REFLECTIONS IN MID-WINTER
H., I.
Journal of the Quarter MID-WINTER tivity have significantly increased. And finally there is the danger that, in the words of British Nobel Prize winner general radioactivity which no one...
...respect for the American mind...
...Strange politics, stranger Democrats were against unemploy- logic...
...During a local investigation of “subversive aca movement seems to be springing tivity” Mr Sweezy was questioned by up...
...and in SENT, or the one after, to organize a full discussion on this topic, but here it may be worth a word or two...
...diation of the world as it is...
...Journal of the Quarter MID-WINTER tivity have significantly increased...
...to the Burmese Socialists, more time One Presidential adviser is quoted by to Europe and to Asia...
...But that in itself should give one pause before totally rejecting the idea or better yet, the sentiment...
...Both tion was a rebuke to it, and if the parties tacitly accepted war economy Democratic victories indicated a deas the permanent base of American sire for change-why then should the life (see Helen Mears’ article in this Democrats soften into the bent posDISSENT...
...Were it merely a scheme for tary speaks of it simply as a Stalinist slogan...
...A thought to conjure practice, does it make for an increaswith...
...The Alsops report that the radiols What is one to make of it all...
...that was a victory too...
...cance...
...It seems to us force in American politics...
...Nothing a iMcCarthyite guttersnipe, was elected...
...H. 6 Winter 1955 DISSENT...
...Moral appeals, political may lead to “an increase in the prob- strategy, even ordinary caution may ability of malignant growths...
...On top it takes the form of a a legislative committee...
...Nonetheless, he has been con- To assume that McCarthy is finished is to make the classical mistake of the victed for contempt, and an appeal is liberal mind: the mistake of assum- now pending in a higher court...
...One can What is euphemistically called “local speak of the fatal incapacity of the fall-out” is the effect of one hydrogen bourgeois world to cope with its enebomb: the blanketing of an area of mies except by inventing weapons so 4,000 square miles with radioactive dreadful they may destroy it as well...
...Meanwhile, we note the debate that keeps twisting through the pages of the daily press and the liberal journals: co-existence or not...
...Yet there are people in to whether to test a “Super-Super” “the highest governmental circles” hydrogen bomb several times more who would like to test Super-Superpowerful than the one exploded at no doubt, to teach the Russians proper Eniwe tok...
...What is dethe Alsops as defining co-existence as sirable for the coming period is: a) “A-s tay-in-your-backyard-and-we’ll-s tay- no hot war...
...He informed committee of admirals, generals and this committee that he had never industrialists...
...Some experts, like Dr...
...The istration...
...But at the moment it occurs to us to say to those “highest governmental circles”: isn’t the H-Bomb enough Distant fall-out, by contrast, involves danger to every point on the globe...
...Sweezy is simply a private citizen...
...But we believe that cut violation of civil rights...
...dust...
...If that be co-exist- in Michigan, perfected their political machines within the Democratic party, From Opposition t o Coalition...
...soon crumbling from within...
...neuverability and play for any political tendency which, whatever its label, so- And then co-existence signifies-to us, most important of all-that vast, cialist or not, tries to find a way out 4 Winter 1955 DISSENT of the impasse...
...After the November elections, the liberals claimed victory...
...The issue Were {Eo-existence merely a Stalinis tragic, the terms comic...
...tion of disaster...
...Edgar Adrian, “repeated atomic edge: it does not come to us as a explosions will lead to a degree of living image...
...As soon but failed to use them for any polias the liberals begin claiming a vic- tically bold or significant purposes...
...bomb, the extinction of a state would All, clearly enough, valid responses...
...In the primitive literal sense of coexistence, there seems no alternative to war...
...A. H. Sturte- for any conceivable purpose of devant of California, believe that this struction...
...The Bill” through Congress, what would America be like if Humphrey weren’t more the intellectuals declare its virtues to be flexibility, the more, in reelected...
...The issue of McCarthyism ture of coalition the day after their was gingerly evaded by most politi- victory...
...That means that even as McCarthy is censured, and even if later he were not to be reelected, McCarthyism as a political movement is yet political writings, he refused to answer on the grounds that the questions were irrelevant, that the Progressive Party is a perfectly legal party and that his writings are in the public domain, accessible to anyone to be heard from...
...The trade unions, especially The Premofure Deafh of McCarfhylrm...
...Co-existence is, to be sure, used as a Stalinist slogan...
...as well as human, consequences-it follows that, from our point of view, some sort of uneasy balance is necessary or at least unavoidable during the coming period...
...c) as much maing...
...The two party system, which has become an object of veneration to numerous ex-radicals and liberals, concould be more revealing in this regard than the fact that shortly after the election the Democrats-whose victory the American pragmatic tradition, the tactics of flexibility . . . ence . . . tory, one grows uneasy with expecta- In the main, a kind of apathy not far from fear continues to dominate American political life...
...What, asked an ADA fund letter mailed out while Humphrey was push- tinues to prevent any clear articulaing his infamous “Anti-Communist tion of basic political choices...
...b) no hard-and-fast geoin-our-backyard agreement, with mu- political division of the world along tual-destruction-the-penalty for stray- imperialistic lines...
...One gical hazards of such a test are of can react with a kind of moral nausea, three kinds-“local fall-out, distant a thoroughly rational gesture of repufall-out and general radioactivity...
...freezing the world into two rigid blocs, there would be no problem either...
...Even before we printed Dennis Wrong’s analysis of McCarthyism in the last DISSENT, there was much talk in the liberal press about the coming demise of McCarthy...
...Senator ist slogan, it would present no probKnowland calls co-existence a form of lem in c!efining a radical or socialist appeasement...
...Sweezy fied, confused and softened by the various maneuvers looking toward a has been giving a guest lecture on compromise that its paasage can “Socialism” for a Humanities course hardly be of decisive political signifi- at the University of New Hampshire...
...Actually, the election was most remarkable for its low political level...
...below, it takes the form, been a member of the Communist as in Massachusetts, of more or less Party, but when pressed for informaspontaneous organization of volun- tion and opinion about the Progresteers to circulate petitions in his be- sive Party, as well as about his own half...
...Sweezy’s made clear enough elsewhere in this politics...
...Given the present war prosperity, it would seem unlikely that it could become a dominant who woulcl read them...
...present mood of political fear and Not even the flimsy excuse sometimes frustration, it would seem equally un- offered for such questionings, that the likely that it could fail to become government has to be careful as to a powerful force and thereby a po- whom it en~ploys, is relevant here, tential for a fascist movement, since Mr...
...Others be beyond the realm of your underspeak of a long-term “‘biological haz- standing, but at least think twice beard” as the consequence of “distant fallsut,” Le., the danger of stillbirths maturely fore you destroy . . . the human race pre3 DISSENT Winter 1955 inchoate yet deeply-felt desire of the European and Asian people to avoid destruction in a war between powers they could not influence or control...
...LVhat is involved is a clearissue of DISSENT...
...But votes and resolutions...
...The great Co-existence may also mean a deal, political kalue of a period of uneasy of the sort Henry Wallace was advo- truce, apart from the primarily hucating some years back, to divide the man consideration of preventing an world into two precise areas of atomic war, is that it gives more time imperial domination and thereby -more time to the British Laborites, achieve a relative balance of power...
...The burNixon showed a native gift for ab- dens of responsibility, the virtues of sorbing its style...
...Hubert Humphrey, fearless defender of civil liberties, had been reelected...
...And finally there is the danger that, in the words of British Nobel Prize winner general radioactivity which no one can tolerate or escape.“ The Alsops conclude that the most REFLECTIONS IW Imagination always lags in areas where the levels of radioacbehind intellect...
...in which there Co-Existence: The Comedy of Tragedy...
...The Sweezy case in ing has actually been proved except New Hampshire, which has been what should have been clear all the singularly ignored by the offidal libertime, that McCarthyism represents at al publications as well as (to the best present a minority, though a very of our knowledge) the American Comstrong minority, in America...
...An editor of Commen- response...
...What this one despite the fact that we diswe think of Paul Sweezy’s politics is agree so violently with Mr...
...the liberals had claimed as evidence Neither party discussed the major of their victory-announced that they would adopt the attitude of “coalition” toward the Eisenhower adminproblems facing the country: neither said anything about the H-Bomb, or foreign policy, or civil liberties...
...ing that the essence of politics con- There are plenty of other cases that sists of parliamentary maneuvers, might, and should be mentioned...
...I n the age of the hydrogen Or one can simply be afraid...
...If the Eisenhower administrament, but it wasn’t quite clear tion is indeed one of the most inept whether they were against Hoover’s in American history, and if the elecor Eisenhower’s unemployment...
...We hope in the next issue of DIS- which war could only bring the most dreadful political...
...connection with McCarthyism is that He is not a member of its faculty nor By far the most important event in a government employee...
...If evidence for McCarthy’s weakness is to be found 5 DISSENT Winter 1955 in the fact that mest of the can- he has a right to express Bia views didates who enthusiastically en- without being subjected to hamanent dorsed him were defeated, then noth- or persecution...
...Walter Lippmann asks, with some show of sense and irritation, exactly what Senator Knowland would substitute for co-existence...
...given the that he was entirely within his rights...
...Given a situation in which the major capitalist powers are incapable of defeating Stalinism politically...
...President Eisenhower is reported to feel that there is now no alternative to nego- seems little likelihood of Stalinism tiating with the Russians...
...I n New Jersey, Clifford Case, ing homogeneity and conformism in an Eisenhower conservative but not American political life...
...The voters, alas, did seem to respond to the issue of “Communists in government”-which is merely a panic symptom of a more legitimate concern with the problem of Communism in Asia...
...We know that it is now possible for the whole world to be blown up by hydrogen bombs, yet we cannot really employ this knowl- Dr...
...For several years now Mt...
...we wish especially to call attention to And Q Word on Civil Librrtier...
...Even mittee for Cultural Freedom, presents more ambiguous is the censure motion a particularly outrageous attack upon in the Senate, which has been so quali- civil and academic freedom...
...For it is in the nature of Stalinist slogans-unlike many of those used by the bourgeois West-that they have been carefully tuned to realities, tuned, of course, to exploit realities but no less significant for that...
...be merely a local fall-out...
...It is therefore hard to react, except with a kind of numbed horror that goes beyond horror, to the news the Alsop brothers recently terrifying fact about this new weapon printed that a debate is going on “in is “that no one really knows what it the highest governmental circles” as will do...
...Yet the danger is that coexistence may become a means of destroying, through the pressure of the two great powers, all of the potentially creative and independent political forces in the world...
...As far as one can conclude from the narrow margins in most of the elections, the balance of power between the parties remains precarious...
...We were skeptical then, and are more skeptical now...
...But the truth of the matter is that all three elements we have mentioned, as well as others, come into play during discussions of co-existence...
...Aneurin Bevan, after some scandalous praise for the Chinese Stalinists, declares coexistence the only way...
...cians, except insofar as Vice President But we know the answer...
Vol. 2 • January 1955 • No. 1
