LETTERS

...DAVID SCHULTZ Saint Peter, Minn...

...In short, "ethnic" union politics was likely as carefully constructed as the "progressive" culture characteristic of 1199's traditional leaders...

...LEON FINK Chapel Hill, North Carolina BRIAN GREENBERG Newark, Delaware NICK SALVATORE Replies: The letter of Leon Fink and Brian Greenberg in response to my review of their book is, unfortunately, further evidence of the problems with their work that I noted in the review itself...

...However, for addictive drugs, a use on a given occasion is an advertisement for the next use...

...Black markets for many legal drugs available only under medical supervision (prescription) thrive...

...6) did mention the scrapping of Article 6 of the Soviet Constitution, not even he captured how many of the political demands in Eastern Europe were legalistically defined and fueled or channeled into demands to rewrite or, in the case of Lithuania, to respect their SUMMER • 1990 • 415 Letters constitutional rights...

...The creation of democratic socialism requires the creation of democratic movements and institutions that will support these political and economic changes...

...Perhaps future issues of Dissent will address the legal-constitutional prospects for change...

...Gould's approach has significant problems, while the free-market approach is sheer lunacy...

...q Legal Change in Eastern Europe Editors: Conspicuously absent from the Spring 1990 issue on the prospects for change in Eastern Europe was any sustained discussion of the legal and constitutional reforms that have occurred already in these countries and of the need for further constitutional reforms as prerequisites for the emergence of democratic institutions...

...Therefore, it may reduce, but does not eliminate, the incentive for the existence of black markets and the associated crime...

...Gould's notion of legalization, that is, to "package these substances [marijuana and the opiates] in brown paper wrappers and make them available under some form of medical supervision," does not create a free market in these substances...

...and their reduction of my 414 • DISSENT comments to something called "sociological essentialism" is, to be most generous, a quite poor attempt to follow the tradition of comic farce in political writing that Marx captured so well in his The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte...

...q CORRECTIONS Thanks to a reader in New Delhi for noticing the typo in Irving Howe's article (Spring, p. 186...

...But because we have a long "lead time" for each issue, you have to send us your letter within three weeks after getting an issue of Dissent in order to get it into the next issue...

...The consequence would be widespread abuse as is the case today for tobacco and alcohol...

...We reserve the right to edit letters down to fit our space and to choose which shall be printed...

...Reflexively identifying with the rank-and-file service worker, we learned quickly that much of 1199's history had been shaped for good or ill by other actors, the most important of whom were the union's leaders...

...Now, Salvatore seems to have no patience at all with a labor organization inspired by more than self-interest...

...Such an a priori dismissal of the political left facilitates neat and quick copy...

...In general, one expects better within the pages of Dissent...

...Remixing the ingredients of our telling, the union's history, in his view, boils down to a few basic lessons: left-wing, intellectual Jews colonize a black proletariat...

...Second, Gould would prohibit "the advertising that we accept for alcohol and tobacco...

...To address this problem, Gould favors launching "the most massive educational and advertising campaign in American history to discourage the use of all dangerous substances...

...They offer political pieties when sustained analysis is called for and are unable to understand accurately the evidence upon which they base their views—in this case my review...

...If the authors wished their book to be evaluated as a political tract, they should have indicated as much in the introduction...

...Further, the articles also saw the conversion to market economies as potentially dangerous but necessary conditions for free democratic institutions (Dahl, p. 224...

...None of the articles discussed the importance the different countries and their people have recently placed on constitutional reform, or upon how this appeal to constitutional change is a major move toward Western European style democracy and away from arbitrary rule...

...and finally, the union's leadership crisis reflects the imperial secular universalism of Leon Davis et al...

...For the record, Doris Turner is not my "adopted victim-heroine...

...Limited decriminalization of illegal drugs should merely be a sideshow...

...Nor would I be so presumptuous as to offer an "alternative version of the 1199 story" in so short a space...

...Dispensing the drugs under limited decriminalization might prove difficult...

...416 • DISSENT...

...The second and third sentences in the first paragraph should read as follows: "The word itself is misleading as well as solemn, and I used it only because people on both sides of the debate have been using it...

...it reminds me of the concept of "safe" nuclear weapons...

...The authors generally and strongly emphasized the prospects for economic reform in Eastern Europe and noted the problems in creating new economic and political structures for these countries...

...Full legalization, including commercial production and advertising, would relinquish the power of preference formation to those driven by the profit motive...

...180), who hinted at some of the institutional changes needed to promote democracy, there was no discussion of the importance of rule of law, constitutional structures, and a sympathy for Western-style political structures as crucial to the emergence of free parliamentary governments...

...On the other hand, it is difficult to see how other doctors, preferring money to Hippocratic purity, could be relied upon to provide adequate medical supervision (whatever that might mean...

...Indeed, the biggest "problem of democracy" surfaced when Salvatore's adopted victim-heroine, Doris Turner, took charge: for the first time, intra-union opponents were threatened with violence and an election was flagrantly rigged...

...What is needed in the fight against drugs is more social control over preferences for and availability of the already legal drugs...

...The result, we think, is a mixture of social, institutional, and political history, a blend that we hope allows due credit and blame to workers, union leaders, as well as outside forces...

...The proverbial gremlin dropped a line from David Bromwich's article in the spring issue (p...

...Letters must be kept to about 500 words, typed, double-spaced, and carry the full address and name of the sender...

...q No "Free Market" in Drugs Editors: I appreciate Stephen Jay Gould's observation that the divisions between illegal and legal drugs are not strictly based on the level of harmfulness of the substances (Dissent, Winter 1990...

...1199's "problem of union democracy" is directly attributable to a persistent communist cell within the leadership structure...

...Many of the articles discussed the problem of creating markets in a few years in Eastern Europe when it took centuries in Western Europe (e.g., Cohen and Tobin), but the authors ignored the fact that it also took centuries to create the type of Western democratic institutions they seem to want to create overnight in Eastern Europe...

...Rather, as the review makes clear, I have two basic difficulties with their work: the book is based on quite weak research and the interpretations that follow raise far more questions than they purport to answer...

...This is the major difference between Gould's proposal of limited decriminalization and proposals for legalization...

...Finally, by what mystical process did Fink and Greenberg discern that I now "have no patience at all with a labor organization inspired by more than self-interest...

...As authors, we sought to maintain a focus on the play of individual wills while also exploring the contexts which limited those wills...

...Clearly, under limited decriminalization, significant expenditures for law enforcement and bureaucracy would still be required...

...The subject of my article was something different...

...Even Denitch, fresh from Yugoslavia, neglected to discuss the continuous constitutional battles in this state and the importance of the courts and other constitutionally created structures as crucial to defining individual rights, rights of republics, and so on...

...Julian Martov died in 1923 not 1932...

...To its credit this approach would allow the government a measure of control over the quality of the drugs sold through legal channels...

...Nor is the cultural polarity between leaders and led so neat as Salvatore alleges: the "deep roots" of Turner's religiosity escaped not only Davis but her closest black adviser...

...Just as it is anachronistic to read back the Lindsay Era "collusive" labor-management contracts into prior periods, so it is misleading to group 1199's initial breakthrough confrontations with the hospitals into the later pattern bargaining evident in pubic-sector labor negotiations...

...To Letter Writers • We welcome succinct letters from our readers...

...GUY RAGAN Fort Collins, Colo...

...Nick Salvatore offers an alternative version of the 1199 story...

...hospital unionism, belying its outward trappings as a crusade or social movement, is better understood as an incorporation within a larger pattern of public-sector collective bargaining...

...That serious study, one that can both appreciate and question simultaneously, still awaits its historian...

...But perhaps the story is not so simple...

...Local 1199's history cannot be reduced to a sociological essentialism, an interplay of the Communist Jew, the Liberal Jew, and the Ethnic, Black Worker...

...liberal Jews (as hospital administrators and newspaper publishers) willingly tolerate hospital unionism but no one else does...

...So if you want to write about something that you like, or dislike, in or about Dissent, please do it quickly...

...inflicted upon the more organic, deeply religious, "specific ethnic experience" of Doris Turner and the black rank and file...

...Although Howe (p...

...Yet precisely, because of this joint role," I wrote, "a thorough and searching study of 1199 is needed...

...At the same time, we watched in horror when union leaders tore themselves apart over issues generally troubling the larger left-liberal community, but here given a special twist of personality, race, and politics...

...the "secret Stalinist cabal" is their language (I had called for a more thorough and less disingenuous treatment of the role of the Communist party in 1199...

...For non-addictive drugs, peer pressure advertises effectively...

...It is hard to imagine, on the one hand, how some doctors could be persuaded to administer drugs they believe to be harmful for reasons they consider to be frivolous...

...The book is a poor example of the historian's craft, and no amount of political posturing changes that reality...

...Neglect of a discussion of the special problems in creating a "democratic consciousness" to go with a "market mentality," for example, suggest either unintentional oversight (I hope), unimportance (I hope not), or that in the minds of the authors there is an economic determinism to the prospects of political change in this part of the world...

...In our view, Salvatore's comments amount to a unilateral denunciation of the labor-political tradition bound up in Local 1199...

...Since Salvatore draws entirely on our research to reach his conclusions, how could we—except out of blind loyalty to the traditional union leadership—have missed the same insights...

...Have they so identified with their subject that now they and it have become the new criterion on matters political...

...Letters will not be returned to senders unless they are accompanied by stamped, self-addressed envelopes...

...His approach should be differentiated sharply from the recommendations of market worshipers...

...We were (and remain) sympathetic to the political ends of the union and impressed by the extraordinary achievement of leaders and members alike in carving out a significant, interracial common ground in what had been a no man's land for organized labor...

...My review clearly applauds 1199 both for its collective bargaining gains and for its commitment to social justice...

...But with the exception of Denitch (p...

...Although Dahl is correct that markets may be necessary but not sufficient conditions for democracy, respect for rule of law, constitutional limits on political power, and a willingness to submit the resolution of major political disputes to legislative-legal resolution are perhaps also necessary conditions for a stable democracy...

...The image of black workers as manipulated and acted upon by a scheming, conspiratorial leadership cannot account for the shared agency evident in what one close observer called 1199's extraordinary "culture of organizing...

...Only universal availability would eliminate the black market...

...256...

...Finally, while economic factors may be necessary conditions to the success of political change in Eastern Europe, by no means are they the sole conditions...

...It does not, however, do justice to either the historical record or the recently renewed vigor of Local 1199...

...As a biographer of Eugene V. Debs, Salvatore once speculated sensitively on the gulf separating Debs's American socialism from the ideology of the mass of American workers he tried to recruit...

...Gould thus acknowledges a collective responsibility for individual preference formation, a notion abhorrent to free-market zealots...

...While Leon Davis's tenure of office may have betrayed a whiff of democratic centralism, the problem was one of decisionmaking structure and personality, not some secret Stalinist cabal...