LETTERS
On Housing in America Editors: Richard Appelbaum, Peter Dreier, and Michael Harrington ("A Faded Dream: Housing in America," Dissent, Winter 1984) rightly argue that the free market cannot...
...As . . . the world has not yet reached that point, socialist governments can only implement nonsocialist programs...
...And tyranny exists wherever there is "domination of some over others, whoever the some and the others may be," to quote a phrase by Albert Memmi from the Summer 1981 issue of Dissent...
...has the military strength" to intervene in situations like Grenada, it also showed it will occasionally use that strength...
...Martha regrets the violence in the North, but she believes that IRA operations are a legitimate response to the injustice of partition and British and Protestant discrimination and violence...
...It is impossible to be in the presence of Maya Lin's sculpture without feeling the overwhelming presence of the 57,939 Americans who gave their lives for this country...
...It works well within its own sphere, but at most has a marginal influence on the actions of large corporations and multinationals...
...I would expect leftist governments in a democratic society to hold power only about 20 percent of the time...
...Yet Communist nations which have suppressed free enterprise in the name of "socialism" have suffered adverse consequences...
...Let us begin to honor our soldiers for fighting to end the institution of war...
...Its "advice centers" disseminate legal information and help the nationalist people organize to solve community problems...
...q Discrimination in Baseball Editors: Liked the Spring '84 issue of Dissent—a bit heavy in spots but, overall, nicely balanced...
...On Housing in America Editors: Richard Appelbaum, Peter Dreier, and Michael Harrington ("A Faded Dream: Housing in America," Dissent, Winter 1984) rightly argue that the free market cannot solve America's housing problem, but their proposed solutions neglect an important consideration: most Americans don't want to live in any kind of public housing...
...The classic rights named in the Declaration would not be "unalienable" unless they were also equal...
...And a nation that calls itself a "democracy" is only justified in so doing if it aspires to realize that ideal...
...There are three areas that I would like to see you explore or at least comment upon in the next year or so...
...Sculptures like Frederick Hart's no more...
...The task of the legislator-politician, of management, of the parent, of the would-be group leader is to demonstrate convincingly the superior cogency of what he or she proposes and so to earn the grant of authority to carry it out...
...The pro-British bias in the media and government censorship of Republicans operate to distort American understanding of "the troubles...
...Most people want to live in detached, singlefamily homes, and they want to own their homes individually rather than collectively...
...KEVIN GLEASON q A Word on Neoliberalism Editors: The growth of neoliberalism certainly warrants discussion by democratic socialists...
...Despite government harassment and repression, Sinn Fein received 42 percent of the Catholic vote in the June 1983 national election...
...I believe that America has PVS, and it is well that it does...
...Howe clearly has more insight than most leftist commentators and is to be applauded for it...
...The alternative is for socialists to cling to power while applying "austerity," and let their disillusioned followers drift back to the Communists or other extremists...
...Grenada: `Twas a Famous Victory," Winter 1984...
...BEN WALKER New York q Proposals for Discussion Editors: I am glad to renew my subscription to Dissent, having found the articles both of high quality and consistent with my principles...
...This ex-soldier who survived Vietnam can best be honored by absolutely refusing to honor the war he fought in...
...q The Vietnam Memorial Editors: Nicolaus Mills finishes his article "Architectural Politics: The Vietnam Memorial" in the Winter 1984 issue of Dissent with a question that may well be finally becoming, as Mills describes it, an "immediate and human question: Are we prepared to honor those soldiers who survived Vietnam while refusing to honor the war they fought...
...She hopes that Sinn Fein's electoral gains, IRA activities, and international pressure will achieve reunification...
...First, an analysis of the British newsmagazine the Economist...
...Unfortunately, Frederick Hart's sculpture is a step in the wrong direction...
...But Jim Sleeper's "Neoliberalism's Hesitation Dance" (Dissent, Spring 1984) is distressingly superficial—long on rhetoric and short on serious analysis of the neoliberal program and its ideological underpinnings...
...Each participating family could receive title to their house after living in it for a specified number of years and paying a nominal sum...
...I do not, however, see any point in being doctrinaire about housing...
...and in that its net benefit was clearly positive and human (despite the original motives...
...But, to paraphrase his retort to Stephen Soiffer in the Letters section of the Winter 1984 issue, what would he propose as an alternative to the invasion—an indefinite period of rhetorical criticism of the Coard-Austin group...
...I would argue for a modified version of that theory...
...One could argue that socialist parties should stay in opposition, even refuse to govern, until capitalism has increased wealth to that point of abundance...
...This too is part of the lesson of Grenada...
...In 1918, shortly before partition, the vast majority of the Irish voted in a nationwide referendum for freedom and independence for all of Ireland...
...Besides showing that the U.S...
...I regret that Howe doesn't feel that the plight of the Grenadians represented an extreme enough case to support the invasion based on its net effects (rather than its alleged motivation...
...These houses could be homesteaded to lower-income families...
...This means scrapping—or at least severely limiting—the authors' plans for "limited equity cooperatives" and "public utility housing...
...They have been campaigning for lower wages as the only way to get stalled economies moving again, and I would like to see their sophisticated arguments answered and refuted...
...In Martha's view, partition is and always has been illegitimate...
...The boundaries were drawn so as to ensure a Protestant majority in the North...
...It seeks self-determination for the Irish people through an all-Ireland election...
...Moreover, the U.S...
...The greatest way to honor the survivors of Vietnam, those who died there as well as those who experienced that war on the streets of this country and in front of their television tubes, would be to make it the last one, the last war...
...Such a program would create millions of socially useful jobs, reduce the price of housing by expanding the supply, and—most important— give people homes of their own...
...Maya Lin has done much to honor the memory of those who died in Vietnam, as Mills notes, and her sculpture, by doing that, also honors those who came home from Vietnam...
...Ideally socialism will distribute wealth on the basis of need, or of justice...
...it requires a vigorous and detailed response, one devoid of the chatty and irrelevant asides that mar Sleeper's article Louis F COOPER Bethesda, MD q 383...
...Let us hope that it will mature from the experience...
...MARK KOERNER Portland, Oregon q "Democracy in the Workplace" Editors: Robert A. Dahl's "Democracy in the Workplace," in the Winter 1984 issue, might have made a stronger argument for his case, I thought reading it, by making the point that democracy, in the workplace, the government, the home, must have the consent of the governed...
...Third, comment on socialist governments...
...Progressive and socialist movements should be a short term in power made possible by an increase of wealth in the last couple of decades, and institute certain reforms so popular as to be irreversible—and then follows another generation in the political wilderness...
...However, one minor complaint...
...The antithesis of democracy is not monarchy or oligarchy (pace Michels) or even "Communism" (pace Reagan), as such, but tyranny, as the patriots of 1776 knew...
...The war there was lost, but the lives are not necessarily lost in vain...
...Sleeper might be surprised to learn that Harvard in the mid-tolate '70s had a fairly sizable contingent of socialist and other progressive activists—probably one of the largest campus lefts in the country...
...Unfortunately, he only sees that as "might," not "is...
...I do not see free enterprise as synonymous with capitalism...
...Subsequent opinion polls repeatedly show that most Irish people favor reunification...
...Madison, in the 10th Federalist paper, shows that there is a place for something like oligarchy, where "pure," face-to-face democracy is impractical...
...ROBERT BLAIR Arlington, Va...
...Sinn Fein's primary objective is the reunification of Ireland...
...I would be interested in the thoughts of Lester Thurow or Robert Heilbroner on this issue...
...381 An important step in that process is to begin to change the way we educate our children concerning the "honor of war...
...War no more...
...It is in this way that a government will derive its just authority from the consent of the governed...
...If people want to own the houses they live in, why not structure public policy accordingly...
...Obviously, if what is said here of democracy is true, it is an an ideal yet to be realized, one that deserves to be approximated as rapidly as possible...
...She asserts that the American media receives most of its information regarding Northern Ireland from British sources...
...The Veterans' Administration labels some survivors of the war in Vietnam with PVS, Post Vietnam Syndrome...
...I have no idea what "chilly" means in this context, but the attempt to pin part of the blame for neoliberalism on "the 'rationalistic' elites at such places as Harvard" is pretty far-fetched...
...Rodney has every right to be proud of what he wrote, but to make his "intervention" (and, somewhat more plausibly, that of the Negro press) the centerpiece of his review seems far-fetched...
...R. A. ATHEARN Friday Harbor, Wash...
...State Department, in an apparent violation of the right to free speech, denies visas to Irish Republicans...
...Sinn Fein is confident that an all-Ireland election would result in reunification, if only the British would permit such an election and abide by the result...
...It reminds me of childhood-type memories of soldiers and war, but my vision has changed with the experience...
...In neither case can it be universally applied, nor universally suppressed...
...A house is not a steel mill...
...Second, the issue of free enterprise...
...Must we all experience the same thing to learn...
...JOHN RHODES Dunstable, Mass...
...For an authentic democracy requires that interpersonal relations be persuasive, never coercive, that those called to rule be freely chosen on the strength of a demonstrated competence...
...in that it was generally condemned as violating international standards and commitments made by virtue of membership in international bodies...
...It was based on a questionable policy, hypocritically defended—but the results were beneficial to the Grenadians...
...For example, why not implement a massive WPA-type countercyclical program to build single-family houses...
...Grenada resembles the Cambodian invasion (and perhaps also Tanzania's invasion of Uganda) in that it was not done out of humanitarian concern for the local population...
...Neoliberalism poses a challenge to conventional liberals and democratic socialists alike...
...In the past, men honored their soldiers for fighting and winning...
...Honor those who survived as well as those who died there, but never ever honor that war, or any war anymore...
...q Grenada Editors: Hooray for Irving Howe...
...Whatever motivated Branch Rickey in his strange mixture of greed, foresight, and religiosity, it can hardly be argued that he gave a damn one way or the other about what the Daily Worker said...
...As a fan who transferred allegiance to Ebbets Field when Jackie Robinson joined the Dodger line-up without benefit of reading the Daily Worker, I'm a little put off by Lester Rodney's review in that issue of Baseball's Great Experiment by Jules Tygiel...
...It is probably the best news weekly in the world, and insinuates its conservative, probusiness propaganda so persuasively that I find myself being influenced by it...
...Moreover, Sleeper's venture into cocktail-party sociology is annoying—for example, "He's a young writer of fairly typical neoliberal pedigree: prep school, the chilly Harvard College of the 1970s, then on to the precocious circle at the Washington Monthly, and finally to glossy, 'responsible' national journalism...
...Equality, it seems to me, is at issue only as far as individual rights are concerned...
...Being a good socialist, I advocate social ownership of the basic means of production and distribution...
...PETER B. DENISON Somerset, Mass...
...Maya Lin's memorial has concentrated the power of those men whose names it holds, and that power overwhelms me whenever I am there...
...Yet this can only be done where there's enough to go around...
...When socialists, as in France, achieve power, they can implement reforms such as shorter work weeks, better vacations, medical programs, decentralization, but cannot control the economy unless they compromise their principles...
...The point is that the educational and social backgrounds of the neoliberals are of minor importance...
...An alternative public-housing policy would take popular aspirations more actively into account...
...Consequently, government housing policies should focus on making private homeownership as widespread as possible...
...q What a Sinn Fein Member Has to Say Editors: As you have been carrying, over the years, some articles on conditions and problems in Ireland, you and your readers may be interested to know that Martha McClelland, a leading member of Sinn Fein, recently visited America and spoke here about the conflict in Northern Ireland, and what she had to say...
...He is the first leftist critic I've read who recognizes that Grenada might be more reasonably compared to the Cambodian invasion by Vietnam than to the invasion of Afghanistan by the U.S.S.R...
...Whatever the outward form of governance, the crucial question is, "How are the governors chosen, democratically or not...
...I feel that free 382 enterprise is at least as consistent with a socialist system as it is with capitalism...
...But the British and Protestants rejected the results, arrested officials of Sinn Fein, which had won 73 of 105 seats for a proposed national parliament, and created Northern Ireland...
...Sinn Fein is active as both a social and political organization...
Vol. 31 • July 1984 • No. 3
