LETTERS
To list all my disagreements with Harold Rosenberg's raid on what he chooses to call "Couch Liberalism" would require more space than you can allot me and more time than I can spare at the...
...There is no excuse for a hatchet job like this, and I think that if Howe is half the man I have thought him to be for many years he will find in himself the moral courage that his present victim has made a hallmark—or enough of it, at any rate, to apologize to Murray Kempton...
...Signed) JOHN WILSON, Notary Public, State of New York, Qualified in Bronx County...
...Had Howe been the author, its subtitle would have been, perhaps, "A Deep and Analytical Study of the Glorious Left in the Thirties...
...Coser believes that it is useless for socialists to advocate policies, in addition to "reestablishing values" and re-stating principles...
...Or, maybe, just to be at odds with Schlesinger, Niebuhr and Bell, Murray Kempton's hide is a necessary sacrifice...
...I do indeed think that the education of a new generation of radicals is one of our central tasks...
...VICTOR ERLICH Seattle, Washington HAROLD ROSENBERG replies: Mr...
...and con tinuously in the ACLU doubtless leaves little time for those literary niceties so dear to Howe's heart...
...Stanley Plastrik, Business manager Sworn to and subscribed before me this 10th day of October, 1955...
...Analytic thinking may not seem a very glamorous and exciting activity, but it is the indispensable prerequisite for political action and is almost the only thing a radical in the United States can do today if he wants to be honest with himself and others...
...The real implication of Mr...
...How are these persons to be recruited and trained in the ideas of socialism...
...Certainly, it prevents him from inventing material of surrender or defeat...
...This assumes a junction at some future date of socialist thought ; with the politically awakening mass of organized labor...
...If, however, you would go a little bit further in history you may find other interesting examples...
...Kempton's life is not an easy one, after all...
...And when Howe gets nasty, he is very nasty indeed, be the object of his wrath friend or foe...
...Trilling's article...
...Business manager, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York 17, N. Y. 2. The owner is: Walter Goldwater, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York 17, N. Y. 3. The known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities are: None...
...1. The names and addresses of the publisher, editor, managing editor, and business managers are: Publisher, Dissent Publishing Association, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York 17, N. Y...
...Or can he point to other significant activities in which he and his sect colleagues are engaged, which the editors of DISSENT neglect...
...Obviously, the test is not whether Mrs...
...1, 1955...
...Who can describe the triumph of the royalists of Paris and the defeat of the liberals...
...Does he deny there was such a position...
...Suffice it to cite a fairly typical passage from Mr...
...Therefore to condemn him it was necessary to fabricate a Type that would go beyond the Stalinists and their collaborators...
...One may agree or disagree with these ideas, but they must be discussed seriously...
...but I tried to suggest in the article to which Mr...
...Now, I am not quite sure whose position is being thus described...
...Does he believe, then, that new socialists can be recruited and trained merely by reading DISSENT...
...There is also a revealing question of tone...
...The government bonds rose in four days from 75 to 82.— May God give wisdom to the Kings after he has given them victory...
...One of the more former-day types was named A. J. Muste who, incidentally, together with Murray Kempton, Irving Howe, et aI, founded DISSENT...
...In the calendar of modern sentimental conservatism, Adam Muller (1779-1829) is another saint...
...It takes him to such sordid precincts as the scene of the Till murder and among uncouth laborers who sully Howe's pristine academic haunts only as literary figments...
...And politics is struggle—ask Harry Truman...
...it would remain so even cif written by one of the editors of DISSENT...
...It helps prevent him from choosing just this particular moment to "judiciously" hunt up material that will strengthen interests antagonistic to freedom...
...Recently the German Zeitschrift fuer die Gesamte Staatswissenschaft (1955, I) printed his heretofore unpublished letters to the Duke of AnhaltKoethen...
...Miller's remark that I would like to see the '30s described as "glorious" persuade me that he quite made out what I was saying...
...As such, it has led a parasitic existence, feeding on the organized socialist move ment much in the same way as the Monthly Review feeds on the CP...
...Many reviewers did and not merely the (ugh) "latter day liberals" singled out by Howe...
...Or does he believe, perhaps, that DISSENT can by itself provide the basis for such activity...
...Howe's real beef, when you come right down to it, i9 that Kempton didn't write Part of Our Time as he would have written it...
...Thanks for sending me your magazine which is excellent and is getting better and better...
...The continued use of the rhetoric of activity can hardly hide the fact that the radical sects are as much cut off from real political activity as any contributor to DISSENT...
...I remain, in deepest veneration and submission your majesty's most humble servant AM...
...Of course we know that Stalinism in the thirties did not stop with "giving money to aid Spanish Loyalists...
...The Autumn issue is an admirable balance of lucidities on the pressent and past situations...
...and monthly in the Progressive...
...Erlich claims to be in doubt about whose position I was describing...
...Faber objects that participation in the ritual life of the existing radical sects (which also comes mainly to writing for papers with small circulations) isn't a substitute either...
...Although this problem of the Couch Liberal falsification has nothing to do with radicalism, it does have to do with politics...
...But I think that if a book is vulgar and flimsy, it remains so even if written by one of the original "founders" of DISSENT...
...In his excellent and stimulating study on Edmund Burke in the Summer 1955 issue of DISSENT Bertram Sarason stated that "we need go no further than the founder of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke himself, to show that the historic role of conservatism has been to defend vested interests...
...The truth is that he doesn't even try to suggest in what ways I was unfair to the book...
...If so, may I remind him that Diana Trilling concluded her judicious analysis of the proceedings by urging that, in spite of his past political errors—which, incidentally, as Mr...
...So I answer Mr...
...Obviously, if socialist ideas are to survive, they can only survive in the form of persons who believe in them...
...Rosenberg refers acidly to "Diana Trilling's Couch Liberal resume of the Oppenheimer Case," I assume that he has in mind statements such as Mrs...
...But the "judicious analysis" of each justified the firers and the executioners...
...Rosenberg knows full well, were not simply a matter of giving "money to aid Spanish Loyalists"—Oppenheimer did not "decrrve to be fired...
...Or does Mr...
...Trilling agreed that Oppenheimer should be fired...
...Lewis Coser's reply to Gordon Haskell's article on the need to maintain socialist organizations in the U. S. calls for some comment...
...we, including Oppenheimer, may well own up that we are unreliable types and deserve to be fired, regardless of actual service to the country...
...Edtor, Irving Howe, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York 17, N. Y...
...but what has all this to do with the quality of his book...
...and the defendants at the Moscow Trials were opposed to their own liquidation...
...and the first step toward establishing any standards in the intellectual life of American socialists is to recognize this fact...
...But the whole magazine is good...
...As for Mr...
...I was delighted to find Proudhon reconsidered, as well as Populism, together with Michael Harrington's and Newman's and Irving Howe's cool analyses of closer days...
...My article had nothing to do with radicalism, petulant or other, but with the falsification of history through the fabrication of a collective "we...
...Managing editor, none...
...I think it is a shame when a good literary critic falls into a personal vendetta with the author of a book under review...
...SEBASTIAN FRANK STATEMENT REQUIRED BY THE ACT OF AUGUST 24, 1912, AS AMENDED BY THE ACTS OF MARCH 3, 1933, AND JULY 2, 1946 (Title 39, United States Code, Section 233) SHOWING THE OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION OF DISSENT published quarterly at New York, N. Y. for Oct...
...So far it has derived its analysis of Stalinism from the Independent Social ist League, its general outlook from so cial-democracy and its mood from every defeated socialist movement in history...
...and while no human being can entirely vouch for his own motives, my review, so far as I can judge, said nothing whatever about Kempton's person or character...
...Coser could be described as a sectarian in retirement...
...Throughout his reply Coser exhibits the humorless wit and the narrow vindictiveness ordinarily associated with sectarian polemics in the traditional style...
...And, besides, why does one detect in Faber a tendency to devaluate the act of "merely" writing— does he perhaps feel that it is unimportant...
...Nor does Mr...
...WILLIAM ROBERT MILLER IRVING HOWE replies: The "vendetta" that has aroused Mr...
...Political philosopher of the Romantic School, political advisor to Metternich, friend of many royalties, theoretician of the Restoration and convert to Catholicism, he is looked upon as a pure idealist...
...He doesn't answer Haskell's arguments, he doesn't substantiate his assertions ("trained flight from reality, etc...
...With this assistance all the latter had to do was to refuse to slice the sausage at the thin extremity proposed by their new allies...
...4. Paragraphs 2 and 3 include, in cases where the stockholder or security holder appears upon the books of the company as trustee or in other fiduciary relation, the name of the person or corporation for whom such trustee is acting...
...Kempton, however, only tried to present "Some Ruins and Monuments . . ." Give him credit at least for trying...
...Erlich's last question thus: Yes, the "conditioned reflex" of a liberal is as important to his activity and to his judgment as the reflex of a soldier or of a parliamentary debater to his...
...Yes, an orthodox liberal conclusion fails to dispel the effects of writings in which the liberal "reflex" is absent...
...Faber's complaint that DISSENT is parasitic in relation to the sects: If the Independent Socialist League had presented one living idea in the last decade I should have been delighted to feed on it, parasitically if you like, but how is one to feed on petrified matter...
...Now, Haskell has definite ideas on how this junction can be prepared and accomplished...
...Coser seems to have retained from his radical experience above all a certain style of writing which we may call "Revolutionary Rudeness" or "Socialist Sarcasm...
...On the 28th news was received in Paris that the whole Kingdom had capitulated and accepted the orders of the rightful King...
...This Coser does not do...
...Does Coser believe that writing articles for DISSENT is an adequate substitute for political activity...
...Miller's anger consisted simply of saying that Kempton's book seemed to me bad and historically irresponsible...
...But I will gladly admit that, though I reject Haskell's solution, I have not as yet found "the" answer...
...It would not have surprised me in the least to learn that an American fellow- traveling scientist had turned over military secrets to the Russians...
...Rosenberg's diatribe: "The final result was that a neo-liberal became available to admit the justice of any accusation, no matter how ridiculous...
...Kempton, he writes, frequently attacks injustices, doesn't have an easy life, etc...
...But Oppenheimer refused to do it...
...also the statements in the two paragraphs show the affiant's full knowledge and belief as to the circumstances and conditions under which stockholders and security holders who do not appear upon the books of the company as trustees, hold stock and securities in a capacity other than that of a bona fide owner...
...What Type...
...This reflex advises him that certain sounds mean that he is under attack...
...Fiedler gave some clues—for others see Mrs...
...I propose to return to these questions in a future issue of DISSENT...
...In this letter of 5 April 1821 he wrote...
...But, since elsewhere Mr...
...In his review of Murray Kempton's Part of Our Time Irving Howe begins with such an animus that he can't make up his mind whether to flay Kempton as a journalist, as a stylist or as an apostate to radical ideals...
...Rosenberg refuse to acknowledge such a conclusion, when it is not couched in the self-righteous rhetorics of conditionedreflex liberals or eternally petulant radicals...
...Howe might do worse than to read it and reflect that the quality of mercy, while perhaps not as heady as his own sulfurous vapors, is closer to justice in this case...
...Yet, Haskell's argument could be summed up in a few simple questions...
...Miller's letter, I fear, is that I should have written a less unfavorable review because Kempton is on "our side...
...I certainly do not believe that writing for DISSENT is a substitute for mass or any other kind of political activity...
...S. The average number of copies of each issue of this publication sold or distributed, through the mails or otherwise, to paid subscribers during the 12 months preceding the date shown above was: (This information is required from daily, weekly, semiweekly, and triweekly newspapers only...
...Leslie Fiedler was opposed to the electrocution of the Rosenbergs...
...Commission expires March 30, 1956...
...Yes, Diana Trilling was opposed to the firing of Oppenheimer...
...Since Oppenheimer gave money to aid the Spanish Loyalists, it mattered not that at the height of RussianAmerican cooperation he unequivocally rejected the approaches of Communist agents...
...Did no "liberals" turn up "to admit the justice of any accusation...
...He also shares the hope that in the course of its development an independent Labor Party will identify itself with socialist positions, enabling it to solve the main problems of our society in a progressive manner...
...There is nothing wrong with this, provided he does not mistake his conditioned reflexes for political theories and leaves other people to work in peace...
...To list all my disagreements with Harold Rosenberg's raid on what he chooses to call "Couch Liberalism" would require more space than you can allot me and more time than I can spare at the moment...
...and he doesn't put forward any ideas of his own...
...The job of pegging injustice in print every lay, Tuesday through Friday, in the New York Post...
...Granted...
...Trilling's...
...A. J: s review is in the September issue of Fellowship Magazine...
...DISSENT tries to do as much as it can...
...from the accusations she made in her "judi cious analysis," others could draw their own conclusions as to what Oppenheimer "deserved...
...Coser apparently shares with Haskell the belief that independent political action by the American labor movement (such as through a Labor Party) would be desirable...
...There is a pearl in his triumphant letter to the Duke announcing that the popular upheaval in Piedmont had been smashed...
Vol. 3 • January 1956 • No. 1
