LETTERS

...Therefore, even from a theoretical point of view, it is incorrect to dismiss conservative ideology as naively blind and onesided...

...Editors: Michael Harrington's brief (Spring 1979) article, "Social Retreat and Economic Stagnation," has provided us with an insightful analysis of our current socioeconomic malaise...

...At present, it is true, as Mr...

...Navasky has not responded to this Weinstein statement either...

...After all, they are some of corporate America's leading representatives...

...Such an analysis does not, however, imply that the New Deal was devoid of all positive content...

...Harrington's contention rests on the assumption that conservative ideology is merely blind...

...that its legacy does not provide us with a positive, socialistic kernel that must be winnowed from the conservative Democratic party husk...

...Editor, the Nation Weinstein's apology for his misidentification of Krieger was printed when the issue of Dissent containing my reply to Rodney, written many weeks earlier, was already in press...

...In June, 1979, it was announced that Weinstein & Co...

...that its perspective precludes an accurate appraisal of anything more than the small entrepreneur...

...It should be said, however, that when I reported that many of Weinstein's key sources in Perjury were misquoted and / or quoted out of context (giving the misimpression that they were corroborating Chambers when in fact only Chambers was "corroborating" Chambers), his main response was to invite me to inspect his tapes and transcripts...

...Harrington has contended, that the New Deal coalition is starting to unravel, and that, moreover, its dominant tendencies were basically conservative...

...The next point, however, is somewhat more mundane...

...On the other issues raised in the New Republic and Encounter to which Wrong refers, here is not the place to go into the merits...

...for such a theory serves to push numerous middleofthe-road interests—especially those nurtured in rural and small-town America—onto the side of the great monopolies...

...In any case, Navasky's original challenge to Perjury had to do with matters that, with a single exception, bore exclusively on Chambers's career in the Communist underground rather than on any of the central issues of the Hiss case, that is, the purloined State Department papers, the Woodstock typewriter, and the association between the two men...

...However, I must beg to differ with one of his cardinal contentions—namely, that the Carter administration is unaware of the magnitude and influence of concentrated corporate power...

...Weinstein proceeds to explain that he refused Navasky's request, after first acceding to it, because Navasky "violated the conditions" laid down for "his special, limited, and preferential access to my research files...

...Buffalo 128...

...Such a theoretical standpoint treats all comers, whether they be small businessmen, workers, consumers, or monopolistic corporations, as commensurable individuals...

...My memory was faulty and I owe Professor Polsby an apology, for, as he correctly informs me, he has never written any such "formulation...

...Spies, "revolutionaries," and ordinary criminals presumably adopt false names in order to conceal their true identities, so it is not very surprising that they sometimes succeed in fooling law-enforcement agencies...

...Instead, he has complained, as in his present letter, of Weinstein's refusal to let him inspect his tapes and records, a refusal 127 that, according to Weinstein in Encounter (March 1979), has assumed "near-mythic proportions among friends of Alger Hiss...

...And then when I attempted to take him up on his invitation, he withdrew it and announced that he was giving his papers to the Truman Library "later this year" and I could see them at that time...

...Seventeen months have now passed and the Truman Library has yet to receive his papers...

...This, of course, exemplifies class struggle on the right with a vengeance...

...The misidentification resulted from the fact that there were two American Communists in the 1920s, one of them Sam Krieger, using the Alias "Clarence Miller," and Weinstein relied on the FBI files in mistakenly attributing several experiences of the other one to Krieger in two short sentences of a footnote in a book of nearly seven hundred pages...

...In a word, the New Deal was essentially a rear-guard action seeking to prop up the hoary capitalist system...

...Editors: In Dennis Wrong's reply to Lester Rodney (Letters, Summer, 1979) he suggests that I have yet to address myself to what he calls "Allen Weinstein's crushing rebuttal in the New Republic" of my essay in the Nation on the limits of his scholarship...

...Harrington has pointed out, what we are now witnessing...

...it places all other interests at a competitive disadvantage, since treating unequals as equals—as Aristotle knew— means greater inequality...

...Consequently, not only does this standpoint convince small businessmen to align themselves with the liberty of corporate monopolies...

...In this case, the error was perpetuated by a historian drawing on such an agency's files nearly half a century later...

...I have since read the statement to which Navasky refers, but not in the issue of the New Republic he cites, because there is no such issue, nor are there any issues carrying either of the two dates he gives...

...and this exacerbation of social and economic inequality is precisely, as Mr...

...Northampton, Mass...

...I described Weinstein's rebuttal as "crushing" because, except for the Krieger affair, Navasky has not responded to Weinstein's excruciatingly detailed refutation of the doubts Navasky raised in his original article...

...From a purely abstract point of view, conservative theory views all individuals as solely profit-maximizing buyers and sellers frequenting the marketplace...

...Perhaps Mr...

...nor was his past even "one of the main points of contention" between Navasky and Weinstein, as the former now claims, Navasky having given equal or greater space in his original Nation article to five other individuals allegedly misquoted by Weinstein concerning whom he has remained silent since Weinstein's statement, reluctantly conceded to be true by several of those involved (including Krieger), that most of the interviews were taped...

...My confidence in Navasky's accuracy in handling facts is not increased by this error...

...Wrong is unaware that Weinstein, the New Republic and Alfred Knopf, Inc...

...They agreed to pay Mr...

...After considering the class position of various members of the Administration, it is virtually impossible to imagine their noncognizance of corporate power...

...For those who care, the Nation has assembled an extensive file of its own on these matters and it is available for public inspection...

...Yet a third Communist of the time who adopted the surname "Miller" is mentioned on the same page of Perjurv—maybe the name had some talismanic significance...

...Krieger, in any case, was not "an important figure in the Hiss case," his association with Chambers having ended years before Chambers met Hiss...

...admitted I was right after all...

...I claimed he had misidentified Krieger, an important figure in the Hiss case because he introduced Whittaker Chambers into,the Communist Party...

...In a word, their apparent blind spot is neither fortuitous nor innocent: rather it serves to mask and justify corporate dominance throughout the American political economy...

...were sued by Sam Krieger on one of the main points in contention between Weinstein and myself...

...Editors: In my article, "What is Political Equality (Dissent, Summer 1979), I referred to an allegedly "crude formulation" of Nelson Polsby's, "that if, say, poor people fail to vote in large numbers, it must be because they think they have something better to do on election day...

...Krieger $17,500 and in the issue dated June 7 & 14, 1979, the New Republic printed Weinstein's apology and correction...