Letters
Organize! Editors: I was amazed, and then amused, and then depressed to read the ten responses in the "Left After Forty Years" symposium (Dissent, Winter 1994) and find that only one...
...Beneath the endless policy rhetoric and finger wagging from Clintonia to Limbaughland, we face a moral nihilism a thousand To Letter Writers • We welcome succinct letters from our readers...
...It has taken a long time for the left to become as weak as it is, and it's going to take a long time to develop some real strength...
...and (3) Industrial Areas Foundation, 1106 Clayton Lane, Austin, Texas 78723...
...We need some new thinking and new language, right alongside powerful popular organizations...
...history in terms of this syndicalist definition and have developed what may be legitimately called a corporatist interpretation of U.S...
...Some of those present at the creation of the Wisconsin school of diplomatic history in the 1950s and 1960s—for example, Ellis Hawley and Thomas McCormick—have analyzed twentieth-century U.S...
...The lamentably forgotten Lewis Corey, in a 1950 review of The Vital Center in the Progressive, commented that beyond anticommunism and "growth," the liberals behind Truman had no real ideas at all...
...A review is necessarily shorthand, and we hope our critics will be pleased by the full treatment of corporate theory in our biography of William Appleman Williams, scheduled to appear in Spring 1995...
...In that spirit, then, here are the names and addresses of the three groups (I work for #2) mentioned by West: (1) Democratic Socialists of America, 180 Varick Street, 12th floor, NYC 10014 (212-727-8610...
...2) New Party, 227 West 40th, #1303, NYC 10018 (212-302-5053...
...In addition to mischaracterizing Sklar's extraordinarily important work, confusing corporatism and corporate liberalism obscures crucial differences between European, Latin American, and U.S...
...We therefore read the review of Henry Berger's new Williams reader with great interest...
...I know that politics these days is more about "discourse" (although I confess to not actually knowing what that means) than about organizing, but this is too much...
...Moreover, as we understand the issue, corporatist ideology— particularly as it arose in Europe and Latin America— was strongly statist and had traditionalist and romantically organicist elements...
...political traditions to which we need to attend in developing a strategy for the left in this country...
...Lawrence Lynn, SILVER SPRING, MD...
...Letters must be kept to about 500 words, typed, double-spaced, and carry the full address and name of the sender...
...Richard Schneirov, TERRE HAUTE, IND...
...It provides a welcome appreciation of Williams's insights and suggests their enduring relevance...
...Speaking for myself, however, I would like to propose a Letters times deeper and more destructive than the much discussed nihilism of the ghettos...
...So if you want to write about something that you like, or dislike, in or about Dissent, please do it quickly...
...That symptomizes the real tragedy behind the decline of democratic hopes and environmental prospects since the New Deal, and brackets any theorizing about modern "corporatism...
...q helpful third term: Trumanism...
...More to the point for socialists of that day, he successfully eclipsed the class struggle by accelerating a whites-only suburban sprawl and upward mobility, destroying the cities as nonwhites entered in numbers (also creating a bastion of future blue-collar conservatism in the South and West, and arranging for an armed, forced integration that would make nonwhites the frontline cannon fodder for future imperial wars...
...The conflation of corporatism and corporate liberalism may have begun with Williams himself, who proposed that with the rise of corporate capitalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, intellectuals and policymakers developed a "syndicalist" definition of society, through which functional groups supplanted individuals as the fundamental category of political discourse and obligation...
...Paul Buhle Replies: The authors of the review had no intention of questioning the originality or value of Martin Sklar's contribution...
...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...
...There are lots of ways for left intellectuals to relate to and support the day-to-day organizing of progressive groups—including helping them with writing, theorizing, outreach, speaking, recruiting students, international connections, research, fundraising and more, still leaving time (and perhaps renewed energy) for valuable scholarship...
...A little time and money invested in these groups would not be a bad way for Dissenters to fulfill one piece of their obligation to the struggle for democracy and freedom...
...Keith Haynes, ALBANY, N.Y...
...As I look out at my little Rhode Island, a picturesque green space and historic home of manufacture was turned into a condo-suburban zone ofswollen bureaucracies, handouts to business, dying songbirds, and sick people (the second-highest cancer death rate in the U.S...
...Corporate liberalism, however, has encompassed a commitment to individualism, voluntary association, and the supremacy of society over the state—what the Founders called the sovereignty of the people...
...political and diplomatic history...
...We write because we were puzzled by the reviewers' char acterization of Martin J. Sklar's approach...
...Editors: I was amazed, and then amused, and then depressed to read the ten responses in the "Left After Forty Years" symposium (Dissent, Winter 1994) and find that only one respondent —Cornel West—actually named any organizations...
...Although Williams's "syndicalism" is compatible with either a corporatist liberal or a corporatist interpretation, the two must be distinguished...
...William Burr, WASHINGTON, D.C...
...Paul Buhle and Edward Rice-Maximin suggest that from his work with Williams at Wisconsin Sklar developed a "corporatist" in terpretation of twentieth-century American history...
...SUMMER • 1994 • 431...
...and Paul Wolman, WASHINGTON, D.C...
...James Livingston, NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J...
...In addition, although some have interpreted corporate liberalism as simply the invention of "elite" corporate capitalists, Sklar's work has led us to understand that it was a cross-class construction developed over time by large and small capitalists, labor leaders, social reformers, and politicians...
...We think this claim is mistaken because Sklar has long drawn a sharp distinction between corporatist ideology and corporate liber 430 • DISSENT alism...
...Unfair to Sklar Editors: As graduate students at Northern Illinois University during the 1970s, we worked with Martin J. Sklar and Carl Parrini and came to think of ourselves as "second generation" students of William A. Williams...
...Letters will not be returned to senders unless they are accompanied by stamped, selfaddressed envelopes...
...We are unable to acknowledge letters...
...Dissent, as a reliably sane voice, could help out along the way with both...
...This is more than an academic issue...
...That's Trumanism to the core...
...in only two generations...
...We reserve the right to edit letters down to fit our space and to choose which shall be printed...
...At the cusp of mid-century, Harry Truman used the cold war pretext to erect a warfare/welfare economy and security state so comprehensive in its handouts and its exclusions that liberals and conservatives alike soon tied their political careers to it...
...DANIEL CANTOR New York, N.Y...
...When another quartercentury has passed and Stalinism is only an unhappy memory, Trumanism will (unless something better happens) be the dominant legacy of the twentieth century to a toxified, ozone-thinned, automobile-overwhelmed globe...
Vol. 41 • July 1994 • No. 3
