"Special interests" & American politics an Exchange
Kinsley, Michael & Howe, Irving
On March 8, Irving Howe had a piece on the New York Times Op-Ed page entitled " Special Interest' Cant." Michael Kinsley, an editor of the New Republic, then wrote Howe a letter commenting on it....
...It all depends on how and when you criticize...
...Not only is this to join the right-wing attack on the interests of millions of Americans, it is also to forget that whatever portion of social decency we have achieved these past 50 years—those measures of the "welfare state" that have eased the lives of both the poor and the middle class—is in good part due to the efforts of the labor movement...
...The courageous political leader is the one who doesn't attack special interests as a great Other, but persuades people that we'll all be better off if we relent a bit in our specific demands on the system...
...When an increasing number of constituencies learn to articulate their demands, the result can sometimes be a confusion of voices and a scramble of appetites...
...I think I understand why...
...Their unions have come under sharper attack than at any time since the late 1920s...
...MICHAEL KINSLEY The New Republic Washington, D.C...
...Politics may sometimes be about the "larger" themes of national survival and moral style, but more often it's about the mundane division of power, income, and wealth...
...Being nonunion (and often very inefficient), that airline offers lower prices from which many, including the poor, benefit...
...Combined with similar favors for other organized groups, such "special interest" policies disserve the interests of workers in general —especially would-be workers without jobs...
...When unions help to raise levels of income and thereby of buying power, that helps millions of middle-class people who sell to, deal with, and service the working class...
...To say this is not at all to endorse the unions uncritically...
...suffered badly during the recent recession, and for workers in Detroit, Youngstown, and Gary, Ind., that recession is by no means over...
...They don't bite...
...But Mondale really is the candidate of "special interests"—in the sense that he sees all of us with our various badges on, rather than as fellow citizens wanting basically the same things—and that worries me more...
...Don't you see that this isn't very far from the traditional antiunion argument...
...interest"—has entered our political language...
...Unfortunately, the role of some unions in today's economy is a good example of the special-interest problem...
...They are not something apart or "special": they are integral to our life...
...and we must nevertheless look for some (perhaps limited) political linkage...
...If everyone insists on beating the light by a few seconds, nobody gets anywhere...
...But it's unfair and futile to impugn the motives of anyone who criticizes, say, unions or entitlement programs...
...A new cant phrase—"specia...
...When Franklin Roosevelt used the term, he focused on small groups of the reactionary rich, mean-spirited and anti-social (Dallas before Dallas...
...I share some of the nervousness about Hart's rootless self-invention, and his heart with an "e...
...That is good, intrinsically, and, more often than not, it helps the rest of us...
...What the "welfare state" has done for us is to enable previously mute and oppressed social groups to speak up, at long last, on behalf of their needs and wants...
...and in this moment of spiritless conservatism there seems to be general agreement that the Republic will be endangered if "special interests" aren't curbed...
...I detect a resentment of roughly this flavor in reading and talking to some people of the left about the Democratic primary campaign...
...But when the term is applied to unions, whose members and families may total 40 million people, then one can detect a malicious intent...
...But this wonderful new arrangement wouldn't exist if People Express hadn't pushed Eastern to the brink...
...Consider the logic of your remarks about People Express...
...But when the term is used, as it was by Gary Hart, slyly to attack trade unions, then you're talking about a large and significant segment of the American people...
...I think it would be better if we were to point to the impossible position into which the steel workers have been driven rather than to take a poke at their union...
...It is only, for people on the liberal side, to recognize who their allies are and to refrain from tripping them up when they are already bruised...
...Suppose we have a Democratic president after the election...
...Who is a well-paid, youngish journalist to lecture workers, even steel workers, about greed...
...Yes, the yuppies are needed in any labor-liberal alliance...
...It is the tradition of an elite gentry, a self-ordained patrician class, which supposes itself to be above the battle over "mere" material needs...
...they have suffered heavy blows during the Reagan years...
...Let's recognize that there's an important difference in experience between us...
...The needs of working people ought not to be set off as something apart from the needs of the American people as a whole...
...To a measurable extent, these are the American people—not all of them, of course, but many...
...Now a word, if I may, about yuppies...
...IRVING HOWE Dear Irving, Your piece on "special interests" as a political term of art was especially interesting but (in my opinion) not quite fair to people like Gary Hart who are using it this election year...
...Aren't the neoconservatives, ironically, right in their sighting of a "new class"—except that they failed to anticipate how gracefully these nominally liberal young professionals would ally themselves with the old order...
...Yes, but what are the other consequences —the overall workers' standard of living, their ability to buy cars also, their capacity to defend their rights...
...Since the discussion seems of general interest, it appears below: first Howe's Op-Ed piece, then Kinsley's comment and, after that, Howe's reply.— EDS...
...near Michael, I appreciate the friendly spirit in which you write...
...Suppose he pursues an inadequate policy on domestic matters, failing, say, to press for full employment...
...What troubled me was that, through sly codes about "special interests," he tried to undermine Mondale's major constituency—the unions...
...Is there any real difference between the foregoing "neoliberal" homily and Richardson's Disease...
...In so diversified a country as the United States that is unavoidable...
...If the unions had had their way, air travel would still be regulated, there would be no People Express and no new union role in Eastern...
...Is that a trivial consideration...
...It's not that the more thoughtful people in and around the steel union don't know "protectionism" to be inadequate or at best a stop-gap--they have good plans for reviving and converting the industry—but they also recognize that the one thing they might get through Congress is some sort of "protectionist" bill...
...But there it is...
...The problem is not these evil things called "special interests" that are "apart from" the rest of society, and you're right that it's demagoguery to suggest as much...
...Unfair, because such criticism really can be based on concern for workers and for the poor...
...Many unions are in grave difficulties...
...Surely, this sentiment is not just reaction in disguise...
...Unions have been slow to reexamine their role...
...As you say, "special interests" can be a code word for mean-spirited worker bashing or for patrician political elitism...
...What troubled me about Hart's campaign was not that he attacked some of Mondale's ideas...
...To do that he had to appeal, tacitly at least, to antilabor prejudice...
...But nevertheless, the people who pay the cost of government policies that maintain current wage levels in the steel industry (through lost jobs or merely through higher prices for steel products) are, on average, poorer than steel workers...
...In that situation—the general atmosphere improved, the threat to unionism diminished—I'd think it entirely appropriate to criticize the unions...
...That is a recipe for disaster, both electoral and economic...
...As long as we live in a (sort of) welfare state, there will be conflicts among special interests...
...large portions of the public have succumbed to a sleazy antiunion sentiment...
...When one begins to look into the steel crisis, one sees a multiplicity of factors: the unions did make wage concessions, only, in some instances, to see plants closed anyway...
...Anyway, let me propose a little deal: I'll spread the word that yuppies don't bite if you persuade some of the neoliberal chaps around Gary Hart to read a good history of American labor...
...It seems more reactionary to me when Walter Mondale goes around picking off the interest groups one-by-one, playing on their fear of change by assuring them that all present arrangements will be protected...
...He was, in effect, setting the yuppies against the workers, or at least against their unions...
...Hundreds of thousands of these people have Copyright © 1984 by The New York Times Company...
...In those years the unions were relatively strong and, in my view, too closely intertwined with Lyndon Johnson's policies...
...Now, in these desperate circumstances, can one simply blame the steel union for falling back on "protectionism" at a time when both corporate America and the Reagan administration show little if any concern for its unemployed members...
...The problem is that we're all part of a special-interest conspiracy against the general interest...
...Lately, the phrase has been put to a special use...
...This political tradition claims to care only about highminded, moral concerns: it presents itself as an advocate of "higher" values...
...Neoliberals tend to speak of special interests as if there were no crucial moral and social distinctions to be made among them...
...It's not completely baseless...
...I grew up with the feeling that, mistaken and sometimes even corrupt as one or another union may be, the principle of unionism is . . . well, almost sacred...
...Unions aren't and shouldn't be above criticism...
...There has got to be an alternative to Reaganism other than a reflexive embrace of every traditional Democratic way of acting and thinking...
...television commentators toss the phrase about as if its meaning were transparent...
...It's like gridlock in Manhattan on a Wednesday afternoon...
...I don't think so...
...On some matters (clean air, safety rules at work, national security, and so on) there no doubt is...
...I think such claims are often delusional...
...One could attack the unions' mistaken positions on foreign policy without endangering the gains they had won for their members...
...Suppose that the UAW were wiped off the map, wages of auto workers went down, prices also . . . car buyers would benefit...
...It conveys the impression of something small-minded, narrow-spiritedsay, little groups trying to cover up pollution, or find dubious tax shelters, or keep children from getting needed medicines...
...That's why it seems opportunistic and peculiarly nasty for politicians, some even boasting liberal backgrounds, to snipe at "special interests" when everyone knows they really mean labor...
...It is also, for a while, politically effective...
...It has become a code word for attacking unions, often by political figures intent upon picking up conservative votes within or near the more-or-less liberal arena of the Democratic party...
...Yes, this is thanks to unionism...
...competition from abroad is enabled by governmental subsidies (Brazil, Korea), and no reasonable wage concessions by the union here could in themselves cope with this problem...
...Right now, I'd hesitate to criticize the unions...
...During the Vietnam war I was a sharp critic of the AFL–CIO for its prowar position...
...A true liberal would have chosen to continue an earlier tradition of persuading the yuppies to extend themselves politically and emotionally to the workers, the poor, and the unemployed...
...I'd guess that for you the first major brush with the idea of unionism came during George Meany's support of the Vietnam war...
...What seems to me disturbing in your approach to these matters becomes clear in your comments on People Express and the crisis in steel...
...And to "zap" their unions in the way Hart went about it was to borrow a little from Reagan's arsenal...
...Reach out to yuppies...
...It seems a pity if that keeps young people of liberal inclination from recognizing they share important common goals with the unions...
...When you write, Michael, that "we'll all be better off if we relent a bit in our specific demands on the system," I'd modify that, in light of recent findings about the way the distribution of income has been skewed toward the rich under Reagan, that "we'll all be better off if the rich and powerful in America are made to relent in their steady accumulation of tax privileges, etc...
...When not sheer demagogy, the talk about "special interests" is mostly nonsense...
...The only culprit you mention with regard to steel is the union, but I'm sure you recognize that the steel corporations have been especially inept, narrowminded, selfish...
...My own first impulse is therefore to express solidarity with the unions...
...It is, after all, the unions that brought a measure of dignity to the lives of millions of workers, and the unions that deserve a large share of credit for whatever social reforms we've had these past few decades...
...I have my disagreements with the AFL–CIO leadership on foreign policy, and, besides, no institution should be endorsed uncritically...
...The medical term, I believe, is "Elliot Richardson's Disease...
...Reprinted by permission...
...as if it weren't clearly in the common good to further some and oppose others...
...Not refrain, but hesitate...
...any serious attempt to cope with the havoc wrought in the steel-producing areas requires socioeconomic planning such as this Administration rejects and (here I agree with you) Mondale hasn't given serious public consideration to...
...And suppose the unions fall in line behind this inadequacy...
...These policies are regressive, not progressive...
...Next time you hear a candidate or commentator declaim against "special interests," challenge him to say what he really has in mind—if, that is, he has anything in mind...
...But in the long run, it represents a triumph for democracy...
...A few words in reply: There are special interests—and special interests...
...But "special interests" also refers to a real problem of American democracy, which you are wrong to dismiss...
...Great...
...There would be fewer (though betterpaying) jobs in the airline industry...
...When steel workers win protection from foreign competition, higher steel prices cost jobs for auto workers, and so on...
...In the current Dissent, Jim Sleeper mocks the neoliberal enthusiasm for People Express, the cheap nonunion airline where workers own stock in the company...
...Now I suspect this feeling about unions isn't one you fully share...
...And he was doing this at a time when the yuppies are relatively well-off and large numbers of workers remain jobless...
...Furthermore, today's steel worker (if he's lucky enough to still be employed) is not like the garment worker of 50 years ago: he earns far more than the average American wage...
...Potential occupants of cheap airline seats are a good example of an interest that is genuine but not "special"—that is, not organized—and therefore often unserved by present political arrangements...
...But the neoliberals have been a bit too enchanted with the notion of a general interest transcending the limited interests of various social groups...
...Politicians gravely declare themselves against it...
...There is a long tradition in this country to which the rhetoric of "special interests" is related...
...Futile, because even a "rainbow coalition" of classic Democratic-party interest groups cannot achieve a governing majority of this country anymore...
...He compares it unfavorably to the new arrangement at Eastern, negotiated by the unions, where the workers have a bigger slice of the pie and a role in management of the company...
...If the organized American workers do form a "special interest," it is largely in the sense that they have taken a special beating during the Reagan years...
...Furthermore, a lot of working-class people who can now afford to fly would still be taking the bus or staying at home...
...For the organized workers of America constitute a large segment of the American people...
...Isn't there, however, a discernible general or national interest transcending the interests of all discrete social groups...
Vol. 31 • July 1984 • No. 3
