LETTERS
DeHaan, Richard & Kristol, Irving & Roseman, Herman & Olsen, Alex & K., E. & Gordon, Arthur
If one is to judge from the Winter 1956 DISSENT, a blind spot has afflicted its contributors en masse. I refer to the contention that Marx believed that a simple cancellation of private...
...I found the papers at the DISSENT forum in New York very stimulating, but I am sure that I am not alone in feeling that much of the value of the meeting was negated by the presence of professional speech-makers sent by the vari ous socialist "sects" to uphold the gospel truth (s) against the DISSENT heretics...
...In Boston a well-attended party was held by DISSENT supporters, and in Detroit friends and readers of the magazine participated in an informal discussion with Irving Howe to plan for an enlargement of local circulation...
...A communication has come from Henri Rabassiere concerning the article by Gunther Anders on television...
...Contributing Editor Sidney Lens has A World in Revo lution (Praeger) coming out this spring...
...They cannot or will not see that alienation is a class phenomenon...
...In my opinion, there hasn't been as satisfying a magazine published in this country since Dwight Macdonald's Politics...
...Marx held precisely the opposite...
...Almost adjusted to your "tierischen Ernst" I was delighted and surprised by Henri Rabassiere's fluffy bubbles of learned humor...
...As early as 1844 (in the Okonomisch-philosophische Man uskripte), Marx argued that any overthrow of capitalism would be empty unless the alienated human values were recovered for man...
...Congratulations and thanks for an issue that we, who don't romp and feed on enriched blue campus grass, appreciate...
...I was especially interested in Marcuse's polemic on Freudian revisionism and hope he will contribute more articles on the same subject as his point of view, unhappily, is in my opinion nearer the truth than Fromm's...
...These symptoms should be recognized for what they are: proof par excellence of Marx's contention that the bourgeoisie is a dying class...
...Rosenberg was addressed to me personally, contained various private references to editorial matters outstanding between us, and was therefore regarded by me as a personal communication...
...ALEX OLSEN : Unlike some readers who do not know what to expect from a magazine of this sort, I am getting more than I had expected in the manner in which theories, arguments, analyses of political, psychological and philosophic issues are presented...
...This subject may not be so important as politics, nor so imminent, but it has a devil of an influence on our judgment and conclusions...
...We want to get a large number of new student readers, and though this means a financial loss, we are offering a special inexpensive subscription price for students...
...Not to mention Norman Mailer's novel The Deer Park (Putnam's) which has been out for several months.] It is our policy not to review books by the . Held Over...
...Recently, after reading Ben Seligman's article on Keynes [Winter 1955], I came upon the following passage in Keynes which I thought might interest you...
...Rabassiere himself belatedly recognizes what Marx actually wrote on alienation in the postscript to his article...
...I should like to advise your readers that the letter mentioned by Mr...
...What this means in practice is something like this: if the Marxist researcher observes the same phenomenon in two adjacent classes (and whether such is observable is still a huge problem, the affirmative answer to which the "interpreters" facilely assume) , he takes it as evidence of hegemony, not of class unity...
...What these "interpreters" do is to depict their symptoms as those of humanity at large, and then blame socialism for not alleviating them...
...What this "something else" is was generally not broached, although two (apparently contradictory) solutions were suggested: industrial co-determination and a return to a pre-industrial idyll of some small communities...
...Two—Patterns of World Conflict (Dial) by G. L. Arnold and The Power Elite (Dial) by C. Wright Mills —have just appeared...
...In this issue: Coser, Seligman papers...
...Now, the worker has his own problems, and among them is not to be found that image of the effete bourgeois which these "interpreters" would pass off as a common predicament...
...What is wrong with their researches in "mass culture" is just that: they treat of an amorphous, classless mass...
...Had I known it was intended for publication, Encounter would have published it, for we make it a principle to publish letters from our contributors, particularly when they take issue with something that has appeared in the magazine...
...Perhaps he was too sensitive to remind me of what was, for him, an unpleasant incident...
...knowing per sonally of his deep feeling and adaman tine sincerity one the subject ("The Right to Be Lazy") helped of course in the appreciation...
...Possibly I am attuned to the type of thinking of your contributors...
...Rosenberg...
...If one is to judge from the Winter 1956 DISSENT, a blind spot has afflicted its contributors en masse...
...It was an unfortunate oversight on the part of Mr...
...This correspondence was cordial, and led to our publishing two articles by Mr...
...Politics and the Novel (Horizon) by Irving Howe...
...These people neither really listened nor cared to listen to what the speakers said, for they knew in advance that Seligman, Rosenberg, Howe and Coser were among the damned, and that all they needed to do was to denounce them...
...At least it is a highly readable magazine with some compliments to myself for this quality of perception and discrimination...
...See back cover...
...All of these "interpreters" of Marx (with the possible exception of Andrieux and Lignon) held that something other than socialism is needed to alleviate cer tain traits of boredom, passivity, satiety, etc...
...Although I was a contributor, my letter was not published...
...It is hard to reach potential student readers, and our friends could be of enormous help simply by talking to students they know and buying a gift subscription or two for students...
...they will be review ed in a forthcoming issue...
...Books, Books, Books...
...and it, too, will be reviewed in one of our next issues...
...In its sense of Cold War 'responsibility...
...As a result, those of us who came to participate in a discussion grew weary and either left the meeting or sat back in disgust...
...a Study of Veblen (Public Affairs) by Bernard Rosenberg...
...The first two this spring, the third early fall...
...Andrieux and Lignon, Henri Rabassiere, Erich Fromm and his reviewer, H. P., all believe that Marx held that to abolish private property is to abolish the alienation of the worker...
...The various utopian schemes for supplanting private property which would not humanize man he dismissed as "vulgar communism," mere logical extensions of private property, which require the continued mediation of alienation for their realization...
...In the future, can't you arrange with the various spokesmen of the True Line (s) to refrain from overwhelming us with boredom...
...Alienation ceases only when man becomes man in and for himself (an sich and fur sich) . This position of Marx should be equally clear from almost any of his writings: for example, the realization in the Communist Manifesto that monopolization progressively destroys private property is certainly not tantamount to the contention that monopolization progressively destroys alienation—on the contrary, it intensifies it...
...In itself this might have been tolerable, if only they hadn't been so long-winded about it, if only they hadn't adopted a tactic of saturation, one after the other getting up to mimic each other's righteousness...
...It will appear in the summer issue...
...This was written in 1921...
...Essays in Persuasion, p. 60...
...If one is to believe the statistics which DISSENT itself has published, the workers of the world, far from being satiated and passive, are on the contrary even now in the most acute distress of imperialism and "war unemployment...
...Just when I wanted to complain about the Ph.D.'ish air DISSENT gives itself there appears such an excellent issue [Winter 1956...
...It's been a busy season...
...In retrospect, I deeply regret having missed the opportunity for staging a Rosenberg-Fiedler argument, which would have been worth the watching...
...The first DISSENT forum that was held in New York City drew over 100 people and provoked lively discussion...
...Rosenberg never to have mentioned the fate of his letter, in the correspondence we had with one another in the months that followed my receipt of it...
...OUR MAJOR promotional effort this spring concerns students...
...Nevertheless, you can understand that I was astonished and more than a little taken aback by coming across the sentences quoted above...
...I refer to the contention that Marx believed that a simple cancellation of private property, "capitalism minus exploitation," is sufficient to dispose of alienation...
...Most of the papers presented at the meeting will be printed in the magazine...
...Does your Library subscribe to DISSENT...
...In a socialist society, as in the utopia of News from Nowhere, this middle class would continue to compete among itself for means of escaping inactivity, just as it does under capitalism...
...The pretensions to universality which these analyses make are similar to the utopian chimeras which DISSENT has so effectively pointed out among the New Conservatives and New Liberals, but has not as yet been able to see among the "New Critics" of bourgeois society...
...The "interpreters" are perfectly at liberty to "rethink" socialism in any way they choose, and to hold that industrialism inevitably involves alienation...
...Three books are coming from DISSENT : The Functions of Social Conflict (Free Press) by Lewis Coser...
...But they are not at liberty to do so in the name of Marx or Marxism, and they preferably should not even use the term "socialism"—the term involving, as it does, some historical kinship with the proletariat, to say the very least...
...In Harold Rosenberg's article, "Couch Liberalism and the Guilty Past," in your issue of Autumn 1955, the following passage occurs: .. After reading his [Fiedler's] article, I wrote a letter to Encounter pointing out its distortions...
...many Americans give their advice as though it were actually immoral to make suggestions which public opinion does not approve...
...Anders has been invited to answer, if he wishes...
...In America, I gather, an act of this kind is considered so reckless that some improper motive is at once suspected, and criticism takes the form of an inquiry into the culprit's personal character and antecedents...
...We are very happy to report that a really impressive number of books is going to be published in the next few months by DISSENT edi tors and writers...
...Couch Liberalism had learned to mimic the toughness of Red Front liberalism with its why-rock-the-boat cynicism...
...If Marxism has any validity, it is the validity of the class analysis of society (which, again, they are free to abandon, but not in the name of Marxism) . The questions with which they concern themselves thus have little to do with the questions of the means of production with which Marxists concern themselves...
...Dissent Meetings...
Vol. 3 • April 1956 • No. 2
