Communist party under Earl Browder's leadership, which at one and the same time achieved a real impact and authenticity and yet was flawed by terrible crimes, stemming from a supine self-involvement with Stalinism...
...the] more well-to-do are more liberal, the poorer are more intolerant...
...But this struggle to go to the outer limits of an all-encompassing and suffocating doctrine, his attempt to create a genuine movement in the face of the limitations of his allegiances and motivations, the way the CP in his time tried to break through its own contradictions can, I believe, be granted as important...
...Nor was there any letter in his text where he offered new evidence...
...Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months-7,575...
...Actual number of copies of single issue nearest to filing date-7,075...
...Average number copies each issue during preceding 12 months-9,500...
...6. Names and Addresses of Publisher, Editor, and Managing Editor: Publisher: none...
...10017...
...Yes, indeed, George Jackson was imprisoned (indeterminate sentence) for a "$70 holdup...
...My reply read as follows: "Professor Lipset's present claim...
...Actual number of copies of single issue nearest to filing date-8,200...
...G. Total (sum of E and F— should equal net press run shown in A...
...Howe finds I did not have Jaffe's "startling" revelations, either because of ignorance or discretion...
...Actual number of copies of single issue nearest to filing date-900...
...nor is there any doubt at all that he was throughout a creature of the Comintern (with all this implies...
...They are never integrated into the main line of his argument...
...272 LETTERS...
...The point about his "complex multivariate arguments" was also discussed in this previous correspondence...
...Larner, keep up the good work...
...B. Paid circulation: 1. Sales through dealers and carriers, street vendors and counter sales...
...2. Mail subscriptions...
...Actual number of copies of single issue nearest to filing date-8,200...
...Actual number of copies of single issue nearest to filing date-4,125...
...One footnote, on p. 250, does mention Browder's private papers, now at the University of Syracuse, as revealing a conflict in this regard between the UE, a Communistled union, and the Daily Worker...
...Hic Rhodus, hic salta, as one of the many Karl Marxes would have said...
...And I continue that "failure to make civil liberties a principle, the failure to abide by principled behavior, cost the Communists dearly...
...At a still later point Lipset summarizes Eysenck's research on the "tough-" and "tender-minded," the latter being described as "tolerant of deviation, unprejudiced, and internationalist...
...He then proceeds to indicate the relationship with class...
...In accordance with the provisions of this statute, I hereby request permission to mail the publication named in item 1 at the reduced postage rates presently authorized by 39 U.S.C...
...One entire paragraph (of three) is given to this casual laborer's enthusiasm for the Soviet Union's 1956 action in Hungary, an action which he compared with the weakness of British policy in Cyprus...
...If not owned by a corporation, the names and addresses of the individual owners must be given...
...5. Location of the Headquarters or General Business Offices of the Publishers: 509 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y...
...3626 provides in pertinent part: "No person who would have been entitled to mail matter under former section 4359 of this title shall mail such matter at the rates provided under this subsection unless he files annually with the Postal Service a written request for permission to mail matters at such rates...
...All the above quotations from Lipset, it will be noted, involve "simple two variable relationships...
...For those interested, this correspondence appears in the Revue francaise de sociologie, January– March 1970...
...8. Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owning 1 percent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages or other securities: None...
...3626...
...Stanley Plastrik, Business Manager...
...10017...
...Average number of copies each single issue during preceding 12 months-475...
...Lewis Coser, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y...
...The important plane of inquiry does not lie in Browder's personalpolitical shortcomings (which are undeniable), which the book makes plain in tracing his strange gyrations...
...Joe Starobin and I don't disagree so much as we approach the past from our very different backgrounds...
...But perhaps Mr...
...He did rise to the presentation of three variable tables at a couple of points, but he never offered the complex multivariate analysis that he demands of his critics...
...10017...
...However, we all deserve equal protection under the law, and a three-time loser by the age of 18 (or, indeed, any age, yes...
...Yet I wouldn't deny that there were released through "Browderism" some heretical currents vis k vis Stalinism...
...7. Owner (If owned by a corporation, its name and address must be stated and also immediately thereunder the names and addreses of stockholders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total amount of stock...
...In this connection I mentioned Lipset's work and indicated that these results ran contrary to his "workingclass authoritarianism" argument...
...But please tell the whole truth...
...D. Free distribution by mail, carrier or other means-1...
...Irving Howe, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y...
...Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months-1,925...
...Average number of copies of each issue during preceding 12 months-9,500...
...On the facts, let the following be added up: Jaffe's disclosure that Browder was in the fall of 1939 in radio contact with Dimitroff in Moscow who validated the CP's turn to isolationism is reported in my book on p. 214...
...On the following page Lipset makes a contrast between what once appeared to be the case (the parties of middle and upper classes supporting "jingoistic foreign policies") and what presumably is now the case (working-class groups in some nations being "the most nationalistic sector of the population...
...A. Total number of copies printed (net press run...
...Editor: Irving Howe, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y...
...the secret details of the meeting itself have long been available to all scholars (this is where Jaffe got them) in the book by Eugenio Reale, one of the Italian Communist delegates, entitled Avec Jacques Duclos au Banc des Accuses (Paris: Mondadori, 1958...
...Larner fails to point out—in spite of much publicity to the contrary—that the holdup was an armed holdup, and represented Mr...
...Jackson's third felony conviction...
...Actual number of copies of single issue nearest to filing date-450...
...F. Office use, left-over, unaccounted, spoiled after printing...
...46-47 of my own book, reference is made to this episode as a haunting one, and I say that "the Stalinists cheered the government on...
...Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months —1,050...
...9. For Optional Completion by Publishers Mailing at the Regular Rates (Section 132,121 Postal Service Manual) 39 U.S.C...
...Puretz for the additional information...
...Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months-6,050...
...blank—not relevant] 11...
...But the drama of the matter lies in the attempt of heretics within the limits of their doctrine to burst beyond it, all the while trying to be loyal to it...
...He sees "Browderism" as an anticipation of his own development away from the Communist movement...
...In the first pages of this chapter on workingclass authoritarianism he presents a long quotation from a "Short Talk with a Fascist Beast" which he says "portrays graphically the ideological syndrome...
...q On Crime Editor: While it may well be true that a white, racist society "dumps" on its black citizens, tending to nudge them toward actions which, if and when exposed, land them in prisons, to state, as does Jeremy Lamer (in "To Speak of Black Violence" DISSENT, Winter 1973), that "Jackson [was] imprisoned at the age of 18 for a $70 holdup," is so far from the whole truth as to be an un-truth...
...I did not mean to imply that under the circumstances it was unreasonable to have imprisoned Jackson at all...
...Basically, my feeling is that Browder was on the right track for the wrong reasons...
...They supported the prosecution of political opponents on charges which, when used against themselves, they would denounce as without substance...
...Again: was Browder really a heretic when leading the CP or when expelled from it...
...No great compulsion moves me to argue with Jaffe about anything...
...As for Browder's volunteering of documents to the Department of Justice to be used against the American Trotskyists indicted under the Smith Act in 1941—which Howe properly calls a "shameful act, worthy of stool pigeons"—it is true that I did not have the documents which Jaffe has evidently guarded all this while...
...It seems to me that Lipset did assert a relationship between class and foreign-policy attitudes and, specifically, claimed that the workers are the toughs...
...He must have been Jaffe's source as well...
...Lipset responded with a letter of complaint saying he had "never related the effect of education or class to foreign-policy concerns...
...10017...
...evidences little suggestion that he will make contributions to the general safety...
...United States Code...
...If owned by a partnership or other incorporated firm, its name and address, as well as that of each individual, must be given): Dissent Publishing Corporation, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y...
...Howe believes that I make "too much of the 'autonomous' possibilities of Browderism," and he brings to bear on this point an article in the Spring 1972 Survey wherein Philip Jaffe offers some unusual revelations about his long-time, intimate friend, Earl Browder...
...But on pp...
...10017...
...3. Frequency of Issue: Quarterly...
...Managing Editor: Edith Tarcov, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y...
...Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months-1,850...
...1. Title of Publication: DISSENT...
...10017...
...Section 3685...
...But to deny B, namely, the historically very interesting and (for today's issues very relevant) quest of one wing of American radicalism to grasp the imperatives of a non-Leninist path and to grasp that the war had changed the terrain of the battle seems to me unhistorical...
...Average number copies each issue during preceding 12 months-4,200...
...2. Copies distributed to news agents, but not sold...
...4. Location of Known Office of Publication: 509 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y...
...2. Date of Filing: October 1, 1972...
...Actual number of copies of single issue nearest to filing date-1,125...
...It is possible to say B, without denying A. To argue about A at this late date, when Howe has surely won the argument long ago seems unnecessary to me...
...But I doubt whether its faults lie in my treatment of Browder...
...There is really no exuse for his not knowing...
...when liberalism is defined in noneconomic terms—as support of civil liberties, internationalism, etc...
...Actual number of copies of single issue nearest to filing date-1,600...
...JOSEPH R. STAROBIN IRVING HOWE replies: When Joseph Starobin writes that "Browder was on the right track for the wrong reasons," by inclination is to respond: yes, but when the reasons are so wrong, what does that do to the track...
...The matter was discussed at length in an earlier exchange...
...I am by no means inclined to underestimate "the all-encompassing context of Stalinism as a total ideological movement...
Vol. 20 • April 1973 • No. 2
