LETTERS
Editors: In order to help move the United States "toward a sane defense policy," Bogdan Denitch [in Dissent, Summer 1982] calls for "a fundamental examination" by the democratic left of "the...
...society as a "democracy" and not as a "capitalist class society...
...The result is a worldwide crisis of overcapacity, which makes protection doubly expensive...
...Denitch observes correctly that neither Soviet foreign policy nor the Soviet military has been "the major cause" for the decline in the power of the U.S...
...This means that we must explore the possibility of developing some immediate demands in the field of defense and foreign policy that can be supported by both the socialist and the nonsocialist democratic left...
...and its allies...
...These programmatic tasks are immense...
...If this analysis is correct—and it is compatible with Harrington's argument—socialists designing the "third stage" of the welfare state have a difficult task ahead of them...
...Guerre seems unable to grasp is that just as there is a legitimate interest in a sane defense policy, in a world where the other military bloc is also armed to the teeth, so there are legitimate U.S...
...This move cleverly serves to depict any skeptic as unreasonable and inflexible, saving her the trouble of defending what is a grotesque comparison...
...Contrary to Kohn, however, I did give specific suggestions of the way in which the image of a social compact (as opposed to contract) can serve as a source of radical dissent from technocratic managerialism...
...Nationalization is also necessary in the banking sector...
...interests...
...For that matter, although I sometimes choose to stress my relative orthodoxy as a Marxist, neither do I. q "Feminism, Family & Community" — Some Last Words Editors: I must write a letter on Jean Bethke Elshtain's attempt to defend the family from its leftist critics (Fall 1982...
...5) In her introduction, Elshtain promises us she will show that "things that exist [things that exist??]—such as the family—incorporate values that implicitly challenge corporate power and anti-democratic, managerial elites...
...What underlay these attacks —and what Kohn misses entirely—is an atomistic vision of the human person and an instrumental picture of human society...
...I also argue that it is possible to have a sane, that is, noninterventionist and nonconfrontational foreign and defense policy, even in a nonsocialist America...
...and its allies...
...the problem of capital flight that France under Mitterrand has experienced must be controlled...
...A program to address these international problems requires an international focus...
...All is subordinated to this concern...
...2) After a long (and distorted) summary of radical criticisms of the family, Elshtain remarks: "What oozed into the vacuum created by the breakup of community and the breakdown of families were the forces of right-wing reaction and a bewildering smorgasbord of cults...
...state...
...In sum, the global economy is undergoing structural transformation...
...But they do not address the fact that corporate America has been warring with the welfare state for 35 years, and has developed increasingly powerful weapons to fight it...
...ruling class, which decides policy...
...That in itself would not be a fatal barrier to reasonable debate if he did not combine that defect with sectarian rigidity...
...Even this rather safe position, moreover, is simply asserted rather than defended— and it leaves no room for people who don't want any...
...Since the New Yorker purveys its advertising to the upwardly mobile, and especially those who wish to regard themselves as such, its content is often a triumph...
...government in the Third World as "adventures...
...While not proposing to abolish either capitalism or imperialism (at least not in this bill), he proposes to get rid of: the MX, the cruise missile, the Pershing II, the Trident II system, the new proposed carriers, and the 270 Rapid Deployment Force...
...Although the proposals in Dellums's bill are well short of socialism, I support it as a way of furthering a debate regarding assumptions about defense and foreign policy that the present Administration and, unfortunately, most Democrats share...
...is today...
...is] inclined to "fight and win" full-scale nuclear war with the Soviet Union...
...I argue that the democratic left, which is not a synonym for socialists, has to be concerned with problems of defense in the here and now, even if the U.S...
...and problems of world currency and world finance require attention...
...This parallel is drawn without even a perfunctory acknowledgment that it is at best appropriate to a tiny fraction of the critics...
...government, as we have known it historically, acts to serve the interests of the U.S...
...Laing was concerned to make psychosis intelligible from the perspective of the family system...
...But he does not say why these capitalist states are in decline: they are in decline because of the basic contradictions in their socioeconomic systems...
...What Mr...
...This ignores the principle that undergirds those processes—corporate America's attempt to undermine our partial welfare...
...it must embrace its problems as ours...
...socialists to design investment or labor-market programs within a national frame-work...
...Accordingly, he asks us to consider what sort of "defense policy" it is that "we" need, and never mentions the U.S...
...It seems to me to be equally without point to state that "we must . . . insist upon substantial negotiations with the Soviets toward a drastic scaling-back of existing nuclear systems," and that "a beginning could be the ratification of SALT II," since our left does "insist"—though in vain—that our government seriously negotiate, and since both our left and the Soviets are in favor of SALT II (they have ratified...
...She claims, on the one hand, that there is a "fundamental argument that the family is an agent of the status quo"—seeming to concur with this "fundamental argument...
...The New Yorker, then, like many of our cultural artifacts, presents contradictions...
...The democratic left needs to address international investment and trade flows, and reform GATT...
...To see his analysis as "mocking the efforts of parents to provide security for their children" appears a willful misreading—and one flavored by defensiveness...
...Regarding Jonathan Schell's thoughtful work [responding to "Waiting for the End...
...3) In a stunning display of ideology before reason, Elshtain compares radical critics of the family to cultists such as Jim Jones...
...steel industry, for private corporations will not invest billions to modernize domestic steel production when greater profits are to be made in overseas investment, speculation, high technology, and the service sector...
...state) today is to speak of the most far-flung and rapacious empire in the history of the world...
...Critics of the family of the sort I criticize, in turn, are a "tiny fraction...
...Saving the steel industry will require nationalization, the unfashionable program that was once socialists' panacea...
...energy corporations are exploitative, oligopolistic, and extremely difficult to regulate or control...
...they are further complicated by the politics of nationalism...
...She does illuminate the tension between commitments to individual freedom and community on the part of critics who tried to defend both, but this is actually an ad hominem attack on those who did so...
...All these proposals are sound...
...by Murray Hausknecht, Dissent, Summer 1982], I, too, was disappointed that his conclusion was only "we must love one another or die...
...As Reich and Magaziner argued in Minding America's Business, mini-plans can be self-defeating...
...No longer is it possible for French, Dutch, Swedish, or U.S...
...But as Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison demonstrate in The Deindustrialization of America, corporate leaders did not follow the optimists' game plan...
...And I do not identify U.S...
...Contrary to Denitch's assertions, the historical record shows plainly that, since the early '70s, it has been our government alone that has undermined the post-SALT I "rough parity" in U.S.-Soviet strategic nuclear forces...
...to reach that happy state, it still would have to deal with such unpleasant questions as defense and military hardware —unless the Soviet state and all other major authoritarian states were also blessed with the same transformation simultaneously...
...He describes the extensive paramilitary and military involvements of the U.S...
...They do not attack it, as a cultist would, for competing with a surrogate family...
...without it, how will we gain control of credit creation and capital flows...
...The same holds true in the energy sector, where, as Robert Engler has shown, U.S...
...Planning not only must be coordinated on a worldwide scale, it must be comprehensive...
...The New Yorker Editors: "Form follows function," is the basis not only of art but also of politics and every other aspect of life...
...Instead, they began moving their capital and facilities out of unionized, high-wage, high-tax 272 regions, in search of high profits in the Sunbelt and overseas...
...If he had said so, and even presented a discussion of how, I doubt it would have been published in the New Yorker, provoking worldwide discussion and (we hope) some raising of consciousness...
...Finally, Kohn is less than candid about her own position...
...BRIAN GUERRE New York City BOGDAN DENITCH Replies The trouble with Mr...
...The point is that the U.S...
...Is your own position, instead, one shared with the "fundamental argument" to which you refer, which insists that what people are doing when they create and sustain families is shoring up a given order in whatever its current form...
...Let us not forget, after all, that critics of the family are challenging perhaps the single most sacrosanct institution we have...
...Elshtain assumes precisely what must be demonstrated: that this account of what women should embrace must include the family as well...
...Yet he is astonished by the Administration that deems war inevitable unless the Soviet "regime" changes (actually, the position, which is public, is that if the Soviets don't change their social system, they face annihilation) and he is astounded that the Administration...
...q q This discussion is now closed...
...For example, if the government saves the steel industry at the same time that conglomerates continue to disinvest in metal-working businesses, we will have a very expensive lemon on our hands...
...Americans have a hard enough time taking seriously and understanding what is going on in the United States—in cities, suburbs, and rural areas, in New England, the deep South, and the Pacific Northwest...
...The welfare state model prevalent among social democrats and liberals is inadequate to the challenge posed by transnational corporations...
...or a decade...
...Anticipating objections to the analogy, she imperiously upbraids "those who can't find any analytic comparison" between the two [her emphasis...
...He did not go on to say "and we must create a world in which it is more possible to love one another...
...How much harder it will be to fashion a political strategy to mobilize the mass of American workers to a program for a "new international economic order...
...This vision, at its deepest roots, confirms rather than challenges market society...
...Harrington does propose planning, but planning too will have to be global...
...At the moment, it appears that if the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are not changed, the collapse of Third World economies could drag down social democratic programs in the West...
...interests...
...And our programs to plan economic growth and control corporate behavior must be international in scope, coordinated with the programs of democratic left governments throughout the world...
...Seen in this context, the crisis of the welfare state represents the triumph of transnational corporations...
...I write as someone who sees much in the nuclear family worth defending but is appalled at what passes for serious analysis in her piece...
...JOANNE FORMAN Taos, New Mexico q "A Path for America" Editors: Michael Harrington's "A Path for America" (Dissent, Fall 1982), attributes the crisis of the welfare state to three processes—the growth of corporate monopoly power, the internationalization of capital, and technological change...
...He demonstrated that a good deal of violence masquerades as love, that there is more to patterns of familial interaction than meets the eye...
...An example of that approach is the bill regarding defense that was introduced by Congressman Dellums...
...Guerre, but most of the broad liberal left in the United States does not share his assumption that the U.S...
...I'll be damned if I can see where she has even come close to doing this...
...At present, every industrial nation and some developing ones are protecting their steel industries for political reasons...
...Were the U.S...
...Happily for fans of the family, a better case can be made than is contained in this essay—else the radical and feminist critics Elshtain identifies would win by default...
...Guerre is that he cannot read...
...If Laing spent more time exposing the pathogenic tendencies of many contemporary Western families than reassuring us of the family's potential, that seems a reasonable emphasis...
...I fail to understand why Denitch directs his "argument" against U.S...
...It won't be done in a day...
...But in a new ball game, we have to develop a new game plan...
...Reading about the tribulations of a welfare mother, for instance, the peruser can feel at once socially concerned and socially superior—a subtle and seductive experience...
...There is more...
...As long as they remain private, a planner's hands are tightly tied...
...He calls for a national commitment to full employment, to be implemented by national planning of new industries such as "renewable source energy systems" and modern railroads...
...I also cannot agree that the "detached, minutae" approach to human experience is always "voyeurism or even hostility...
...271 JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN Replies Here we go again...
...But this question is not merely directed at the capitalist democracy the U.S...
...A U.S...
...What Josephine Hendin [in "The New Yorker as Cultural Ideal," Dissent, Fall 1982] neglected to mention is that this holds true for the New Yorker...
...ALFIE KOHN Cambridge, Mass...
...4) R. D. Laing is ripped out of context...
...O.K., Ms...
...remains regrettably a capitalist and, yes, imperialist democracy...
...Or is this final riposte purely rhetorical...
...finds it "remarkable how little the present administration, and even many of its mainline critics, have learned from the past...
...Denitch does not recognize the capitalist, imperialist nature of the U.S., [but] . . . notes that our government defines "U.S...
...alone is responsible for the present state of military confrontation between the superpowers...
...Harrington's "Proposals from the Democratic Left" to democratize corporate power do not fully take into account the new rules of the game...
...interests with the interests of the country's ruling class...
...and he is concerned to suggest an alternative policy aimed at the "reasonable defense of legitimate U.S...
...He also advocates containing inflation through price controls, opening the corporate books to public scrutiny, and creation of a national health service...
...One need not be a "Marxist" to know that this is so...
...If anyone may be characterized as a courageous challenger here, it is the radical critic, not someone like Elshtain who dares to defend the family...
...even though to speak of the U.S...
...Finally, Harrington proposes radical tax reform to finance new social expenditures...
...How much more difficult is it for us to understand our own stake in the uneven development of Latin American economies, in the widening rural poverty of East Asia, in the aging industrial regions of Europe...
...When did this putative renunciation of the family take place in numbers significant enough to be a plausible explanation for the rise of the right...
...How could we achieve full employment by planning new industries when corporate America keeps swelling the "reserve army of the unemployed" by confronting ever greater numbers of workers with the global labor market...
...Barnet argues persuasively that no progress to achieve social welfare in the United States, or in any other nation, can be achieved so long as the structural inequalities of the "Global Factory" persist undiminished...
...He deduces this heresy from the question I asked in the Dissent article: "what kind of a defense establishment is appropriate for a democracy...
...Denitch characterizes U.S...
...imperialist interests could be defined, and defended, in any other way...
...The reader looks back at what preceded this apparent non sequitur, searching in vain for justification...
...is not willing, once and for all, to "completely write off the possibility that a different Administration might move toward a democratic foreign policy and thus have alliances that are not only defensible but worth defending...
...In a short essay one cannot, of course, go over the ground built upon moral philosophy, anthropology, social history and political theory that one draws upon to make one's case...
...But then she ends on a jaunty note to "fans of the family" (as if what was going on was a spectator sport) indicating that a better case for such "fans" can be made than "contained" in my essay...
...A moment's thought reveals the disanalogy: most radical critics are interested in identifying the respects in which the family supports and recapitulates a repressive social order...
...Dellums proposed this bill from a nonunilaterist and nonpacifist point of view that is shared by most U.S...
...capitalist system and ruling class...
...Whatever the literary, aesthetic, or political pretensions of the editors, the purpose of a magazine• (and of newspapers, radio, television) is to purvey advertising...
...Over the years, transnational corporations have developed the ability to shift their profits to nations that tax least...
...Kohn: let's hear it...
...DAVID BENSMAN...
...In a contrived effort to pin the blame on radicals with whom she disagrees, Elshtain skips from rehearsing their criticism to assuming most Americans agreed with it and acted accordingly...
...They cannot be blamed in any way for the widespread conviction that one predominant force of much radical and feminist rhetoric was couched in such reductive language that the possibility that individual men and women, parents and children might have relations with one another not dominated totally by crude power manipulations was squeezed out altogether...
...it would also be relevant even for a socialist democracy...
...It may come as a surprise to Mr...
...left and why he feels he has to point out, to us, that security requires that "we" stop being confrontational with the Soviet Union...
...Schell points out the near impossibility of thinking about nuclear holocaust: John Hersey's Hiroshima, published in the New Yorker in 1946, for example, precisely because it details six lives with such unforgettable precision, creates an impact far greater than any pontification...
...voters...
...The fundamental argument that the family is an agent of the status quo is never answered, and her piece ends only with a ringing endorsement of children...
...It might be interesting to try to make that case to young draft resisters who have stated, explicitly, that the source of their dissent lies in values they were inculcated with in their homes and churches...
...Without nationalization, there will be no U.S...
...Up until now, the trauma of America's deindustrialization has caused even progressives to turn their backs on the problems of foreign peoples with whom we are inextricably linked...
...Ens...
...society as a "democracy," and not as a capitalist class society...
...plan to modernize steel is probably in order, but if it is not coordinated with the plans of our trade partners/competitors, no plan will succeed...
...Here Richard Barnet's The Lean Years: Politics in the Age of Scarcity is relevant...
...1) After a few paragraphs of defending women's "distinctive moral 'voice' " and opposing "women's full absorption within the market society," Elshtain offers this: "Right-wing defenses of the family can only be countered by a feminism that agrees that the family is a prerequisite for any form of social life and that a particular ideal of the family is imperative to create a more humane society...
...Taxation provides the clearest example...
...Close to 50 members of Congress supported the bill...
...Denitch also correctly observes that there is "broad bipartisan agreement" (that is, consensus within the ruling class) that "a major increase in military spending is necessary for the U.S...
...One can then turn to the ads for diamond bracelets and Hawaiian vacations with a soothed and receptive mind...
...There are minor examples of rhetorical gimmicks and posturing as well as major conceptual problems, but I'll content myself with a few representative issues...
...The corporations' new abilities to shift capital, plan operations, and coordinate production and sales in multiple sites throughout the world makes it imperative for us to think in global terms as well...
...Editors: In order to help move the United States "toward a sane defense policy," Bogdan Denitch [in Dissent, Summer 1982] calls for "a fundamental examination" by the democratic left of "the assumption behind U.S...
...interests in a way that ties us to unpopular and repressive regimes," as if U.S...
...Thus he finds that I "in effect" characterize U.S...
...development of first-strike weaponry to the U.S...
...The democratic left must do more than nod to the Third World...
...How would an American "democratic left" program bring this under control...
...In the heady days of the American Celebration of the 1950s, end-of-ideologists proclaimed the solution to the class struggle: in a welfare state financed by high taxes, high corporate profits and high workers' wages would be compatible...
Vol. 30 • April 1983 • No. 2
