LETTERS
On Equality Editors: It is perhaps symptomatic of a tragic flaw in the otherwise excellent thinking in Steven Lukes' article on "Socialism and Equality" that he misrepresents the position of C....
...Some of it does help: the tiny slice that goes for the military equipment with the "sharp qualitative edge," which Mr...
...Anschel that no Palestinian today would look up his old effendi were he to return to his old home...
...He may himself be a victim of colonialism but he is drawn, perhaps unwittingly, into the system when he participates in its economic fruits...
...Gottlieb's recitation of facts and figures Qn waste in U.S...
...Your contributors refer quite frequently to a changing world in which the "producers" will want to control production, never identifying who the producers are...
...The tremendous suffering created by the unwillingness of the Jewish community to let them return goes on and represents the main cause for the unending conflict...
...One must have a doctor, one must have someone to hand the doctor his tools...
...Anschel would have it...
...its foreign capital is collected and contributed mainly by American Jews who make perhaps too few stipulations about how it is to be invested...
...It would be folly to claim that such welfare state measures are themselves "socialism"— but neither is the sterile intellectualism of essays on equality...
...Spinrad appears to) in the notion that socialism is a "science...
...Arms Budget and Israeli Needs," in your Spring '75 issue, appears to be a response to Edward Luttwak's "The Defense Budget and Israel" in Commentary, February 1975...
...If the only answer to the very real problems of inequality is a messianic "socialist transition," which Lukes and everyone else knows will never take place, and during which neither Lukes nor anyone else seems to know what ought to take place, then Lukes ought never to have begun his article...
...For the accomplishment of certain tasks one certainly must establish who has the necessary skills, or, as Lukes might say, "potentialities worthy of admiration," to perform the given task...
...Back any beast into a corner and you are likely to find out more about aggression than about the nature of the beast...
...For so many Americans to believe that Pentagon budgets are largely waste, however, is as dangerous as it is wrong...
...Thus the problem of the mediagenic candidate and the political technicians manipulating him or her crosses the boundaries of any political system (be it presidential, parliamentarian, et al...
...THE EDITORS Reply: If our correspondent will glance over the issues of Dissent for the last 5-6 years, she will see that the magazine has carried a great deal of material on precisely the issues she wants to see discussed...
...Demo414 LETTERS crats, liberals, and socialists ought to reread Eisenhower's prophetic Farewell Address...
...ALEX A. SPINRAD Washington, D.C...
...This inclination is firmly adhered to both by party professionals and the voters at large...
...Finally, the prior question that must be addressed is whether we need all the stuff that these huge sums buy...
...In my essay I had concentrated on the social and economic development strategy of the Yishuv in order to "probe to the nerves" of the conflict that culminated LETTERS 415 finally in the 1948 war...
...arms, such as in the very expensive and much-maligned F-15, is lost, not only Israel but all of us who are democrats, liberals, or socialists may end our days in a world either at the brink of holocaust or totalitarian triumph...
...It is, I fear, a direct result of a basic flaw in the Lukes article: his failure to relate the accurate abstractions of his thinking to real-life proposals...
...E. ANSCHEL New York City BERNARD AVISHAI Replies...
...Israel's local bourgeoisie is dominated by a labor aristocracy that coordinates and patronizes the economy by fiat...
...Therefore it is unlikely that the two-party system would be at all conducive to a transformation resembling its parliamentarian counterparts...
...In reality, of course, that is not the choice...
...On the other hand, slaughter and physical destruction of native populations is not an essential corollary of colonialism...
...If the tangible "suffering" of the Palestinians were the central concern of Arab states, the former would not have suffered for almost 30 years...
...but must they always approximate anything like the present span and shape and must they always constitute "a distinct class stratification...
...If you believe that women will simply ride your coattails into a new order without altering oppressive institutions that you would leave untouched, I personally believe you are mistaken...
...still less, the huge $15-billion bureaucracy of l million Pentagon civilians...
...By contrast, the egalitarian socialist aims for a society in which the image of "the ladder" would be inapplicable and in which there would be minimal society—wide hierarchies of rewards...
...2) The parliamentarian system is not holding up so well either...
...Similarly, the percentages of both the federal budget and the GNP absorbed in military spending are down dramatically from 1968, and also significantly smaller than in 1964...
...More dollars for more overkill don't make Israel more secure...
...Spencer for his fine article...
...Second is the U.S...
...But that should not lead either of them to close their eyes during the day instead of acknowledging that an economy ruled by a local bourgeoisie under foreign patronage and with foreign capital fits the classical picture of a colonialist society...
...And surely as socialists we recognize that more radical and thorough-going steps must be taken to reform American society than the simplistic and obsessive liberal notion of lopping off billions from the defense budget...
...witness the respective defeats of Senator McGovern and Senator Goldwater—both presidential candidates rejected by the American electorate because they were perceived as "extremists" (albeit ideologically pure and faithful to their supporters and partisans...
...As for the morality of changing peasants into wageearners, surely this has never been quite so melodramatic as Mr...
...If C. A. R. Crosland meant by a "distinct class stratification" a permanent sorting-out at age five—a stratification that might not only determine one's own social status but that of one's children—then Crosland is indeed nothing more nor less than a "meritocrat," and perhaps an aristocrat as well...
...Do we want to continue playing world policeman and world arms supplier...
...He gives a number of examples of this technology that are of vital importance to Israel...
...So far, we seem to be "invisible" as far as your publication is concerned...
...q China Editors: I write to express my admiration for the essay "China by Daylight," which Mr...
...To his credit, Mr...
...It emphatically did not—at least, not to Palestinian Arabs...
...The fiscal 1976 budget proposed a 35 percent increase in weapons procurement and research and development...
...Most of the balance of over $100 billion, with the exception of some funds for research and development and for operation of sealift or airlift capacity, is simply irrelevant to Israel's defense needs...
...As I said in my essay, one could only wish with Rodinson (and now Anschel) that the economic improvement of Palestinian or Israeli Arabs was decisively relevant to their political claims...
...But the Pentagon anticipates a budget of $148 billion in fiscal 1980...
...the arms race...
...That interplay, in fact, between thought and action can be and often is a productive interface that enriches both the thought and the deed...
...Luttwak repeats the Pentagon's major stock in trade by asserting that inflation has actually reduced military expenditures...
...That does not imply, however, that the doctor's skills ought to be more "respected" in society as a whole than those of the nurse, or, for that matter, those of a cabdriver or even of a sociology professor...
...I did not imply that he advocates.` `a permanent sorting out at age five" or even "the enforced status of IQ tests" though the latter is quite compatible with "continuous traffic up and down [the social ladder]" (as Michael Young showed in his Rise of the Meritocracy...
...Editors: I have been reading various radical analyses of contributors to Dissent over a period of time now and feel that you are overlooking the feminist angle completely in your prescriptions for an equal society...
...By the way, Mr...
...Modernization is always resisted but never for very long...
...416 LETTERS...
...But more fundamentally, why the need to present this false dichotomy between "social democracy" and "egalitarian socialism...
...If the "qualitative edge" of U.S...
...MARJORIE PLASTINA Niantic, Conn...
...I suspect that Crosland meant nothing other than what Lukes himself advocates when he says that "respecting autonomy points...
...What he seems to be implying is that the unwillingness of the new Israeli government to let these Palestinian refugees return to their homes after the war was shortsighted and morally indefensible, and that it helped to seed subsequent conflagrations...
...In the final quarter of this century the major foreignpolicy problems are likely to be shortages of food, energy, and natural resources...
...I suppose any fair-minded person would have to agree—but would have to do so cautiously...
...If our answer is negative, as would be the case with most Americans, we should begin to wonder why Congress has failed to cut back the growing Pentagon budget...
...Third is Israel's pressing need for the F-15 fighter to counterbalance the growing MIG-23 component of Arab air forces...
...On Equality Editors: It is perhaps symptomatic of a tragic flaw in the otherwise excellent thinking in Steven Lukes' article on "Socialism and Equality" that he misrepresents the position of C. A. R. Crosland on the question...
...But $2 billion a year would buy large quantities of sophisticated planes, bombs, and missiles for Israel, whereas the Pentagon's request in fiscal 1976 was for $104.7 billion in obligational authority...
...The expenditures from Social Security and other trust funds were then added to the budget, swelling its size, and making the military slice look smaller...
...the spread of nuclear weapons...
...His final image—that of Israel being an economy ruled by a local bourgeoisie, etc.—is as helpful as picturing Israel as some large kibbutz...
...q Arms Budget and Israel Editors: Sanford Gottlieb's piece, "U.S...
...military technology...
...In other words, Crosland (and one central strand in social democracy) advocates increasing individual mobility up and down the ladder—i.e., affording "maximum scope for individual self-advancement" (Crosland's words) within a hierarchy of positions characterized by structured inequalities of rewards, chief among them status...
...RALPH SELIGER New York City SANFORD GOTTLIEB Replies: I wrote "U.S...
...But perhaps he was shrewd not to let this observation interfere with the full bloom of his moral sanity...
...defense spending...
...They try—albeit occasionally unsuccessfully—to take Lukes' abstractions out of magazine pages and put them in terms of money, laws, and programs...
...Instead, the indication is that the squishy-soft center will prevail...
...but it is clouded with errors of fact and logic, which we ought to resist with great energy...
...In stable 1975 dollars, planned defense outlays for 1975 are $41.4 billion lower than the 1968 Vietnam war peak, and $9.5 billion lower than the last pre-Vietnam year, 1964...
...Arms Budget and Israeli Needs" before Edward Luttwak's article appeared in Commentary, although the Spring issue of Dissent appeared later...
...while its foreign patronage looks as steady as the price of oil...
...worldwide inflation...
...This "equality of opportunity to achieve scarce social rewards" is contrasted by Lukes to the "egalitarian socialist" focus on "equalizing the rewards and privileges attached to different positions...
...As for Mr...
...The fact is, the combined power of the White House, the Pentagon, the military-industrial firms, and the defense-dependent labor unions has blocked any meaningful cuts despite widespread public support for new federal priorities...
...the exploitation of the oceans...
...Let it suffice here to say that in this respect, as in others, the example of the thought and practice of Tawney would repay the attention of all present-day socialists...
...If our answer to these questions is affirmative, we should support current Pentagon programs and strategies...
...If democratic socialism is to be something other than either the welfare state or a college major, Lukes must start relating to socialists working in the real world of politics—and those in the "real world" must start listening to Lukes...
...I do question, however, whether a traditional peasant who is forcibly transformed into a wageearner will consider that change of social status a satisfactory compensation...
...As socialists claim to know, men are motivated by imagination, not just hunger...
...First, inflation has reduced the purchasing power of all federal expenditures, civilian and military, but the civilian agencies have to "swallow" inflation...
...I wish one could be confident that the essay will be widely read...
...Indeed, American socialists ought to have their sleepless nights, as have their brethren in Israel...
...In fact the treasure of socialism, its "science" if you will, is its attempt to translate abstractions such as "equality" into reality for masses of people...
...The other parts relate to foreign policy and internal democracy...
...Seliger correctly cites as vital to Israel...
...The contrast I had in mind was eloquently and precisely captured by R. H. Tawney when he distinguished between the "claim for an open road to individual advancement" and the desire "to narrow the space between valley and peak...
...For any open mind, it is indeed corrective of many current romanticisms regarding China—as the author intended...
...July 1975 Mr...
...If Israeli socialists had only to worry about the indicators and the hypotheses with which Mr...
...Most are exacerbated by it...
...away from the ideal of a stable hierarchy...
...Second, the military share of the federal budget has been decreasing largely because the bookkeeping system changed in fiscal 1969...
...The wars of 1956, 1967, and 1973 were not fought by Arab governments for the sake of Palestinians as much as out of consideration for those maximalist (antiZionist, pan-Arabist, anti-"imperialist") political ambitions that had first been articulated by radically conservative leaders in Palestine from the onset of the British Mandate...
...Lukes, in his conclusion, says only that "this is not the place to enter into the whole question of the `socialist transition...
...One is the Air Force "smart-bomb," a key factor in the Israeli recovery from the Yom Kippur attack...
...q Overlooking the Women's Movement...
...Not guilty to believing in a "messianic" socialist transition...
...Avishai may rightly retort that somebody living in America on the proceeds of capitalist society should not point the finger at oppressed people who are trying to establish a new life in one way or another...
...defense spending is noteworthy, but it misses the points made so tellingly by Luttwak...
...1) The party system in the U.S...
...Both Crosland and Lukes advocate "unstable hierarchies...
...OSCAR GASS Washington, D.C...
...I can assure Mr...
...Moreover, a fair-minded person must consider the condition of the Jewish state at the close of this war before pronouncing judgment: it was left a barely contiguous garrison under siege and encirclement by hostile powers, with a convoluted and harassed border...
...Lukes appears to indict all of "social democracy" when he cites Crosland as believing in the "meritocratic policy of widening the social base of recruitment to privileged positions...
...Of course, one must have doctors and nurses (a system of occupational selection) and perhaps structured inequalities of occupational rewards will always be needed for this purpose...
...If, in so doing, they create a "welfare state" to alleviate real, pressing, immediate human problems like hunger and joblessness, then so much the better for the hungry and jobless...
...It would have been neater, no doubt, if some emerging class of Palestinian Arab kulaks, not socialist Zionists, had caused the demise of traditional peasant society here, but let us not idealize the loss...
...Third, the military's share of the GNP should go down as the economy grows at a time of relative international calm...
...If faced with a choice between these two extreme positions, one knows which side Mr...
...The editors of Dissent requested the piece, I suppose, because they are aware of the efforts to align the American Jewish community behind the Pentagon budget, on the assumption that Pentagon spending helps Israel...
...In your class-defined society, you do not address the women as a class, and I frankly feel that you are not only overlooking the women's movement, you are misjudging the importance of a women's political movement...
...If what Lukes simplistically calls "social democracy" (as opposed to "egalitarian socialism") has any distinguishing characteristic whatsoever, it is the fact that "social democrats" have to live in the world of people, houses, parliaments, and armies...
...Anschel presents us, slumber would be no problem day or night...
...Lukes wants the reader to choose...
...In fact, one could argue that the present "disciplined party" government of the British Prime Minister's cabinet is evolving toward a presidential system along the lines of its American counterpart...
...Anschel's "information" about displaced Arab peasants on the and (?) slopes of the Carmel has the ring of pure casuistry...
...Anschel's contention, but we must be more exacting in our specification of the fumbled moral challenge...
...population pressures...
...Editors: In "Political Technicians, Corrupters of Democracy," in your Spring 1975 issue, Martin Spencer pinpoints correctly, I feel, the present phenomenon of the mediagenic candidate...
...I do not mean to denigrate Mr...
...however this has not been the case...
...Anschel hints that he knows to whom this did happen...
...Anschel punctuates his letter with a stab at moral sanity that I find irresistible...
...Nonetheless, kudos must go to Mr...
...nor do the funds to maintain the old alliances created by John Foster Dulles and the new alliances being forged with Saudi Arabia and Iran...
...Moreover, before summoning us to join with him in condemning "slaughter and physical destruction" of native peoples (I think that this is why he put in this otherwise cryptic sentence), he might at least try to establish that "slaughter and physical destruction" happened...
...Anschel wants now to convince us that the consequences of this war "led to" its own primary causes...
...THOMAS LEPIONKA Somerville, N.J...
...The earlier displacement of 3,000 to 30,000 peasants ("depending upon which statistics you use") may have been accompanied by all the legal niceties, and I do not want to doubt Avishai's word on their compensation for the loss suffered...
...I believe neither in messianism nor (as Mr...
...Spinrad's wider accusation of the failure in my article "to relate the accurate abstractions of [my] thinking to real-life proposals," I plead both not guilty and 413 guilty...
...Do we want to prepare to fight nuclear wars as well as to deter them...
...Only the Pentagon is given an annual increase higher than the rate of inflation...
...Taking inflation into account, it is not true that defense expenditures have increased in recent years...
...I plead guilty, however, to not saying more about this...
...Outside of some Gulf states, Israeli Arabs enjoy the highest standard of living in the Middle East...
...I must, however, disagree with Spencer on his point that the imposition of a parliamentarian electoral arrangement and mode of government would prove to be a solution to this problem...
...and it had also to establish normal relations with the large Arab minority that remained, whose loyalty to this new state was understandably suspect...
...it was faced with the task of absorbing six to eight hundred thousand refugees of its own (from these very Arab states...
...Luttwak acknowledges that there is waste in U.S...
...It would be difficult to adduce another recent paper on this subject that is at once so penetrating, so comprehensive, and so balanced...
...The producers, in the ultimate analysis, are the women, who produce the offspring, who in turn become the workers in the society...
...Donald S. Zagoria contributed to your Spring issue...
...The solution does not lie in a change of the political framework as such but goes much deeper...
...For Americans, only part of the problem is waste, albeit a very costly part...
...q Salvation in Parliamentarianism...
...naval missiledefense system, which allowed the Israeli Navy to survive and emerge victorious against the much larger Egyptian and Syrian fleets...
...is not conducive to ideologically motivated parties...
...As to compensation by receiving other lands I saw even last year—if the information I was given is correct—some of these peasants in miserable huts on the arid, stony slopes of the Carmel eking out a pitiful living, close to the land sold to strangers behind their backs...
...Should more toasters and auto tires be matched by more missiles and bombs...
...As Luttwak explains, the reason why this large-scale cut in U.S...
...STEVEN LUKES Replies: I do not see that I have misrepresented Crosland's position, though I may be criticized by his defenders for attacking it...
...q Arabs and Israel Editors: In speaking about the separateness of Jews and Arabs Bernard Avishai omitted to mention what I believe to be the main factor that led to it: the "separation" of 600,000 to 800,000 Arabs ("depending upon which statistics you use") from their ancient homes...
...The strength of precedent shows that partisans of both parties are repelled by the polarities presented in the ideologically based choices a parliamentarian system would provide...
...The "socialist transition" is a matter of practical politics, of which theorizing is, of course, an integral part—and the limits to what is "practical" may themselves at certain times be expanded by the consequences of such theorizing...
...But Crosland quite obviously meant something more fluid than the enforced status of IQ tests, as evidenced by his thought of "continuous traffic up and down [the social ladder...
...There are four ways to test that seemingly simple truth...
...None of them can be solved by military power...
...A colonist is not necessarily a colonialist as Avishai states correctly...
...defense spending (at a time when Soviet military expenditures are increasing) has not yet proven disastrous is the "sharp qualitative edge" in U.S...
...Of course the labor market sets—and perhaps always will set—constraints on the realizability of this aim...
Vol. 22 • September 1975 • No. 4
