LETTERS
Editors: I was impressed by Bob Kuttner's article, "Jobs," in the Winter 1984 Dissent. I was struck by the boldness and simplicity of the "procurement" approach to full employment and economic...
...Surely, Rosenberg isn't thinking of different benefits for women of different races, marital backgrounds, marital prospects, or other features of their "distinct personal and class-cultural histories...
...That the politics of democratic states should come to this is neither pleasant nor desirable...
...He thinks the whole realm is an epiphenomenon of domestic politics and wishes it would go away...
...Some strategies for procurement-based development will not work—Carter's alternative-energy industry is one example...
...But I'm less pessimistic than he is...
...The mass, public opposition to government policy, indeed the active and intense expression of this opposition, is the essence of democracy...
...Pointing first to the experience of World War II—when, through government procurement contracts, not only the military but the civilian economy as well received an unprecedented growth stimulus—Kuttner provokes the reader into imagining what could be done if useful goods were produced by such a method instead of tanks and bombs...
...One expects more from an editor of Dissent...
...Priceman distinguishes between them, magisterially rejecting both...
...The second omission, male unemployment, cries out for serious attention and concern, not acquiescence...
...I hope Dissent takes up the challenge of procurementbased employment, and encourages debate around the "centralization" and "soft-hard" questions...
...What are American counterparts that would make sense given our political economy...
...He thinks that continuation of the cold war threatens democracy but that "ending the cold war would entail social and political upheavals East and West that may put democracy at risk where it exists"—which means in the West...
...The World War II mobilization was clearly significant...
...They do not really want to move into the wasteland sprawled along the fringes of metropolitan areas...
...Nor did I express "disdain" for them...
...Isaac's remarks about the alleged similarity of my views to those of the Pentagon and the CIA are sheer demagoguery unworthy of someone associated with a reputable university...
...The contemporary movement by some feminists and trade unionists to raise the wage levels of "women's jobs" must figure prominently in any discussion of women's economic standing...
...Isn't it enough that they add to the awful waste of our physical, psychic, and moral resources, and keep us from more constructive pursuits...
...Writing last January, I saw little point in once more going over ground that had been debated countless times here and in Europe since at least 1981, a debate certainly familiar to Dissent readers...
...How to build in countercyclical labor-market stabilizers, so that a sudden drop in demand for, say, autos doesn't suddenly displace thousands of workers...
...Protest marches and "demos" are certainly legitimate expressions of democracy, but so are free elections and the debates and decisions of elected parliaments...
...A second major question involves the continuity of production and employment...
...This brings me to the first of two surprising omissions: "comparable worth...
...7. Now to the ideological punch line, the "preferred family form...
...The Swedes have done very well at devising a system of sabbaticals, shared "short-time," anticipation of redundancies, early retirement, and so on, to take up the periodic slack...
...As for civil disobedience, the more violent forms of it were overwhelmingly rejected by the German peace movement according to Richard LOwenthal, a frequent and long-time contributor to Dissent...
...threats to civil liberties and public order," for I have no first-hand knowledge of the German (or British) movement...
...What exactly this means is then left to our imagination, and Wrong provides no analysis of the causes and strategies of the superpower rivalry of which the latest arms race is a part...
...What about it is compatible with "left-liberal values," and where does that leave the missiles and the arms race...
...The AFL–CIO executive board speaks of a short-term stimulus, through infrastructure repair, aimed at bridging the gap until the private recovery takes shape...
...A Dutch government pledged to carry out the NATO decision also won an election, but the verdict was not clear-cut and the government coalition itself is split on deployment...
...And why bother with the counterdeployment, since that preponderance "will not be eliminated" by the new missiles...
...The model here is MITI of Japan, tough, far-sighted, and a function of worldmarket trends...
...How...
...in the Democratic Left (March–April 1984) is that "women's work" does not provide an adequate family wage and therefore we must transcend our employment demands and instead enlarge the socialwelfare programs on which women (and children) so heavily depend...
...Surprising here is not so much his analysis of the European peace movement, which sounds remarkably like the analysis of the CIA, as his satisfaction that NATO (which is not a democratically elected government but an alliance system with its own complicated military and bureaucratic institutional apparatus) has prevailed over the most massive and organized popular movement to confront European states in the postwar era...
...But for purposes of public policy, what's wrong with treating them as a "unified entity...
...To quote a figure from America's own democratic heritage—"if this be treason, then make the most of it...
...This is a sad perspective for "Americans of leftliberal values...
...recently divorced mothers from throughout the class structure (including many, especially among whites, who are likely to remarry and be again part of twoearner, male-and-female headed families...
...How to decide, as a society, what to produce, in the absence of an overarching wartime consensus...
...The government could not compete with a private economy fueled by savings and capital availability...
...Public policy should also recognize this diversity, rather than holding up one type of family (generally the malebreadwinner, female-homemaker, plus kids model) as the norm, compared to which all others are "broken" or "pathological...
...He also suggests that the government did not do all that bad a job coordinating the effort, and that the high rates of spending, and the nagging inefficiencies, were more than amply compensated for by the fantastic rates of economic development attained...
...This is the crucial fact, not any "exercise of the repressive powers of the state against political protest," for there was no such exercise...
...The thrust of their argument, spelled out further in Ehrenreich's pointedly titled "Will Work Aid Women...
...Henry Moss is right...
...While it could once be said that the American left was "soft on communism" (although this language in itself is another story altogether), I fear that it has become fashionable of late to simply accept the Pentagon's definition of reality...
...Naturally, many women would prefer a well-paying job (especially if child care were available...
...Isaac's peroration about breaking the law suggests that he wishes they had proved to be right...
...Priceman seems to think that the cold war was acceptable back in the 1940s and 1950s, but now that the Soviet Union is much stronger vis-a-vis the United States it has become "a contest between rival power blocs...
...Not as a test of the merits of rival systems, but as a contest between power blocs...
...The opponents of their deployment tend to exaggerate the risks: with or without the missiles there are enough explosives around...
...I should dearly love to see a negotiated disarmament agreement with the Russians, but I am not persuaded that the absence of one is all the fault of Ronald Reagan nor that democracy is imperiled if we have to wait another generation or so...
...So I decided, wisely or not, to limit myself to the politics of the issue at the time of writing when the protest demonstrations were petering out and the stationing of the missiles was proceeding peacefully...
...I think that the redevelopment of the large urban metropolises provides the best opportunity for full, constructive employment and sustained growth...
...Verso's Exterminism and Cold War is an interesting collection of essays on these problems, which attempts not to deny or paper over the malign actions and intentions of the Soviet Union in parts of the world, and to explain the new cold war...
...Unlike Willy Brandt, neither Mr...
...Wrong asks us to believe that the suspension of the NATO decision (the deployments) "would have cast a shadow on democratic government itself...
...As 1 see the missile "victory," I cannot rejoice in it...
...This will require a great deal of centralized command and control, and a vast division of labor...
...CARL BLUMENTHAL Jersey City, N.J...
...To reaffirm NATO and "partially" restore the military balance of power, Wrong appears to be saying...
...The editors of Dissent, correctly assuming that I approved of the NATO decision, had asked me to write a comment no longer than four pages ( I took five) to be printed with Bogdan Denitch's equally brief negative statement...
...Indeed, civil disobedience is a democratic practice, designed to make a government responsive when all else fails, and premised upon the assumption of the ultimate responsibility of government officials...
...q BARBARA EHRENREICH Replies 1. Frances Piven and I do not propose expanded social welfare programs as an alternative to well-paying jobs...
...Or that (like me) they ought to be read out of the ranks of the "democratic left" because they happen to agree on a foreign policy issue with Kohl, Thatcher, and Reagan...
...As extraordinary as it may seem, Ehrenreich and Piven apparently welcome the long-term growth of state-supported welfare programs as a liberation from the oppressive, male-dominated nuclear family—what Ehrenreich has earlier dubbed the "private-sector welfare system...
...We can all agree that in the short run expanded welfare-state programs could help minimize the suffering of growing numbers of women and children living together in poverty...
...Why should "another round or two" of rearmament be a greater threat than in the past, if— and the qualification is essential—we avoid future misadventures like the Vietnam War...
...Worse still, the benefits are barely sufficient for subsistence...
...Denitch and I did not see each other's contributions before publication...
...5. There is no evidence that "the social and psychological problems" of female-headed families have any source other than poverty...
...He would do well to carefully consider the remarks by Bogdan Denitch, who stated the strategic liabilities of the Euromissiles...
...But this requires much political work, and a task-oriented, nuts-and-bolts debate about particulars...
...The authors thus ignore the distinct personal and class-cultural histories of women whose lives may be similar at a particular moment but whose broader life chances differ substantially...
...If the Russians' purpose in deploying their SS-20 missiles was the "usable nuclear superiority" to bring about the "Finlandization" of Europe suggested by Wrong, they were just as misguided as is our side in its counterdeployment...
...Wrong's brief reiteration of cold-war platitudes is disturbing, but it hardly distinguishes him from many others on the "democratic left...
...It is by itself not a momentous, certainly not a conclusive, event...
...Mr...
...I merely remarked that they often antagonized rather than converted nonparticipants...
...The Euromissiles affair must thus be seen as an episode within a historic process now completing its fourth decade...
...Long-term, never-married welfare mothers...
...Politics, especially perhaps left-liberal politics, is too important to be left to such romantically self-indulgent sectarianism...
...Priceman means to suggest by his reference to "the highest priority...
...Rebuilding the great cities of the Northeast and Midwest will work...
...Building new subway cars would also be a great thing, but what kind of jobs would subway riders be going to: useful, productive jobs at decent wages, or marginal service jobs...
...2. It is true that poor women are diverse in race, class background, and so on...
...that nearrevolutions would break out in the West if arms spending and the cold war ended as "indispensable props for the internal status quo...
...II Editors: Dennis Wrong's comment on the deployment of the Euromissiles ("Pershings Over Europe...
...Popular demonstrations, marches, plebiscites—even civil disobedience— might force Kohl and Thatcher to alter their 510 policies, revealing "extraordinary political weakness and instability...
...I Editors: Whether one says "No" to the Euromissiles with Bogdan Denitch or welcomes their deployment as a NATO victory with Dennis Wrong (in "Pershings over Europe...
...The data they draw on are by now woefully familiar...
...The politics of opposition, particularly in regard to a global issue such as nuclear arms, must of necessity be confrontational...
...Editors: I'm a fugitive from the '60s, a descendant of shopkeepers and socialists, who now vacillates in ideology between economic democracy and neoliberalism...
...I agree with Wrong that in proceeding to carry out its deployment decision, NATO has won a victory...
...In a period of high unemployment it was relatively easy to organize teams of workers to build new "pioneer villages" to be lived in and maintained by the team workers and their families...
...Again, blacks bear the highest rates: male unemployment of 25 percent and unemployment of female house508 hold heads of 45 percent...
...How to generate the political consensus for the full production/full employment strategy whose technical feasibility is so obvious...
...3. The demoralizing effect of welfare is an issue I had thought we had handled rather well in our article...
...True, as Wrong points out, "the Reagan administration's loose words" and the "popular apprehensions aroused" by them put some life into "pacifist-neutralist movements...
...An entire generation of Americans has gained from the public interest in science and technology spurred by the program...
...I did not, as Mr...
...Surely it was always that, which in no way precludes a choice of the West as infinitely preferable on the scale of liberal and democratic values...
...But in what sense...
...Once again: welfare is demoralizing because it is designed to be demoralizing, to discourage people from enrolling...
...We go to some length to argue that a truly adequate "safety net" would empower women (and men) in their workplace struggles (a point well made in The New Class War, by Richard Cloward and Frances Piven...
...As it is, all too many women remain in oppressive, abusive, and even violent relationships because they can see no economic alternatives...
...What he refuses to acknowledge is that popular majorities in the NATO countries don't share his rejection of the NATO decision or of NATO itself...
...President Reagan is not my favorite president, but he was fairly elected and not solely, nor even primarily, because he was a "cold warrior...
...q Women and Poverty Editors: Barbara Ehrenreich and Frances Fox Piven's "The Feminization of Poverty" in the Spring 1984 Dissent is an opening sally in the debate as to whether full employment or the further elaboration of the welfare state serves the best long-term interests of America's poor women and children...
...Political unity cut through what might otherwise have been significant obstacles to economic progress in those cases, but a question is raised for the "procurement" theory: where must we move now to secure a similar level of political consensus and active public involvement...
...There are many difficult questions to be asked, and no easy answers, but it would seem from Wrong's comment that he prefers simply to repeat the prognoses of the current cold-war consensus...
...The proponents delude themselves as to the benefits...
...But neither of us is a strategic expert, and there are presumptive experts on both sides who have been heard from at length...
...The low level of women's wages and the fact that women are the majority of welfare-state program recipients and workers lead (mislead) the authors to conclude that we should forget about that stale old jobs/income equation and simply expand the number and kind of welfare-state programs...
...The NATO missile decision was made when Carter was president and was not an issue in the 1980 election, in contrast to the European elections of 1983...
...If women's wages leave them and their children in or near poverty, why not fight to raise their wages...
...As feminists, we prefer to recognize and respect the diversity of American families...
...The subject is so distasteful to Mr...
...Buy it, or resign yourselves to America "pursuing a more aggressive unilateral policy of resisting the Soviet Union...
...The present situation in Holland, incidentally, is something else...
...Nor has this been evident in other Western democracies, or in Japan, all countries that devote much lower proportions of their resources to military purposes...
...I don't pretend to be "a learned student of contemporary democratic theory," but I do lay claim to some understanding of the grubby realities of democracy in practice...
...Isaac finds them unworthy of the slightest notice...
...I believe the materials, labor, and energy requirements of reconstruction will be immense, especially in the light of the continuity of progress...
...Finally, many left-liberal industrialpolicy theoreticians would probably cringe at the suggestion that NASA and the Pentagon have been archetypical nonmarket procurement-planning bodies whose operations might be usefully studied...
...An active, involved, continuously educated population can make these things work for us, and in a fashion that would make the paternalist American corporations, MITIs, and Soviet Five-Year Plans fade from memory...
...The values of "community" and "cooperation" were extolled...
...But the frustration of the peace movement, and its reliance upon a strategy of "intense opposition," is simply a testament to the failure of NATO governments to respond to more normal forms of opposition, and to repeal a dangerous and fateful decision...
...Priceman overestimates the impact of the cold war on Western societies, probably because, like most liberal Americans, he refuses to see the autonomous reality of international relations and foreign policies clearly enough to cope with them...
...The critical fact is that we are both addicted to the arms race, and will always find reasons for our next move in the other side's last move...
...Recently I picked up yours and found that it fit my mood of nostalgia for the rightness of the old cause and honesty about the historical failure of socialism...
...The unpopular war in Vietnam provoked much social turmoil in the United States, but the Nixon-Ford-Carter years of detente were hardly marked by tumultuous social change...
...2, 1984) provides an informed and wise account of the missiles issue in Germany...
...The protest movements, it is worth noting, were not independent of the elections and waned after the vote was in, months before the missiles were deployed...
...At least he mentions these events, whereas Mr...
...The private sector cannot do it under any circumstances, and yet the people living in or near these areas understand the great potential—social, economic, and cultural—of urban life...
...I see no convincing evidence in support of either 512 eventuality...
...Leading black intellectuals and policy-makers (among others) grappling with the overwhelming rise in female-headed households also view welfare programs separated from jobs and real training as demoralizing and contributing to the further disintegration of the black family...
...There is now an openness and orientation to the great potential available to us in new technologies—we are, as a whole, less susceptible to mythology and dogma as a result...
...The elections, like the deployment, were good for the continuation of the cold war and the arms race, and hence for NATO as their symbolic institutionalization in the West...
...On the question of the strategic and political value of the missiles, Wrong provides no argument in support of his "Yes" contention...
...6. We do think women should have other options than "the oppressive, male-dominated nuclear family...
...A marriage that is "Pershings over Europe...
...Perhaps we have here a true political consensus and a basis for popular mobilization...
...Dissent and other journals should provide a forum for this debate—on a NASA-style procurement strategy for our economy and our cities—perhaps in the context of rebuilding the Democratic party constituency and winning over a few key members of Congress to the idea...
...In order to argue that there is now a critical mass of impoverished women who can serve as the vanguard for expanding the welfare state, they treat a statistical category—female poverty—as a unified entity...
...HENRY Moss Bronx, New York q BOB KUTTNER Replies Bravo to Henry Moss for advancing the full-employment discussion...
...He identifies precisely the right difficult issues...
...Isaac nor Mr...
...But this raises more problems than it solves...
...The relevant issue was whether it necessarily was democratic to demand that governments reject policies they had strongly advocated in successful election campaigns just a few months earlier in response to continuing single-issue demonstrations and protests against those policies...
...It is not taken lightly or belligerently, for, unlike the battle of ideas, in real battle the state always wins...
...After World War II further government procurement efforts failed, as in the famous collapse of the ambitious postwar housing construction program...
...I was struck by the boldness and simplicity of the "procurement" approach to full employment and economic growth...
...To break the law, and to accept the consequences, is the most difficult decision...
...Priceman thinks I present "a sad perspective...
...None of the rationalizations stand up very well to informed logical scrutiny (except perhaps to that of "experts on military matters," according to Dennis Wrong), but they are effective, or have been so far, in political reality...
...The answers will take time and careful thought, but we have the advantage of beginning with the right questions...
...In the long run it would be best to work for an economy capable of providing secure jobs and adequate incomes, still the bedrock for the preferred family form: stable male-and-female headed households...
...While it can't be denied that ending the cold war would entail social and political upheavals East and West that may put democracy at risk where it exists, democracy's prospects would be at least equally uncertain if cold war and arms race were to continue for another major round or two of perverse shadowboxing...
...Isaac, however, will not be denied the chance to run through the standard list of ritual epithets about "cold-war platitudes," "Pentagon definitions of reality," and the like...
...Thus while "instability" is inherent in the politics of the peace movement, the "threats to civil liberties and public order," which Wrong seems to attribute to the peace movement, represent in fact the probability of the exercise of the state's repressive powers against political protest...
...but this ignores the social and psychological problems faced by women and children (particularly boys) living in families without men...
...This fanciful notion used to be summarized as a "guaranteed annual income for all," and I list it—along with National Health Insurance—as one of the "old ideas" the Democrats seem to have forgotten...
...JAN ROSENBERG Brooklyn, New York q held together only by the wife's fear of destitution is not worth saving...
...This is particularly troubling...
...It is the exercise of those political rights that distinguishes democratic states from authoritarian ones...
...and women working at low-level service jobs supplementing their low wages with Food Stamps and other government programs—all these are thrown together in this statistical melange...
...I would add that Kuttner's solution takes a long step beyond the currently prevailing "industrial policy" proposals...
...The list of European social democrats—some in office, some in opposition—who supported the NATO decision long before deployment began includes Schmidt, Mitterrand, Mauroy, Craxi, Soares, Owen, Jenkins, Healy, Hattersly, and many others...
...Surely, Kuttner wants us to do more than submit "wish lists" of goods to be produced...
...The procurement plan must be deep and broad enough to ensure that people will be going to jobs that will build even better mass transit systems...
...This "fight" should indeed be given precedence over the missiles—as a subject of scrutiny in all its aspects, in the columns of Dissent...
...How frightening a scenario...
...Isaac claims, "fashionable" on the "democratic left," I can only respond with a gracious bow...
...Isaac think that they all take their cues from the Pentagon or the CIA...
...The debate in the Democratic party has been almost entirely dominated by investment strategy, oriented toward enhanced market penetration by a new, flexible U.S...
...I expected that he would make a military-strategic argument and it would have been easy enough to make a counterargument...
...In a warbound world, however, they would enhance the threat of war...
...It is not only the right that fears the debilitating consequences of welfare...
...Isaac's remark that "in real battle the state always wins" suggests that he has a penchant for posturing on behalf of noble lost causes...
...Most disturbing, considering Wrong's reputation as an astute and open-minded social theorist, is his glorying in NATO's "victory in proceeding smoothly to carry out its decision in face of intense domestic opposition in West Germany and Britain, encouraged and often promoted by the Soviet Union...
...We should not really care too much about how the Soviets rationalized their SS-20s to themselves, nor how our side rationalizes its countermove...
...His recent "Letter from Berlin" in Partisan Review (No...
...JEFFREY C. ISAAC Fordham University New York City DENNIS WRONG Replies Jeffrey Isaac and Mark Priceman are annoyed because I did not directly argue the case for the NATO missiles but chose instead to confine myself to noting that deployment was a fait accompli and reflected an electoral consensus...
...I have always thought that military deterrence of the Soviet Union through arrangements for collective security (that is, the "cold war" and NATO) was justifiable and necessary, today as much as over a quarter of a century ago, although I have never thought that everything else ought to be sacrificed to this goal if that's what Mr...
...Under such circumstances, it seems to me that a decision to postpone deployment is a matter of judgment on which democratic principle has little direct bearing...
...By the way, we can imagine "giving up on the goal of full employment for men," to fight instead for adequate social welfare programs for them...
...Like most others who analyze the "feminization of poverty," they compress women in diverse situations into this new rubric...
...While his basic point—"Yes" to the Pershings—is outrageous enough, even more incredible is his way of framing the discussion...
...Could organic food faddists and protectors of small, rare wildlife have led the war mobilization in the '40s...
...Isaac suggests, even "seem to attribute to the peace movement...
...What is the fight about, not from the perspective of the 1940s and '50s, but of (the real) 1984...
...About one thing we should have no illusions...
...Of course, NATO is not an elected body, but its decisions and membership in it are subject to parliamentary approval in the nations belonging to the alliance...
...There was a high degree of political unity...
...in the Spring 1984 Dissent could not be more wrongheaded...
...Priceman that he even objects to any inquiry into the reasons why the Soviet Union installed the SS-20s and increased its arms buildup during detente...
...Why did the "nearly 40 years" of Soviet "preponderance in both nuclear and conventional strength"—claimed to my mild surprise by Dennis Wrong—not result in Europe's "Finlandization" long 509 ago...
...Nothing is more important for the democratic left than to think through the details of a full-production economy, and its politics...
...On the question of the geopolitical implications of the new European arms race, Wrong simply reiterates the received wisdom of the Economist, that the new NATO deployments are a (necessary) response to the Soviet attempt "to separate Europe from America and frighten it into acquiescence in future crises and conflicts...
...This would certainly be more feasible than expanding welfare programs in the current political/ deficit climate...
...If my views are now, as Mr...
...The same is true for most consumer goods...
...Women on welfare repeatedly reaffirm their aspirations for decent jobs at decent wages...
...MARK PR10EMAN Larchmont, N.Y...
...decentralization...
...I did no more than report that many observers on the scene had erroneously predicted that such threats would materialize, some of them supporters of the movement who used this as a second-line argument against the 511 missiles...
...others will...
...But you cannot play at war—even a cold or sham one—without scaring and arousing some of the people...
...There is, finally, the question of centralization vs...
...Imagine someone urging us to respond to low wages for men in this way—to give up on the goal of full employment for adequate wages and fight instead for more Food Stamps, health services, and welfare...
...It will also require centralizing types of technology...
...And in that reality, the cold war and the arms race have become indispensable props for the internal status quo, East and West...
...A sophisticated advocacy will moderate its claims of added physical security—for instance, Wrong's "partial" restoration of the military balance—and stress political gains...
...Stay Our Course...
...By now I've read every major publication on the nonsectarian left...
...And, how to democratize both decision-making and execution of a full proCuction strategy, so that it doesn't end up looking like the Synfuels corporation...
...And the same could be said for the NASA-led space program...
...In the same sense in which it was the victor in three elections in NATO nations that he mentions and in one he does not: the one that made Ronald Reagan our president...
...Does Mr...
...It takes cold warriors to have a cold war, and Reagan has been about the most effective imaginable model for it in our time...
...in the Spring 1984 issue) should depend in the final analysis on one's reading of the nature and current state of the East-West antagonism...
...In practicing such a politics, activists and ordinary citizens must make difficult, consequential choices...
...Priceman seems to hope (or fear...
...We must actively involve labor, minorities, and urban high schools and colleges...
...Only time will tell if you will bring me back to the social democratic fold or precipitate my next subscription—to the Washington Monthly...
...In Wrong's view, not only NATO but democratic government itself had to be reaffirmed by the deployment of the fearsome, unemployable weapons for their supposed political effect...
...Wrong, a learned student of contemporary democratic theory, apparently believes that a bureaucratic decision, taken by the leaders of West European NATO governments in an alliance dominated by the United States—a decision vocally and actively opposed by a mass movement representing the most vigorous popular participation to emerge in recent years—is the supreme expression of democracy...
...Auto manufacturers know that cars must be replaced after a few years...
...Could conservation 507 and decentralized solar grids really do the trick...
...It was highly successful, technically and organizationally, and it was informed from the start by an active, interested population whose creative potential could be tapped through teamwork and planning...
...4. Comparable worth is important, but this was an article about (and originally entitled) women and the welfare state...
...But many others, especially women of color, have struggled for expanded benefits and more dignified treatment...
...We must avoid corporatist mistakes, and we must realize that processes are under way that are reshaping our urban community...
...Isaac's impassioned defense of mass demonstrations and civil disobedience is utterly beside the point, since 1 never questioned anyone's right to engage in such activities...
...There is no better place than Dissent to take up that challenge...
...What these families need most desperately is not a man, but a man's wage...
...I hope he is right...
...How would a computer for every classroom, a procurement area suggested by Kuttner, be part of a sustained reemployment effort in the electronics area...
...There is a very serious theoretical and practical debate taking place about the connection of the arms race with American geopolitical and economic interests in the Third World, and the strategic importance of the "European theater" in this regard...
...Another example can be found in the New Deal period...
...industry...
...We cannot compromise with fear of centralization, bureaucracy, and technology...
...What is distinctive is the disdain he expresses for democracy...
...Yet the procapitalist Reagan and the socialist Mitterrand clearly see eye-to-eye on many issues of East-West relations, including Euromissile deployment...
...Events have moved much further in this direction in the succeeding six months: the protests have continued to fade away, both the German SPD and British Labour have toned down and partially backed off from their stands last year, and the Greens have split over, among other things, the influence of Communists in their ranks...
...And they may increase the risk of accidents, which would be horrible but would hardly set off a war not in the making...
...the vast majority would still rather work than go on welfare...
...Yet as soon as the economy showed the slightest signs of recovery, the workers began gradually to return to the "home" town and into the private-sector opportunities they thought might enhance their life styles...
...For democracy to be preserved, nationally and internationally, the highest priority to the good fight against the "evil empire...
...there has been a broad national consensus, and a more than passive intellectual and political participation by the population at large...
Vol. 31 • September 1984 • No. 4
