RESPONSES
Bensman, David
Despite all the butchery committed in its name, despite the hypocrisy, the betrayals, and the heartbreaking defeats, the socialist vision continues to inspire us. That is fundamentally why we...
...a few people would join us who now stand at arm's length...
...That is fundamentally why we do not abandon it...
...Of course, idealism carries you only so far...
...No one in America is really proud of liberalism...
...Cold cash could not have organized the farm workers...
...But many actions cannot be explained on the basis of self-interest...
...There is no longer a socialist blueprint, no timetable, not even a program we can be sure will solve our problems, yet socialism remains the name of our hope...
...But I fear our motor would run down...
...even its adherents see it as a balancing act, a set of partial solutions...
...Many radicals did not have what it takes...
...How about the CIO...
...Abraham Lincoln was probably a wiser man than Eugene Debs...
...And it might no longer be the same work...
...our work would be more comfortable but less compelling...
...If we abandoned the name socialism today, we might gain respectability in the eyes of some...
...Once you have a union contract, you need brains, skill, patronage, determination, sometimes even ruthlessness to build an institution that will survive defeats and disappointments...
...Perhaps liberalism deserves a better reputation...
...The Socialists and Communists who helped to organize industrial unions in the 1930s—some now revered, some entirely forgotten—were not primarily concerned with their own well-being, nor was their goal simply to improve the material welfare of the masses of working people...
...they left the labor movement or were driven from it...
...But people do not dedicate themselves to political wisdom...
...Cynics usually underestimate the power of idealism in politics...
...Yet their earlier idealism was a creative force, one for which there could have been no substitute...
...Liberalism is an inadequate substitute...
...we want a noble ideal, something larger andbetter than ourselves...
...Some are now bitter, cursing the very institutions they helped to establish...
...The idea of militant liberalism seems a contradiction in terms...
...Had they been so motivated, they would not have worked so hard or risked so much...
...We would go on with some effect, lending our will and intelligence to the struggle for human freedom...
...That seems evident...
Vol. 25 • January 1978 • No. 1
